Will Waspe's Whispers
If you watched last Sunday's ITV play from London Weekend, Ben Spray, and felt you'd seen it before — you were right.
The same play was networked by Granada in February 1961. But not a word of that was breathed by London Weekend, despite assurances of a screen announcement given to author Peter Nichols and his agent Peggy Ramsey — who are naturally irked at having a twelve-year-old play passed off as a brand-new piece from a man generally regarded as the best comedy dramatist of the day.
Other authors are likely to be a little more careful in future to get such assurances in writing. In fact, it has hitherto been comparatively rare for any dramatist — however successful — to sell the same play to two different companies, but it is likely to happen more frequently in future. While some companies can still be tricky over limitations on their rights, most authors nowadays can get contracts that allow the copyrights to revert to them after two-and-a-half-years.
Comings and goings
All's well that ends well, it might hopefully and unoriginally be said of recent traumatic times at the Hampstead Theatre Club, where the Tokyo Kid Brothers (with their pot-pourri of Japanese ' rock ' and ' protest ') were surprised to find themselves opening on Monday — and thus clashing with their classical compatriots of Kabuki at Sadler's Wells.
They came to the rescue of Hampstead boss Vivian Matalon, obliged to close prematurely the Patty Welles play, The Lottery. Matalon's troubles with this little number began long before he saw the critics' stinging notices. After hard days with Patty, the play's director Ronald Hayman — though officially credited with the job to the end — had walked out in despair a week before the opening, leaving Matalon himself to take over and hold together a cast that came, I'm told, within an ace of following Hayman through the exit door.
Square holes
That job from which Bill Hays has been unceremoniously booted, the artistic directorship of the Leeds Playhouse, has gone to John Harrison, who has survived previous periods of working with boards of governors — at Nottingham and Birmingham. He takes over in September.
Meanwhile I'm pleased to hear that Hays has thoughtfully kept in touch with old chums at the BBC, where he used to direct TV operas. He's returning to that comforting fold to direct The Gondoliers for producer Cedric Messina when he leaves Leeds.
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