Will Waspe's Whispers
For quite illogical reasons my hackles tend to rise a bit when I hear of Americans using London theatres for " pre Broadway " try-outs, rather as West End managements might use Bristol or Brighton or even Crewe. I thus offer only a qualified welcome to an American named Bill Snyder who has been doing the rounds of the managements here with a musical comedy called The Eighth Wonder — and with $300,000 of investment money from ' angels' back home who feel that a London production, for starters, would be not only less costly but less risky than a Broadway flier. Snyder himself wrote the music for the show and he may well succeed in getting a London impressario to present it, for not all of them would sneeze at $300,000.
I feel bound to warn him, however, that the previous form is all against the second part of his dream — the subsequent Broadway production. I can think of many instances in which American money has financed London shows that were intended to transfer later to New York, but none at all in which the transfer has actually been achieved, or indeed in which the London production has itself been successful. London may be cheaper than Broadway, but its audiences are no less discriminating.
Malice in Granadaland
There is, 1 suspect, some discrepancy between the critical approval of and the rather baffled public reaction to Yorkshire Television's series, The Organization, written by Philip Mackie and having to do with the large PR department of a fictitious firm. The reason, I further suspect, is that journalists generally — unlike 99 per cent of the public — come closely in contact with PR people, and that TV journalists particularly come closely in contact with the executives (and PR departments) of TV companies, including those of the Granada organisation in which author Mackie spent so many happily observant years.
Which would explain why TV critics are so rapturous about The Organization, while the rest of you probably miss altogether the satire behind the stylishness, and can have only a limited appreciation of the barbed accuracy of the performances. But no one appreciates it all so much as the employees and ex-employees of Granada, who turn it on weekly in a fever of anticipation — nervous (if present employees) or delighted (if among the growing legions of ex).
Relative values
Despite the disaster of She and She, I am glad to see that Harriet Crawley, twentythree-year-old daughter of London Weekend president Aldan Crawley, is able to continue her television career. She has been given a new Sunday talk series, Private Views, beginning this week with a dialogue with Clive Jenkins. The programme is originated by London Weekend.
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