W i ll
Waspe
Critics of the Arts Council's subsidisation policies — who were much exercised not so long ago over grants in aid of allegedly pornographic theatrical activities — have some rather different ammunition to hand in the Council's support of the Portable production, England's Ireland, which I'm told has received a very lavish grant indeed. The play, the work of a consortium of seven writers with no compunction about sinking their teeth into the hand that feeds them, is a semi-documentary treatment of the Ulster situation which many would regard as heavily slanted in favour of the activities of the IRA. Over fifty theatres in Britain turned down the show with varying expressions of distaste and disdain for its propagandist methods (coolly shrugged off by Portable as "the reluctance of British theatres to present a political play "), until it was booked for four nights in Lancaster and one-night stands at London's Royal Court and the Nottingham Playhouse. What might conceivably disturb us all, and even the Arts Council, is that, while scrabbling around for bookings in this country, the Portable people, with a wilful lack of tact, hied off to Amsterdam and premiered their piece at the Mickery Theatre there, a notorious centre for anarchic international theatre groups.
His own thing
Daphne du Maurier's story, Don't Look Now, should start filming ere long unless American producer Peter Katz's enthusiasm for it has suddenly cooled. Katz has been trailing the film rights around with him for some time, but could never get front-office backing to make the picture for either Paramount or Saggitarius. Now, however, he is taking over from Louis Heywood as London production boss of American International and will presumably be able to make the big decisions for himself.
Present laughter
After seeing what BBC2 are doing with Evelyn Waugh's Scoop (see my colleague Clive Gammon's comments this week), I can sympathise with Kenneth More in his decision to decline an offer from London Weekend Television to star in a six-part series called The Upper Crust because — like Scoop — it was to be done with a studio audience. LWT programme controller Cyril Bennett evidently insists that all the company's comedy series should be done in this way.
Most people, I suspect, will be surprised that there really are live studio audiences at our TV comedy shows, which are generally so unfunny that it must be the devil's own job to recruit and encourage the half-wits who are heard laughing at them. I have always_ assumed that the producers simply dubbed-in waves of canned laughter wherever, Gold help them, they thought it appropriate.
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