Will Waspe
To the growing list of groups in the country turning bitterly against the Common Market, I suspect you may safely now add the British film industry. Already in a far from healthy condition, the industry this week got the bad news from the Department of Trade that films made in EEC countries will henceforth be regarded, for quota purposes, as no different from films actually made by British companies.
The quota system, for the benefit of those not aware of it, compels our cinemas to show at least 30 per cent British films. The industry here would like the percentage to be higher. Instead it is clearly going to be lower, and even now company chiefs are getting together on a strong petition of protest.
I wish them luck, though of course the Government's hands are tied in the matter — unless or until we cut loose from the Community.
Whose Shrew?
Charles Marowitz of the Open Space Theatre has, I hear, been invited to send his production of The Shrew (one of his eccentric, potted adaptations of Shakespeare) to a Yugoslav theatre festival. What I also hear — though perhaps the Yugoslays have not — is that Marowitz himself is not personally directing the company he's sending. His original production is presently being busily re-directed by actor Nick Sim monds. •
And why has Marowitz opted out of the chore? Not, certainly, from boredom or lethargy. He has a separate and more worrying problem in getting together and getting financed a new Open Space production, unexpectedly needed because the grievous Sherlock's Last Case ran only four weeks instead of its scheduled eight.
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