Happy valleys
Sir: Kenneth Hurren's admirable piece about the world premiere of the play Nye Bevan evokes many happy memories of that time shortly after the second world war when I toured two plays which I produced for the Arts Council — Anna Christie and An Inspector Calls — through the small halls of the mining valleys of S. Wales, including the Welfare Hall at Tredegar. My memories, thirty years later, are rather different to Mr Hurren's; we were thanked enthusiastically by playing to full houses wherever we went, and although most of the audiences were 75 per cent composed of miners and their families — many of whom had never seen a professional actor before — they liked their first taste of the Theatre.They were 'turned on' by the group idea of presenting the play (in which actors, director and production were all subservient to the playwright, who was worth playing second place to. in any event) and provided living proof that real drama, as written by Priestley and O'Neill at their best and presented by a dedicated cast of actors, goes down with the masses. I returned from S. Wales to London convinced that an adventurous policy pays. Such a policy was good for the box office and good for the Arts Council. Admittedly, to quote Sammy Cahn, 'That was a long time ago', but it is not nostalgia that dictates my memory, for I recall chronicling such thoughts at the time. Also, I query whether the men who work underground and who are serious about life, because they live the hard way, have changed to the extent that Mr Hurren implies in his article. More likely, I suspect a trendy Arts Council, that has forgotten its original mission and nowadays misunderstands the taste of its audience; certainly that section of it capable of appreciating true drama as opposed to the meretricious. Before the 'whiff of the sort of trendy little experiment in which too many subsidised groups feel free to indulge as soon as they get their hot little hands into the public purse' — as your distinguished drama critic has it — it is certain that there would not have been, as there apparently were, any empty seats in the small miners' hall at the first performance of the play, however indifferent, about that great legendary figure, Nye Bevan; the most tellingly 'theatrical' of all orators of our time and a player of real drama to boot.
Peter Cotes Savage Club, 9 Fitzmaurice Place Berkeley Square, London, W1
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