Will W aspe
After struggling with the project for a year or more, the Jesus Christ Superstar boys, Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, have given up their attempt to make a musical out of Jeeves and company. Most would probably imagine that the difficulty was the score, since nothing we hay,' heard of Lloyd Webber's output suggests that he is exactly the composer to set the distant, languid, 'thirties never-never-land of Wodehouse's imagination to 'music. Surprisingly, though, it turns out that it is lyricist Tim Rice who, while ready enough to tackle the Bible, confesses himseli defeated in his attempt to blend lyrically with Plum's prose and humour.
Over to Auntie
Actor-playwright Colin Welland, whose Say Goodnight to Grandma, a London success, is soon to open in New York, makes no secret of the fact that Leech; United — commissioned by Granada TV — is his most ambitious work to date, at least for television. Granadamen are polite about it, too, but they are not doing it — nervous partly, it seems, about the subject matter (the clothing workers' strike of a year or two back), but mostly about the length. The companies of the IBA network are not, on the whole, enthusiastic about devoting upwards of three hours to a minority entertainment such as drama, unless it's an epic. Fortunately, the BBC have no such inhibitions and have picked up the dropped option.
Corker
The Evening Standard's art critic Richard Cork evidently takes a perverse pride in qualifying for Private Eye's Pseuds' Corner. But he sets some pretty problems. In his whole-page piece last week on Matisse's 'The Snail' almost any paragraph would qualify, and doubtless the Eye has had them all. Waspe intended to quote one, but couldn't bring himself to pl,;■• favourites. The thing deserves to be read in its entirity for a proper joyous appreciation of its gorgeous, deadpan flight into the realms of the higher bosh.
Previous page
