Will Waspe's Whispers
If the Royal Shakespeare Company boss, Trevor Nunn, finds a job for the present drama critic of the Observer, Ronald Bryden, it will surprise no one except a scurrilous few who think Bryden has been already working for the RSC for some time. Nunn would certainly have quite different motives from those that are said to have influenced Laurence Olivier in employing Bryden's predecessor, Ken Tynan, at the National Theatre. Virginia Fairweather, who recounted her experiences as Olivier's press agent so divertingly in her book, Cry God for Larry, recalls one Sunday morning at Chichester, where the first Festival Theatre season was a ' trial run' for what was to become the National Theatre. After reading a powerful blast from Tynan, panning his production of The Broken Heart, Olivier raged for ten minutes, finally remarking to his wife, Joan Plowright, "Darling, I would suggest that I employ Mr Tynan at the National Theatre. In the time-honoured phrase, If you can't beat 'em, join 'em,' and at least he wouldn't be able to write notices about the theatre."
Reflected glory
Mr John Aziz, the enterprising Cypriot who burst on the London night-life scene five years ago, has grandiose plans for some Frith Street premises on which he holds the lease. His friends say he is spending a six-figure sum on converting the building into a theatre-restaurant where he will stage a two-hour girlie revue, It will be called the Folies Bergere.
The name, is in line with the dazzling originality invariably displayed by London's night-spot entrepreneurs, who have so far 'borrowed' the names of the Astor, the Blue Angel, the Copacabana, the Latin Quarter, the Stork and the 21 from New York, and the Casino de Paris, the Lido and the Crazy Horse from Paris. There used to be a Bal Tabarin in London as well, but that was one of Mr Paul Raymond's wrong guesses and since he sold the place it has become much better known as Danny La Rue's.
No plagiarism or ' passing-off ' prohibitions evidently ,apply in this area.
Autre temps
My colleague Benny Green, whose fondness for word-games is well known, was clearly not chosen idly as 'editor' of the text of Show Boat (which is being revived in London). Revising Oscar Hammerstein's 1927 libretto, Benny found himself beset by unexpected problems of semantics — as when someone remarks of the character, Gaylord : "Gay is looking rather queer today." The temptation to leave that line exactly as it was must have been almost irresistible.
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