Will Waspe
When Rudolf Nureyev takes his flatulent new production of Sleeping Beauty for Festival Ballet to the Palais des Sports in Paris this autumn, he has a surprise piece of casting with which to wow the froggies. Dame Margot Fonteyn, no less, will be dancing the Lilac Fairy. Before poisonous British balletptomaines rush to invest in francs for the trip (probably around five to the pound once we've left the Market) they should be reminded that in Nureyev's version the Lilac Fairy is strictly a Character role and has nothing to do except walk round a lot and smile graciously. Unkind ballet-goers may suggest that this is about all Dame Margot has been doing these last few years but, oh, sic transit . . .
Royal flash
Talking of ballet, as I suppose I must about once a year, all is not well at the Royal. Kenneth MacMillan, having survived that campaign of personal vilification ..unparallelled even by Terpischorean standards when he took over, has now made--Something of a success of his Directorship', so it is only natural that the Covent-Garden management should be thinking-Of a change — the departure of his tireless champion Chairman Drogheda may have something to do with this. Amongst those approached to take over has been the ubiquitous Nureyev. The only snag was that he insisted on dancing as well as directing, and the bosses of Bow Street, having seen how he turned even The Sleeping Beauty into a hard-boiled ego-trip, drew the line at that. Dame Margot, 'once she's finished strolling round Paris, is probably next in line for a discreet approach.
Prospective bonanza
All is not sweetness and light in the commercial art world. The Bond Street boys are not up in arms as one might have expected against the increased rate of VAT on antilitie silver from 8 to 25 per cent, nor are they taking wholehearted action to oppose the Wealth Tax on works of art. The fact is that there is apprehension that the prospect of extracting juicy fees from their hapless clients for wholesale valuations of works of art may slip from their clutches if the campaign to exclude art treasures from the Wealth Tax should succeed.
Bitch \
Department of put-downs. Lord Harewood recently invited his old chum Richard Buckle to a first night at the Coliseum. His Lordship, wearing one of those distinctive highnecked, colourfully embroidered mandarin jackets that add such lustre to premieres in St Martin's Lane, temporarily lost his guest in the interval. "Where's Dickie?" he trumpeted. Still small voice from behind: "Here I am George, dressed like .a--man!" and he very possibly was, tem.
Right Bfrkett
Thank heavens someone, Lord Willis actually, has raised the matter of Peter Hall's extramural activities at London Weekend TV in parliament. Even if Hall only spends five minutes a week in the studios in order to earn those fabled thousands (£8,000 was it, or £18,000?), at a time when the National has its back to the unopened wall, moonshining on this scale by its Director not only tastes bad but, as his counterpart across at the Mermaid might have put it, by golly it is bad. How sad that the only peer to spring to his defence should have been his own Deputy Director Lord Birkett, whose somewhat sketchy experience of anything to do with the theatre has made him a laughing stock, when not a source of much iitation, among all those old pros down the Waterloo° Road.
Previous page
