W i ll Was pe Though opera continues to be impossible at the
Coliseum due to the stagehands' strike, I gather , that 'concert' performances (minus . scenery) are more than likely to _ bridge the gap — with seat prices at £1.50 top — following the enthusiastic response of last Thursday's audience to such a performance, staged at the Coliseum for BBC2. For neither the Musicians' Union nor Equity members are giving the strikers their support, any more than they did the BBC hands who moved in to clear the stage of the scenery of Bassarids (abandoned there by the strikers on November 4), The Coliseum's prima-donna stagehands are, in fact, at odds with their own union, NATTKE, , whose members elsewhere have little sympathy with the disgruntlement of the most lavishly remunerated stagehands in the business (weekly pay packets of around £200 are not uncommon), and there are no kind words for them, either, from the singers, many of whom have glum memories of the tours on which' they couldn't help noticing enviously the higher lifestyle of the stagehands.
Move over Norman?
Does the Daily Telegraph know something that is being kept from the rest of us? A shudder ran through the art world last Friday at the paper's description of Lord Eccles as "Opposition Spokesman for the Arts". Could it be that Mr Heath had learnt nothing from the noble viscount's appalling record when in office?
Brought to Coventry
Ed Thomason, lately of the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, is not a man to forget old friends. I have remarked before (September 7) on how, appointed co-director of the Belgrade, Coventry, he took away with him all his key personnel from the Crucible. Now I see that his new Belgrade PRO is Paul Allen, formerly a Thomason fan as drama critic of the Sheffield Telegraph.
Confirmation
One of the least believable (even by me) items that ever appeared in this column was a paragraph last June reporting gossip that playwright John Osborne was a "regular" at Paul Raymond's nudie show, Pyjama Tops. So I was glad to see him confessing to an interviewer in the Sunday Times magazine that he had, in fact, seen it 'twice' and was going again.
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