Will Waspe
The Royal Shakespeare Company's much publicised idea of playing the Shakespearian quartet of Roman plays in historical sequence at consecutive performances seems so far to have been conceived wholly for the benefit of the press. Critics were invited to the Aldwych last week when two cycles of the plays were given consecutively, but in the published schedule up to December, there is not a single occasion when the four plays are given in sequence, let alone at consecutive performances.
Bad one, Bernard
Sweet are the uses of self-advertisement, for those with the opportunity to so indulge themselves. Bernard Levin's astonishing performance in devoting one of his Times columns last week entirely to a blatant 'puff for the cartoon gallery he has opened in partnership with Robin Ray was — as he conceded himself in a naiVe attempt to disarm criticism — a shocking misuse of his position. Waspe hopes, no doubt equally naively, that he had the grace-to return his fee for that particular column describing an idea that cannot claim even to be unique: Mel Calman, at the Workshop Gallery, thought of it first, and Caiman's next sale of original cartoons will be in aid of the Save the Children Fund, conceivably a worthier cause. Waspe learns, incidentally, that the Levin-Ray venture — contrary to an impression that may have been communicated to Times readers — will not confine itself to cartoons that have actually been published. Anything the cartoonists care to turn out will be gratefully offered for sale.
Footing the bill
Though Eyre Methuen are no longer prepared to go on subsidising Theatre Quarterly, the magazine's contributors, at least. will be glad to know that it is to carry on under the same editors. For the moment it is being kept alive by miscellaneous wellwishers who are kicking in a total, of £4,000 a year in guarantees against loss. Since, however, the publication is, in Waspe's view, so monumentally dreary as to make the losses inevitable, the chances are that the burden will ultimately fall upon the taxpayer, via the famous generosity of the Arts Council.
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