will Waspe
Since the 'Noes' seem to need every vote they can muster, I hope that Ken Tynan is planning a patriotic trip home on Thursday. At last report the critic-turned-impresario had gone into Europe, though not into the Market — he was in Madrid, doubtless indulging his wellknown fever for bull-fighting while working on a follow-up to Oh! Calcutta!, the coach-party sex revue that has made him a fortune.
Cause for alarm?
The number of arty occasions at which Lady Falkender has been turning up lately, for no readily explicable reason, has led to some alarmingly persistent rumours that the Prime Minister is planning to appoint 'The Duchess' as the next Minister for the Arts, in succession to the woefully unsuccessful Hugh Jenkins, Who is due to be retired ere long (not at his own request). Waspe's bet remains on Bryan Magee, Who has been doing the artistic rounds rather longer, but those rumours do give me pause.
None for Nunn
Meanwhile, the hapless Hugh continues to bear the brunt of the artistic community's ire over everything he can't do, or won't do, or says he might be able to do but so far hasn't. Mostly What he can't do is get more Treasury money for the Arts Council to pay to the likes of the Royal Shakespeare Company, whose director Trevor Nunn says, with sweeping arrogance, that it will have to be new money — for Nunn just couldn't bring himself to accept anything sliced off anyone else's subvention (thus, by implication, denying the Arts Council's right to decide priorities for itself).
I've a feeling that Nunn is going to be unlucky on this one, and his 'threat' to withdraw the RSC from London's Aldwych won't get him anywhere. With plays like Travesties running there (cast of eight, production already paid for), the Aldwych should be making a profit not a loss, or else a terrible amount of reorganisation of the RSC's financing is needed. Maybe the chairman, City man Kenneth Cork, can do something about that, though I was sorry to read of his saying that "it's not the RSC's job to keep commercially successful plays running indefinitely." Why not, at a time like this — or at any time? If the play is of the standard it exists to maintain, the RSC'should be eager that as many playgoers as possible see it. Only good — and profit — can come of that.
Absentee tenant
I'm glad to see that the London Evening Standard quickly picked up my story of last week about the National Theatre's extraordinary commitment to the Round House to pay for not using the Chalk Farm engine-shed during the summer. It's possible I may have exaggerated the weekly rent (is it only £1,400 instead of £2,000?), but it's hardly possible to exaggerate the insane profligacy of this bizarre arrangement.
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