Will Waspe
Pleasing though it is to learn that Christopher Hampton's play,Savages, is to come into the West End after all, it is sad that that civilised and gentle entertainment, Dear Love, based on the love letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett will have to close (on Saturday week) to make room for it at the Comedy. None will be sadder about that closure than Phillip Kelley of the Browning Institute of New York, who passed through London this week en route for Florence where the Institute has recently purchased, for restoration, the Brownings' old love nest, Casa Guidi.
Kelley, in Britain to lay his hands on various Browning relics (his principal regret is his inability to trace the Browning bookcase, last heard of in the possession of a Mrs Webb of Drayton Gardens in 1927), had been hoping for a long Dear Love run to stimulate tourist interest in Casa Guidi this summer, especially as the US production failed to reach New York.
His consolation: actor-artist Keith Michell (who plays Browning) promised to paint him a picture as a fund-raising gimmick — though that, in the view of some art critics, may be a mixed blessing. At least Michell was more helpful than Myrna Loy, who played Elizabeth in the US, and who declined to make a TV appeal for funds, apparently in fear of being asked precisely why the show was not coming to Broadway.
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