The theatre critics have been having a thin time as
far as London is concerned (nothing new in the West End for two weeks in a row) and those on piece-work have had to make the best of their dreary scurries around the 'fringe', into the provinces and even abroad. What may be good news for them that a plethora of London openings is just around the corner is, however, bad news for theatres and IMpresarios.
For openings are simply the consequence of closings, and London is having more of those than would ordinarily be bargained for at the height of the tourist season. The Pay-Off has l°t paid off and has departed from the 7estminster, as has The Clandestine Marriage nm the Savoy. This Saturday The Sunshine oys (Piccadilly), The Tempest (Wyndham's) and The Merry Wives of Windsor (Mermaid) W, ill fold. Even Anthony Shaffer's Murderer (Garrick), though it has never looked like emulating Sleuth, gets an unexpectedly Premature chop on Saturday week.
Miller's moans
!i!ee that Dr Jonathan Miller, being no longer in he employ of the National Theatre, of which he Zias an Associate Director, has lost no time in necking, in press interviews, the expensive 7-t) there. Miller's departure from the ational is thought to be not unconnected with F_;eter Hall's disagreement with the great uoctor's view of the classics which, since they 4re in the public domain, Miller is disposed to regard as being fair game for any interpretative
theories he feels like visiting upon them. Hall's general respect for, say, Shakespeare would ill accord with the attitude of Miller, who freely admits that he prefers working with the work of authors who are dead: "They can't give me an argument."
In his interview with the Sunday Times, by the way, while complaining about the money the National paid its actors, Miller was all moans about the low income of a "successful director." Let's see, now, a successful director would have two or three West End plays on long runs and playing to upwards of £6,000 a week each, of which he'd be netting 21/2 per cent for the few weeks of his year he'd spent on them. Not quite penury, but I doubt whether Miller would know about that kind of success.
Trick missed
The BBC has developed a neat trick of transferring its successful TV series to radio and vice versa, but has slipped up with red faces all round over the Radio 2 comedy show, Hello, Cheeky. While no one at the Beeb was looking, Yorkshire TV nipped in and sjgned up the whole bundle for the commercial channel and will be putting it out next year, probably concurrently with the show's next radio series.
Undermanned
Meanwhile Yorkshire TV has an embarrassment of its own. Last month it screened the first of what was to be (indeed, is) a six-programme series called The World of Television. The other five, alas, are unlikely to be seen, that vigilant trade union, the ACTT, having instructed its members not to transmit them on the grounds that the film-crewing on the programmes was at variance with the official agreements. The crews did the job efficiently enough, but that is not, of course, the point these days.
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