Will Waspe reviewing the• reviewers

John Dexter, one of the associate directors at the National Theatre, was quoted somewhere the other day as saying that a lot of the critics would be better off as racing correspondents. Embarking on this annual end-of-term survey, I'm naturally tempted to endorse that view, but a couple of thoughts give roe pause. One is that the only critic I know who has actually been a racing correspondent is the , film critic, Derek Malcolm, of the Guardian, who is probably the best man currently operating in that line of work. My other thought is, of course, that Dexter may have been just a shade unfair to racing correspondents.

The picture, in the reviewing business, is bleak — although, as always, I shall strive to be aS. balanced as I am benign, as judicious as I am constructive. And, at least, perhaps by the salutary influence of this very column, few of my subjects have been behaving themselves scandulously.

Art

Determined, graciously, to begin and end with compliments, let me repeat an old opinion that the art critics most worth reading are Michael Shepherd of the Sunday Telegraph (and lately appointed 'consultant editor' of Arts Review) and Tim Hilton, who deputises on the Observer whenever Nigel Gosling is fortunately away. These chaps bring a zest and sense of proportion to the job that are singularly missing in the columns of their colleagues, who continue to ,display the most remarkable ability to take up the maximum of space for the minimum of intelligible comment.

What is notably lacking in art criticism is forthrightness in distaste. Waspe sympathises, of course, with a bunch of groping appraisers who may know all about the genius and worth of Rembrandt and Turner, but find their academic training ill-suited to determining whether a painter who throws ketchup and eggs at his canvases is more divinely inspired than one who merely rides a bicycle over them with paint-smeared tyres, or whether it is higher art to wrap up a building in brown paper or to daub one with hieroglyphical graffiti. Nevertheless, it is a pity that in their approach to twentieth-century art they so much resemble puppies cautiously sniffing at a hedgehog.

Rumour has it that the veritable prince of wafflers, Richard Cork of the Evening Standard is seriously considering surrendering the acres of space he gets in that journal in favour of the somewhat empty if mysteriously enviable job of editor of Studio International, just as the board of that glossy is said to be contemplating going bi-monthly. Waspe hasn't actually been counting the entries in Private Eye's Pseuds' Corner this year, but suspects that Cork has been there more frequently than anyone else — plainly an unchallengeable qualification for any job going in today's art criticism.

There are, as it happens, few changes in that field. The only ones to note this year are the return of Guy Brett (son of Lord Esher) to the Times, and the transfer of Marina Vaizey (wife of Professor John) from the Financial Times to the Sunday Times. Mrs Vaizey has managed to settle in with the barest of bother and is indistinguishable in tone from her predecessor John Russell, managing to sound both Olympian and dull; it is said that her appointment was preceded by discreet inquiries at the top galleries regarding her industriousness and acceptability (both unquestioned), which is rather as though the opionion of theatre managements were to be solicited about the appointment of drama critics.

Brett, at the Times, has been restricting himself (or has been restricted) to a monthly column, and Waspe hears that the conflict between the critic and his arts editor, John Higgins, is close to flashpoint. Since Brett's review of the Dusseldorf show was cut so mercilessly (or mercifully?), he has been on the verge of stamping his foot and departing.

A curous aspect of the situation is that some of Brett's fellow critics have rallied round to sign a letter of protest against the savage editing of his column. One non-signatory, Waspe hears, was the aforementioned Tim Hilton, which may be why he is the warmest tip to replace Brett.

Ballet

The only event of the smallest interest in the world of ballet criticism during the year seems to have been the Times's John Percival's cruel assault on Kenneth MacMillan's rather harmless 'Elite Syncopations: which is only to be explained on the grounds that `Perce' may have,felt his position as leader of the anti-MacMillan faction needed to be consolidated. The sarcasm, condescension and general ill-humour packed into his review might have moved a less complaisant management than that at Covent Garden to forbid him the theatre — probably with the support of many other ballet critics, who are getting quite bored with Perce's foibles.

For the rest, the same old gang carry on in the same old way: Clement Crisp of the Financial Times with his migraines, Edward Thorpe of the Evening Standard with his lovely costumes and even lovelier wife, Oleg Kerensky of the New Statesman with his elegant barbs (the latest of which, a swingeing attack on the Royal Opera House, was, I hear, 'spiked' at Great Turnstile).

Books

The long shadows of senility have been creeping over metropolitan book reviewing for some years now, and if it is true that the leading contenders for the late Cyril Connolly's seat are C. P. Snow and V. S. Pritchett they will persist for some years yet. On the Sunday Times, Raymond Mortimer's memory has become so bad that he has to borrow his full quota of twelve books from the London Library before he can review anything. In the Observer Philip Toynbee has been grinding his axes for so long that it is now very difficult to tell one review from another. And that other old stalwart, Nigel Dennis in the Sunday Telegraph, has been getting a little slow off the mark nowadays — but that may be due to the fact that he posts his copy from Malta.

The teenage reviewers, in the scrabble to succeed their elders and betters, have also been suffering from premature hardening of the arteries. Michael Ratcliffe in the Times will not use one sentence when ten will do, and it is generally put down to Ion Trewin's well known inability to follow Ratcliffe's copy that it is printed in uncut form. Michael Holroyd, at the Sunday Telegraph, has developed an unfortunate dislike of biographies and biographers, in much the same spirit as A. J. P. Taylor in the Observer has come to dislike all studies of British history. Someone must have a soft spot for Antonia Fraser, who has been moved from the Evening Standard's Londoner's Diary to its book pages, a change not generally thought to be good for the paper's health.

The decision of the Times Literary Supplement to name names has been a shock for hitherto anony

mous reviewers who can no longer pay off old scores and return favours. Can it really be true that Ian Hamilton once savaged a book of Ronald Bottrall's simply by repeating what Ronald Bottrall had written of Ian Hamilton some years earlier? But Hamilton still has his computerised automatons: Clive James, Jonathan Raban and Melvyn Bragg, to name but one, who can be relied upon to say the same things in the same way in the same magazines — the New Review and its acolytes, the Observer and the New Statesman.

The fiction reviewers remain a solemn lot. Christopher Wordsworth, in the Guardian, has been reading novels for so long that he can no longer think of anything to say. The Times has acquired the willing service of Susan Hill, who can be counted on to apologise the following week for getting the title, the name or sex of the author, or the plot of the novel wrong. Frederic Raphael and Philip Norman in the Sunday Times have suffered from similar faults in the past, but this is generally put down to imagination rather than misreading. Waspe doesn't remember if they have novel reviews in the Telegraph, but he doubts it. Ronald Blythe in the Sunday Times is nice to everyone and everything, but can it really be true that three masterpieces are written every week? (Keep it up, Ronnie, the publishers are awfully pleased with you.) In the Observer, bluestocking Lorna Sage is busy finding a seminar in every novel and she is fortunate to have, alternate weeks, so dull a foil as Anthony Thwaite, for he makes even the novels he praises sound tedious.

Peter Prince and Peter Straub still hand in their publishers' reports to the New Statesman, and Valentine Cunningham has moved from the Listener to augment the general piety of the Statesman's novel reviews — handled in our own columns, of course, by Peter 'Twinkletoes Ackroyd, who, should tap-dancing ever return to vogue, will have his stage career to

fails hbaicmk on when every epigram

Cinema

As with books, so with films: only The Spectator seems to add any piquant variety to the reviewing game. Following the departure of Christopher Hudson to the Evening Standard to review television, these columns have been brightened by the filigree prose of Duncan Fallowell, who has for many months borne wiltingly the burden of looking at moving pictures at an hour when most gentlemen of England are still decently abed. Fallowell departed last week to convalesce in India and is said to be hopeful of finding a vacant magus, or at least an amulet. Waiting in the wings (see next week's paper) is Kenneth Robinson, whose urbane irreverence in these matters already well known to radio listeners and television viewers. Given the present state a the film business, Waspe cannot envy him those morning previews which

rarely these days have even the compensation of the hospitality Which once so lavishly marked the relations of the industry with the press. The distributors are now so miserably tight-fisted that they do not provide even a lunchtime drink for the people they have invariably just driven stiff with indifference.

The press-preview personnel does not otherwise change much, though the year has seen the departure of George Melly, replaced at the Observer by Russell Davies, a sheepish lyricist in woollen clothing, a master of the sine qua non of the non sequitur (and a remarkably

enthusiast cinemagoer to boot). However one may feel about Melly, the absence of his accompanying cloud of cigar smoke has at least been favourably noticed by the Evening Standard's Alexander Walker, a keen nonsmoker. (Waspe himself was once much distracted throughout a preview by a great humphing in the throat and flapping of broadsheets in a seat behind each time he innocently lit up. It was, of course, Walker, sitting there fanning violently, an umbrella caught at an angry angle between his tightlyrolled legs. "As de pique," I thought, momentarily bemused.)

Still, Walker is the consolation of all Londoners who cannot make it to Leicester Square before a film is Withdrawn, since he describes the Plots very nicely. He also seems to cherish an ambition to save the cinema single-handed — a hope apparently now abandoned by the New Statesman's John Coleman, who has come to feel really at home only if a film is about a nervous breakdown, preferably that of a tractor, if possible in Cuba, which necessarily narrows his field of salvation.

Margaret Hinxman has moved from the Sunday Telegraph to the Daily Mail (replacing the retired Cecil Wilson), but at the Sunday Times, Dilys Powell goes on, and on, ascended now to an aery plane Where reviewing is an involuntary function of the autonomic nervous System, and a comforting reassurance to us all that not all things Pass away.

Music /Opera There are none who so keenly Pursue the mystery of Waspe's 'true identity' as our critics of music, and none among these is keener than Stephen, Walsh, of the Observer and the Times. Walsh has a rare memory for snippets and has, I hear, the tiresome habit of cornering people whom he suspects (Wrongly, of course) of writing these notes, and regurgitating every word written about him, in the hope of trapping his unfortunate victims into some sort of COnfession. What am I to do but give him something he'll enjoy Memorising? Thus: Stephen Walsh is wise, witty, cultured and universally respected both by his colleagues and by the artists he writes about, master of a prose style unequalled in today's prints, and nicely dressed off the peg at Take Six. I trust he will have that off by

heart by next week.

Lovely Gillian Widdicombe of the Financial Times has again confirmed her title as God's gift to the gossip columnist by giving a remarkable interview to Harper's/ Queen, wringing all our withers by revealing what hell it is being a woman and a critic, and telling us of how she was done out of the job as a columnist in a weekly magazine because the editor's wife objected. (Now, let's see . . . who could that be?)

The only thing Miss Widdicombe and Desmond Shawe-Taylor of the Sunday Times have in common (at least, I hope it's the only thing they have in common) is that they share the distinction of having had really good limericks written about them. They can't be printed here, I'm afraid (apart from a couple of clue words, 'conductor' and 'sailor,' not in any particular order), but you could try a .E10 note and a stamped and addressed envelope. Another Financial Times lady, Elizabeth Forbes, made much of the fact that she had a free trip to Wexford this year because of all she has done for the Festival there in the past. She can't have known that absolutely everybody seems to have had a free trip to Wexford this year (it is a festival less of opera than of free-loading). Still, she deserves some sort of recognition from Arthur Guinness, Son & Co., since this fine, ebullient and upstanding figure of British womanhood is an outstanding advertisement for their product. Talking of which, I am told she fell down a flight of stairs at Wexford early one morning (or late one night, whichever way you look at it). Elizabeth was unscathed, but the stairs haven't been the same since. The critics' team has Thcee .

been augmented by Bernard Levin, a circumstance not greatly appreciated by the music critics who merely write on the arts pages for rather less money. Apart from boring everyone to death with his ramblings on Wagner and assorted soprano beauties, Levin closely rivals arts editor John Higgins in .the 'What I did on my holidays' stakes; as if anyone at all cared what these two comfortable fellows get up to at obscure European festivals. Philip Hope-Wallace of the Guardian, and crowned king of El Vino, admitted only the other day that he nearly went to sleep during a performance of 'Venus and Adonis': on his record over the past year, it seems something of a miracle that he actually stayed to the end of it. His colleague Edward Greenfield continues to act as a sort of unpaid PRO to ,the record industry, churning out superlatives like a berserk cement-mixer.

The Daily Telegraph's platoon of reviewers under 'Colonel' Martin Cooper remain sadly short on humour and their undoubted intellectual prowess is somewhat compromised by some obscure house rule that forbids them to write a sentence of more than four words — in contrast to the Times's Levin and William Mann, each of whom can run a sentence for a column or two without any sense of strain,

save on the patience and comprehension of their long-suffering readers.

Among less heavyweight critics, Noel Goodwin of the Daily Express seems to grow a little more acidulous with age, which is nice, but I can't say much about the Daily Mail's David Gillard, except that he has red hair which he combs for a long time before each performance and once held hands with a very pretty girl through five hours of Parsifar. As for our own Rodney Milnes (the Satanic Milnes, as Cohn Davis is wont to refer to him), he seems eager to emulate the venerable Shawe-Taylor, at least in the acquisition of a country seat, yet continues to moan to everyone about how poor he is: so far, Gloucestershire had not had the same numbing effect on his prose as has Dorset upon that of the old gentleman. '

Theatre

Speaking of the elderly, I hear it said in increasingly loud whispers that the advanced years of the contributors to the review pages is a source of deep concern to Sunday Times editor Harold Evans, andinformed sources, as they say, have it that Harold Hobson — hitherto regarded as having a lease until death on the drama column — will shortly relinquish the job to his present literary editor and drama deputy, J. W. Lambert.

Though Lambert is unquestionably the more reliable and readable reviewer, theatre people would view Hobson's departure with mixed feelings. There is something uncommonly endearing about his eccentricities, about his championing of the causes of really awful plays, about his constant discovery of genius (recognised only by himself) in obscure places, and about the way he will audaciously 'play to the gallery' when, having come up with some astounding judgement even more perverse than usual, he will pursue it week by week, further and further into absurdity. The diminutive Hobson is invariably seated in the front row of the stalls, from which priveleged position he is able to indulge a keen interest in the actresses' underwear, and if it should not be precisely of the period required by the play, be assured the fact will not go unremarked in his criticism. I suppose it is for just such little services to the theatre — peculiar if you like, but strangely beguiling — that he will be most sadly missed.

To turn to more serious matters, the general standard of drama reviewing continues at an inde cently low level in the papers in which it should be most respected. .Waspe would hesitate to assert that the critics don't know what they are talking about, since they are nearly all so dull that he finds it impossible to read them to find out.

Robert Cushman of the Observer, informed and witty, seems just about the only one of them whose opinions are both consistently sensible and readably expressed, although the Guardian's Michael Billington is making promising progress.

No one, as far as I know, with the possible exception of John Higgins, E ever gets through to the end of Irving Wardle's convoluted notices in the Times, though he does lots of 13 earnest homework before he goes to a play and works at his pieces industriously, in a notebook on his lap, almost from the moment the curtain goes up. The Times's second-string man, Charles Lewsen, takes a whimsically idiosyncratic view of most things he sees and often seems desperately eager to convince himself that it isn't all a waste of an intelligent man's time — which is understandable enough, 17 considering the rubbish he is sent"! to see.

John Barber, at the .Daily Telegraph, hardly ever takes a night off, I scurrying hither and yon about the town, about the 'fringe' and about the country, churning out review after review to a formula that grows suspiciously like that of his predecessor, W. A. Darlington (who still, by the way, is seen around the West End theatres, usually at second nights). Vacations apart, his deputy, Eric Shorter, seems obliged to travel hundreds of miles — and often abroad — to get a notice in the paper. Their amazing industry is being surprisingly matched — well, almost — this year, by the Evening Standard's Milton Shulman, who has taken to toiling around the most unpromising entertainments, often to the chagrin of his colleague NaSeem Khan, who is supposed to be there covering the 'fringe.' Even so, Shulman's reviews rarely show the strain. For the quick, crisp comment, sensible and pungent, he's about the best in the game.