The 'luvvies' are in a tizzy! Tomorrow, with a thunderous 'baaaarp' from the orchestra pit, the Chancellor takes center stage like a villain in a pantomime and waving his great sword he will threaten to cut anything and everything but especially - subsidies to the arts - SHLOCK-HORROR! The pampered and cossetted darlings in our two nationalised theatres are quivering and for once it is real, not pretend.
As it happens I have just finished reading Anthony Sher's diary-book called Year of the King. This chronicled his time with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) at Stratford when he created arguably the most unforgettable Richard III since Olivier's film version. It is a good book, wittily illustrated by the author, but it left me with one over-riding puzzle - how the hell do they ever manage to produce a single play in the over-manned, waffling, time-wasting, profligate collection of committees and sub-committees and sub-sub-committees that constitutes the RSC. Exactly the same can be said for the Royal National Theatre (RNT) as you will find out if you ever read Sir Peter Hall's diaries of his time there.
The actual 'front-line troops', that is, the actors and directors, are no better than the host of bureaucratic hangers-on who surround them. They spend - and waste - so much time waffling and talking and getting in touch with their artistic side that it is obvious that none of them have the slightest conception that time is money. None of them would have lasted five minutes with Will's company where, with a different play to be performed six days a week, there was no time for the sort of pseudo-psycho-babble indulged in by todays leading 'luvvies'.
As for the arts in general, well, we have just 'enjoyed' the latest Turner Prize jamboree celebrating yet another batch of untalented phonies who have produced at their best works of yawn-inducing mediocrity, and at their worst downright insults to our intelligence. So my direction to you, Chancellor, is to lay on with your sword with all your vigor! Quentin Letts in The Mail says it all much better than I can.
