Plays Deplored

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30534, 1 September 1964, Page 13

Plays Deplored

One of the playwrights whose work aroused the indignation of the veteran impresario, Emile Littler, last week, is Peter Weiss. We. reprint here a profile of Mr Weiss and a review of the play.

Mr Littler, a governor of the Royal Shakespeare Company, called the season of the company at the Aldwych Theatre a “programme of dirty plays,” -according to a N.Z.PA.-Reuter message quoting the “Daily Mail.” The plays Mr Littler “deplored” include Samuel Beckett’s “End Game,” David Rudkin’s “Afore Night Come,” and the “Persecution and Assassination of Marat by Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the

Direction of the Marquis de Sade,” by Peter Weiss. Mr Littler said his comments were part of a statement of his views on dirt in the theatre generally. In reply, the managingdirector of the company, Mr Peter Hall, said the “Marat” play was a smash hit, fully booked, and the other plays were taking £5OO a night in August, a notoriously bad month for the box office.

He said that the plays had been advertised as part of a “season of cruelty” and the public knew what they were in for before they entered the theatre, the “Daily Mail” reported.