controversy has engulfed the Much Wyttring Players in the last month, over their decision to put on a production of The Orrery, by Enid Sackville-West, Vita’s less well-known sister. The play was last performed in 1924, and starred Virginia Woolf in the lead role, as Sophronia, the lady who owns the eponymous orrery. Over four interminable acts, the play charts the various philosophical musings of the half-dozen characters involved over who is most worthy to possess the item in question, until it is taken into heaven to become one of Plato’s forms. Godfrey Winn famously described the play as “a cartload of pretentious drivel”. The play requires very little in the way of props, and not much in costuming either, most of the character’s outfits consisting of loose-fitting white sheets held in place by a few gold clasps. The decision to perform the play, however, has split the Players. Members of the anti-faction claim the play is “obscenely moralistic and anti-intellectual”, while defenders state it remains “one of the great classics of twentieth-century drama”.
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mass protests are an unusual sight in Little Quinisext, and so the appearance of more than fifty protesters in Quadrivium Street has been the cause of much comment in the Gawain tea-rooms. The group of protesters, who call themselves Quinisext United Against Animal Cruelty, launched the protest outside the Georgian house at no. 36 Quadrivium Street, which has been recently purchased by Lady Orpington for a museum to house her world-famous collection of stuffed cats, including the famous 1921 taxidermy extravaganza Chat a la Somme by Jacob Epstein. In a statement, QUAAC President Phoebe Green described the proposed museum as “monstrous... a revolting, chauvinist display of capitalist disregard for Mother Gaia... a mockery of everything the Revolution stands for.” Lady Orpington’s collection faced controversy before in 1996, when national newspapers accused the Labour hereditary peer of strangling her own pet cats in order to expand her collection. Lady Orpington strenuously denies these allegations.
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the smithfield muses, Britain’s least-successful post-punk indie band, have split up amid a row over the band’s proposed second album, Sandstorms ofTomorrow. Theremin-player Ted Bursle-Pitt is said to have left after a falling-out with band-leader Ned Stringey, over the importance of Baudrillard to minor sevenths. Bursle-Pitt is said to have described the question to Stringey as “****ing central to our dialectic, you ****er.”
