Show Business: The Perils of Being Sir Peter

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HALL FOR "INEFFICIENCY." Until this year, Hall's staff of associate directors had remained faithful. (Miller and Blakemore, who defected from the National in the mid-'70s, were both holdovers from the reign of Olivier, Hall's predecessor.) Then Pinter, whose plays Hall had been directing since 1962, felt abandoned when Hall left for Bayreuth just as Pinter was staging a troubled production of Giraudoux's The Trojan War Will Not Take Place at the National. Without alerting Hall in advance, Pinter resigned as an associate director of the theater. Last week Pinter told TIME, "The fundamental problem of the National Theater is that its artistic director spends a great deal of his time elsewhere. He and the board have failed to appoint a deputy to him, entrusted with full artistic responsibility in Peter Hall's absence. This results in a policy which is incoherent and an enterprise which has no core. This vacuum creates discontent, confusion and inefficiency. That is why I resigned in May."

HALL BURNS MOVIE STAR, SELF AT THE N.T. STAKE. In September, Hall began rehearsing Jean Seberg with a score by Marvin Hamlisch, book by Julian Barry and lyrics by Christopher Adler (all Americans). There were reports of backstage turmoil. The leading actress sprained her ankle, a leading actor broke his, and the choreographer was replaced. There were complaints that the National, with its government annuity of some $9 million, was underwriting a "Broadway tryout" (Hall may direct a New York company of Jean Seberg early in 1985).

Hall, who in his Diaries had derided Hamlisch's A Chorus Line as "reeking of double Broadway standards," now pushes the pre-opening troubles aside and defends Jean Seberg as "an exciting piece of work about the danger of starmaking in Western society." He has literally cast Seberg as a modern Joan of Arc. He has staged Seberg's involvement with the Black Panthers as a khaki chorus line brandishing rifles to a rhythm-and-blues beat. The show climaxes with Saint Jean burning at the stake for her ideals, torch courtesy of the FBI. Jean Seberg opened this month with a couple of champions and more detractors among the London critics. The most telling slur has come from Hall's alma mater, the R.S.C., whose own musical, the satirical pantomime Poppy, has begun a successful commercial run. At one point in the show, the actors encourage the audience to join in song and add a threat: "Anyone who doesn't sing along gets two tickets to Jean Seberg."

SIR PETER TELLS ALL—AND TOO MUCH MORE. A nifty bedside skim, Diaries is 500 pages of tape-recorded daily entries, bleeding with triumph and futility.

As "the pilot of the first theatrical Concorde," Hall fought with arts barons, trade unions and pretenders to his crown to see the National to its concrete home on the Thames. The psychic struggle took its toll: Hall describes himself as being "raw as burnt skin."