The Old Vic theater in London has seen its share of weepy melodrama since it was founded in 1818, but Sir Peter Hall delivered a particularly risible performance last week, when the theater, which is being sold, hosted a final King Lear. According to the Daily Telegraph, Sir Peter pointed a heavy accusatory finger at the English elite's arch-villain, or rather, - villainess: former prime minister Margaret Thatcher (who left office in 1990). "Since the coming of Mrs. Thatcher [in 1979]," he said, "the arts have been scrimped and economized on" (a declaration greeted by the audience with " loud cheers"). Continued the embittered impresario, "Why don't we have a referendum, not about Europe, but about, 'Do we want the arts?'" Thatcher, he tearfully avowed, had made England inhospitable to the good, the beautiful, the true. Sir Peter could only observe, sadly, "We are a daft country" -- a belief to which, on the hallowed boards of the Old Vic, he gave evidence.