Issue 07 - 2006
Prompt Corner 
Those of you who read magazines from the back will already have encountered my comments about managing the critical agenda in this issue's back-page column (graciously donated by the other Ian for coverage of the National Student Drama Festival). It's hardly surprising, though, that students should begin to demonstrate such skills; they are part and parcel of today's processes of communication, if one can call it that.
Time was when a theatrical press agent's job was more or less simply to maximise the coverage given to a production. Now, in a world of proliferating broadcast and print outlets, commercial web sites and the ever-expanding blogosphere of individual online journals/reports, it's a much more selective business. And necessarily so - after all, doling out review tickets to all comers could fill even a medium-sized West End venue on opening night, thus leaving no room for the glitterati whose enthusiastic presence many of us are expected to report. But it's a delicate line to walk.
Control-freakery
For instance, this column is a think-piece rather than a reviews digest because, other than on Financial Times review duty, I saw scarcely any shows outside Scarborough during the period covered by this issue. It's rather a pity, as I was extremely keen to catch up with The Crucible, having missed it at Stratford. Alas, press tickets were available on two evenings only. For Hay Fever next issue, it's even worse: national papers only, on the first night only. How much of this is due to producer policy and how much to press agency operations I don't know (they're the same in each case: Bill Kenwright and Peter Thompson respectively). What I do know is that little concern seems to be evinced in these cases about coverage, or lack of it, beyond a certain area.
There's more to this area than simply news management, and there's certainly no place for the kind of control-freakery exemplified by political spokesmen such as Alastair Campbell or Scott McLellan. Now and again, though, such an attempt will be made in theatrical circles. One such occurred whilst I was in Scarborough, and I rather regret having missed the fireworks. Producer Paul Roberts attempted to ban representatives of leading web site whatsonstage.com and its print counterpart Theatregoermagazine from the press night of Smaller, on the grounds that whatsonstage published a story back in 2004 which had been critical of that production company's ticket pricing on Acorn Antiques The Musical!: with a top price of £65, these were at the time the West End's most expensive tickets. For this - not even a bad review, just a less than glowing comment - a ban was slapped not only on whatsonstage supremo Terri Paddock, who had written the earlier story, but also on the outfit's new reviewer at large, the esteemed Michael Coveney. Following representations made by various individuals and collectively by the drama section of the Critics' Circle, both to the production company and to the Society of London Theatre, the ban was retracted, and rightly so. It's frankly absurd to court critical coverage and then get all huffy if that coverage turns out to be actually, you know, critical.
Symbiotic
It's arguable, of course, that productions like these are each in their own ways critic-proof. However, that may lead producers and press agents into the mistaken belief that they don't therefore need more than a certain degree of coverage. Because, as Paul Roberts' own rash decision confirms, these are not a series of discrete one-off encounters between producers/PRs and reviewers, but rather are ongoing relationships. There will always be another show along in a while from the same stable, a show that does need the coverage. And the petty tit-for-tat revanchism that that last sentence implies is the greatest danger of all Because it's not the case that only one side needs the other, or even that the need is imbalanced: these relationships are (forgive the tautology) mutually symbiotic.
And press agents are there, as I understand it, to aid the flow in both directions, not to act as a unidirectional valve. Indeed, the best press flacks will be - discreetly - candid where appropriate: just recently, a major press agent responded to a lukewarm review I'd written with the words, "My thoughts exactly!", and every now and again there's an angel who lets it be known in confidence that one's life will not be immeasurably impoverished for missing a particular show.
Machinations
No doubt this all seems rather navel-gazing to many readers: why should you be concerned with the dynamics among a small, rarefied group of people you'll seldom if ever encounter, any more than you need pay attention to the machinations between political and media insiders within the Washington Beltway or around Westminster? And the answer is: for much the same reasons - because these goings-on play a part in shaping the information you ultimately receive, or don't receive, or the manner in which you receive it.
In the earlier days of the Internet, there was an aphorism much beloved of some participants in the information debate: "Information wants to be free." It wasn't meant in the monetary sense (well, not by many), but rather in the sense that information will find ways of getting out, and that the advent of the Net - with its infinite number of routes around any blockage - meant that attempts at
censorship were all but obsolete. It's a lesson that governments and official agencies are proving slow to learn, and instances of excessive ticket restrictions or attempted bans suggest that the arts world isn't being any quicker on the uptake.
At the Back
As one grows older, generational observations begin to occur - the "policemen are getting younger" syndrome. One of the most frequently voiced remarks along these lines at Scarborough this year was "Aren't young people incredibly media-trained these days?" To explain: after a show at NSDF has completed its batch of scheduled performances, the company then take part in a discussion session about it. In some previous years, groups had been quite unprepared for the amount and intensity of criticism voiced in such discussions, so a system was introduced whereby the debate would be structured around three questions asked by the company.
This year, however, what became apparent was the extent to which this structure may now be used by companies to delimit what they are prepared to hear. There has always been an occasional example of a company - or, more usually, a director and/or writer - who behaved in discussion as if almost all criticism had been pre-empted in his or her own thoughts, and the rest simply wasn't worth wasting time on. On a number of occasions in 2006, companies used their questions (whether consciously or not) in a way which made it all but impossible to address any aspect of the production other than those they were interested in. Like politicians in interview, they do all they can to define the agenda on terms comfortable to them.
Shoddy
This became most glaringly apparent in the case of John Dwyer's Making Ugly, whose reviews by Van Badham and Tamzin Aitken are on the preceding page. In his questions to the discussion, Dwyer seemed concerned entirely with the conceptual impact of his writing - the "why" of the piece - and displayed a near-total unwillingness or inability to consider the "how", in the shape of its grossly inept execution (under Dwyer's direction). In fact the play was the most shoddily executed work I have seen in 19 NSDFs, and one of the handful of worst shows in the 3000+ of my reviewing career. Nor were its champions on the Festival's board of selectors (both of them, no doubt coincidentally, based in and around Huddersfield) prepared to defend it to any significant extent in the discussion.
Making Ugly was scheduled towards the end of the Festival week, and so any general debate about modes and manners of criticism was prevented. This may have been no bad thing: usually when the subject arises at NSDF, it takes the form of much tutting about "negative criticism" (with the implicit definition of "constructive criticism" as "feedback I'm prepared to hear"), occasionally escalating to a kind of communal hysteria. At such times, though, much is made of the Festival's aspect as a learning environment. Well, quite apart from the fact that people are also learning how to watch and write about plays, and that this should be nurtured every bit as much as dramatic practices, surely an essential part of learning is being confronted with unexpected information and processing it. How can someone learn how to be better if they will not acknowledge the possibility of grave error in the first place?
Exposed
I think that, in striving to prevent blood-letting in discussion, the pendulum has now swung too far in the other direction, and that companies need to be exposed to a little more uncertainty in the assessment of their work by the Festival community. Perhaps not quite, though, to the extent once practised by playwright Tim Fountain in his years at NSDF: one notorious exchange in discussion ran, "Well, I thought it were shite" - "No, don't hold back, Tim, tell us what you really thought" - "All right, I thought it were fookin' shite!"
A pity, too, that no discussion session was scheduled this year for the Festival as a whole. This was, I am sure, due to Festival director Andrew Loretto's imminent departure and the sense that feedback was not therefore usefully directed at him this year, rather than due to the amount of candid "negative criticism" voiced (not least by me) in 2005's Festival discussion. Nevertheless, incoming director Holly Kendrick (late of the Caird Company and co-founder of Sound Theatre just off Leicester Square) was present for the whole week and could have taken any such remarks on board, besides which such sessions are also of value to the Festival community, making them feel part of the whole enterprise and able to influence its direction.
Better
These are little more than cavils, however. My report on NSDF in this magazine last year was unrestrained in its criticism of various areas of policy and operation. I am both happy and relieved to report that the Festival of 2006 was an altogether better year in terms both of social atmosphere and quality of work. Making Ugly was the only real stinker among eleven selected productions. (It would be nice, though, to see the number of selected domestic shows return to pre-2005 levels of 14 or 15 during the week.)
As Robert Hewison notes in his Sunday Times report, after a couple of years in which new writing had proven thin on the ground, this year featured seven pieces of new writing, three devised pieces and only one extant work, Gregory Burke's Gagarin Way... which, although less than five years old, seemed in some ways to come from another world with its pre-September 11 views on political violence. The presence of existing texts within a couple of new pieces - Emily Westwood's The Romeo And Juliet Syndrome and The Solvents' Leviathan (a devised adaptation of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick) - reminded us that classics can always be reshaped, but did little to suggest how a young company today might approach such a play on its own terms rather than on theirs.
Audience participation
The other notable trait during the week was audience involvement. Sometimes, as in (the otherwise) Defunct Red Cloth's meditations on bereavement, it was simply a matter of addressing us as people rather than theatrical spectators; sometimes, as in Leviathan, utilising us as a collective (in this case, the crew of the Pequod); sometimes, as in The Romeo And Juliet Syndrome and The Solvents' other presentation The *Cosmic Family* Workshop-Seminar, enrolling individuals for specific purposes. I found myself becoming more and more interested in what happens when such operations don't work. I happened not to be in the mood for a bit of mock-speed-dating in The R&J Syndrome, but with all credit to the actress in question, she persisted and began to swing me around; those who dared to question the *Cosmic Family's wackily cultish merchandising were dealt with by a company response that was funny precisely because it was so unbending, consisting as it did of simple repetitions of scripted remarks.
But most audience participation still seems to rely on our essential passivity, the only difference being that we docilely do as is required of us rather than equally docilely sitting back; and it seems to me that any show which involves such a sequence, without giving the audience member the option to decline to be involved, needs to have formulated a back-up strategy in case the punter behaves awkwardly. I remember an NSDF show several years ago in which the audience was almost violently dragooned into the theatre by the cast; the imposing Mike Bradwell of the Bush Theatre gently but firmly refused to do as ordered until the actors had broken out of their foul-mouthed, heavy-mannered characters and said "please"; it was an object lesson in the necessity of leaving yourself a get-out from audience involvement.
Refreshing
Part of the delight of NSDF is that it continues to give rise to such thoughts and musings about whole areas of theatre which may never have come into focus for one before. Theory, as much as practice, is repeatedly remade by each succeeding generation, and the opportunity to see young theatrical talent constantly refreshing the medium is one to be cherished and preserved.
Contents / Reviews
London |
||||
THE AMERICAN PILOT New play by David Greig (RSC) |
Soho |
29 Mar |
8 Apr |
366 |
COME AND GO / FOOTFALLS Revivals of plays by Samuel Beckett (Beckett Centenary Festival) |
The Pit |
31 Mar |
9 Apr |
378 |
THE CRUCIBLE Revival of play by Arthur Miller (RSC) |
Gielgud |
5 Apr |
1 Jan |
389 |
FELT EFFECTS New play by Joy Wilkinson |
Theatre 503 |
30 Mar |
16 Apr |
377 |
THE HARDER THEY COME New play by Perry Henzell, based on his film |
T R Stratford E15 |
6 Apr |
1 Jan |
395 |
HENNA NIGHT Revival of play by Amy Rosenthal (red herring) |
Etcetera |
30 Mar |
16 Apr |
359 |
IN CELEBRATION OF HAROLD PINTER Revival of plays by Harold Pinter (A Kind Of Alaska, A Slight Ache) |
Gate |
30 Mar |
6 May |
368 |
LARKIN WITH WOMEN Revival of play by Ben Brown |
Orange Tree |
31 Mar |
29 Apr |
379 |
MASS APPEAL Revival of play by Bill C Davis |
Finborough |
30 Mar |
22 Apr |
377 |
MEMBERS ONLY New play by Fabrice Roger-Lacan |
Trafalgar Studio 2 |
30 Mar |
22 Apr |
373 |
THE MUSICAL OF MUSICALS (A MUSICAL) New musical by Eric Rockwell and Joanne Bogart |
Sound |
31 Mar |
22 Apr |
380 |
MY NAME IS RACHEL CORRIE Return of new play from the writings of Rachel Corrie (Royal Court) |
Playhouse |
30 Mar |
21 May |
375 |
ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST Return of Dale Wasserman revival from novel by Ken Kesey |
Garrick |
28 Mar |
3 Jun |
360 |
PETER AND THE WOLF Revival of musical piece by Sergei Prokofiev |
Hackney Empire |
28 Mar |
16 Apr |
364 |
POSTCARDS FROM AMERICA Double bill by David Adjmi / Brett Neveu (RSC) |
Soho |
5 Apr |
22 Apr |
392 |
RETIRED HURT / MAD MARGARETS REVENGE New plays by Colin Jeffrey I Lesley Ross (showdon'ttell) |
Pleasance |
29 Mar |
16 Apr |
381 |
SMALLER New play by Carmel Morgan |
Apollo |
4 Apr |
1 Jan |
385 |
TIMELESS New play by Christopher Clarke |
New End |
5 Apr |
23 Apr |
367 |
TO THE MOUNTAIN Revivals (Thermidor / Apricots) and new play (Camel Station) by Trevor Griffiths |
Courtyard at Covent Garden |
6 Apr |
24 Apr |
399 |
TRAD New play by Mark Doherty |
Bush |
6 Apr |
29 Apr |
363 |
WAITING FOR GODOT Revival of play by Samuel Beckett (Beckett Centenary Festival) |
Barbican |
5 Apr |
15 Apr |
393 |
WEEDING CANE Return (revised) of play by Sonia Hughes |
Oval House |
4 Apr |
8 Apr |
384 |
WHISTLE DOWN THE WIND Revival of A Lloyd Webber/J Steinman musical, from Mary Hayley Bell novel |
Palace |
27 Mar |
12 Aug |
356 |
A WHISTLE IN THE DARK Revival of play by Tom Murphy (Manchester Royal Exchange) |
Tricycle |
3 Apr |
6 May |
382 |
Regions |
||||
ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF AN ANARCHIST Revival of play by Dario Fo, translated by Simon Nye |
Bolton, Octagon |
7 Apr |
29 Apr |
406 |
THE CRUCIBLE Revival of play by Arthur Miller (TAG Th I NTS) |
Livingston, Howden Pk Ctr / touring |
6 Apr |
8 Apr |
408 |
A DAY IN THE DEATH OF JOE EGG Revival of play by Peter Nichols |
' Manchester, Library |
3 Apr |
29 Apr |
405 |
FIB New piece by Metro-Boulot-Dodo |
Leicester, NCP Car Park |
14 Mar |
18 Apr |
400 |
A NIGHTINGALE SANG IN ELDON SQUARE Revival of play by C P Taylor |
Newcastle upon Tyne, Live |
23 Mar |
29 Apr |
400 |
PROMISES AND LIES new musical by UB40, book by Jess Walters |
Birmingham Rep |
28 Mar |
15 Apr |
401 |
ROAM New devised piece with script by Ben Harrison |
Edinburgh International Airport |
4 Apr |
22 Apr |
406 |
THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL Revival of play by Richard Brinsley Sheridan |
Salisbury Playhouse |
31 Mar |
22 Apr |
400 |
SEPARATE TABLES Revival of double bill by Terence Rattigan |
Manchester, Royal Exchange |
4 Apr |
13 May |
404 |
TUNES OF GLORY New adaptation by Michael Lunney from novel and screenplay by James Kennaway |
Guildford, Yvonne Arnaud / touring |
3 Apr |
8 Apr |
405 |
WARS OF THE ROSES Revival of plays by Shakespeare, adapted by Barrie Rutter |
Leeds, WYP Quarry |
1 Apr |
22 Apr |
402 |