Issue 24, 2007
Prompt Corner 
As the year staggers to its theatrical close with more outbreaks of what has become dubbed "posh panto", and panto-altematives from mould-breaking Anthony Neilson at Soho to throat-clicking Xhosa at the Young Vic (all to be covered in Issue 25-26), folk are getting het up about the oddest things.
The reviews of Michael Grandage's Donmar production of Othello will be reprinted next time round, but a number of people, both in print and in pixels, have become incensed that so few people can get to see the production. One blog commenter (in an identical message posted on more than one site, so they must have felt quite strongly about it) went so far as to "urgently demand" government action, remarking that he himself was "very angry" he couldn't get tickets for it... not, he added, that he would go if he had got them. (Er...)
Rights
There seems to be underlying these complaints a sense that audience rights are being abused. Now, while I'm among the first to argue for the upholding of all human rights, it hadn't struck me that these might include the right to see the show(s) of one's choice. After all, basic brute constraints limit access to any production, principally venue capacity and/or duration of run. It's not as if the Donmar run is acting contrary to the basic equations of theatre: ifs in the theatre it was conceived for and programmed into, and it lasts for as long as ifs scheduled to last.
This instance, of course, has hit headlines for two reasons: (i), it stars two significant names from film (it's a lithe reductive to say that only Ewan McGregor is making the news pages, whereas only Chiwetel Ejiofor is receiving praise in reviews); and (ii), as a result of (i) tickets are changing hands at wildly inflated prices – up to £2000 has been quoted regarding sales on eBay, but at the time of writing the top price asked on the site is £500 for a pair of tickets, and the top price currently bid is just over £300 (or, to put it in one context, around 70% of the official cost of a couple of top-notch tickets for Young Frankenstein on Broadway).
Ethics
It might be distasteful that people are asking (and almost getting) such prices, but taste is a personal matter, distinct from morality and certainly not the proper concern of law. Some of these eBay auctions may be due to genuine inability to use tickets bought in good faith, some may be one-off instances of folk spotting an opportunity too good to pass up, but some – the highest prices being demanded, in fact – do seem to be multiple offers by a single organised party or enterprise. That's a different matter; ifs not the decorousness or otherwise of price levels, ifs the ethics of organised reselling; that might well be a matter not just of morals, but in terms of its market desirability a matter for official regulation.
Yet this one, relatively isolated instance attracts so much ire when scarcely any comment is ever made about the regular set-up of ticket resellers – right up to major, more or less official agencies –whose entire profitable existence hinges on being able to add "booking fees" to tickets they sell or resell. Indeed, it has got to the stage where a number of bigger venues are now imposing their own "booking fee" when they themselves sell their own tickets for their own shows, as if this process involved additional overheads and were not an ordinary, integral part of what such venues do. Surely, if such overpricing is to be outlawed in some circumstances, it should be in all, which would lead to the collapse of a number of quite significant businesses. Whatever one might feel about the rights or wrongs of the practice, we can surely agree that stamping it out is unlikely to prove a net vote-winner given the amounts at stake.
Pretext
As far as I can see, the Donmar Othello has simply provided a number of people with a pretext to bang on about some issue that was already dear to them. Peter Bradshaw argues that the proper course of action was to realise the project as a film; it's a position one might expect from a film critic (he's the Guardian's chief reviewer), although as a sometime actor – I've seen him on both stage and screen – Bradshaw really ought to know how very different such media are. Ifs very unlikely that McGregor would have signed up for a corresponding film, and certainly not on the comparatively paltry wage that he's getting at Neal Street: it's the fact of it being a stage production that provides the compensatory attraction.
Others (naming no names, for I'd promised myself that I'd go at least one issue without mentioning Q**nrn L*tts) try to link matters to the Donmar's modest level of subsidy, as if this provided a public entitlement. Again, the Donmar receives what little public funding it receives for doing what it does, which is to stage productions in the Donmar according to the Donmar's schedule. Still, it makes a
pleasant change to see a complaint that a project is too good to deserve subsidy. As for Mr AngryBlogger, well, I suspect anger may just be one of his hobbies. Everyone should have at least one.
God bless us, every one
As I suggested above, the final four weeks' openings of this year, along with reviews of all seasonal shows, will as usual be covered in a double issue published early in the new year; the first four weeks of 2008 will form another double issue. There's nothing left for 2007 but to wish you the compliments of the season; there's time to take in a panto or two yet...
Ian Shuttleworth | ian@theatrerecord.com
At the Back
Can You Hear Me In Britain?
If you want to organise a successful conference, ask David Edgar to invite your speakers. The line-up he assembled for last Sunday's British Theatre Conference at the Writers' Guild in King's Cross was a starry one, and all gave great value for the day's £20 cost. It was reminiscent of the weekend conferences David ran in Birmingham years ago, although in content closer to the Theatre Forum that British ITI put on when active. The Forum sought to draw up a balance sheet for the year in British theatre. This event, sponsored by Birmingham and Warwick Universities and agent Alan Brodie, and entitled How Was it For Us? – Theatre Under Blair, had ten years in its sights.
Lying bastards
Curiously, the man himself didn't figure much in the day's discussions, having become almost invisible since leaving office. The opening speaker, Tessa Jowell, his last culture minister, did however offer a brave defence of Blairite cultural achievement, flagging up successes such as the £25 million for theatre drummed up by the Boyden report, and energetic outbursts of civic pride like Birmingham's cultural renaissance and Manchester's new festival. While admitting that the political class of the last decade might have lacked respect for culture, she felt that the culture industry had itself colluded in unduly emphasising the formers sleaziness. She seemed to feel that the public perception of politicians as "sleazy, lying bastards" was partly the creation of the arts and media. Michael Kustow took her to task for this.
Peter Boyden himself led off of the next session, with a fact-filled contribution explaining why his report succeeded – it was able to change perceptions of subsidy into thoughts of investment, demonstrating how just 10% extra funding could raise 28% extra productivity in regional theatre. As well as figures he offered a vision: "Let us celebrate our stories through live performance." He was followed by Gemma Bodinetz, director of the Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse, showing how much that extra cash had helped revivify two very different theatres that had closed. Getting back audiences was a huge battle, but even those Scousers who don't go to the theatre were proud that it existed –"tours" to community centres within a hundred yards of the theatres were raising the interest of people who would never venture inside the houses themselves. Liverpool's rebirth contrasted strongly with the recently closed Bristol Old Vic, and there were sharp comments from Equity activist Malcolm Sinclair and the floor on both the "catastrophe" of its closure and the lack of adventure in its hoped-for re-opening. What was regarded as uneconomic for struggling Bristol had yet to be achieved in flavour-of-the-month Liverpool, where Gemma Bodinetz did not dare to look beyond the city's year as Cultural Capital in 2008. In spite of the huge recovery inspired by the Boyden £25 million, the regions are again heading towards crisis, and the man himself pointed to one major cause: when distributing its new-found largesse, the government did not insist that local authorities match and guarantee equal increases in their contributions. Local authority cuts were now eating away the gains.
Official version
Nick Hytner and Nick Starr were able to bring comfort in describing the huge success of the National, which they were gracious enough to admit had been inherited from Trevor Nunn in a stable financial condition. But the Britain of 2003 was a different society from that of 1963 when the NT began. The pursuit of excellence which motivated its founders was no longer enough – and nor indeed were the Blair rallying cries of access and diversity. Conviction was essential. What had helped them bring in 80,000 first-time visitors in a year was undoubtedly a rethink of the seating policy, hugely helped by the Travelex sponsorship. Large parts of the Olivier, which never sold at high prices, went rapidly at £10, and over five years, 700,000 out of the million Travelex season seats sold were at the low price.
The conference's afternoon sessions moved from arts policy to look more closely at content, with writers figuring more prominently. In a session on political theatre, Victoria Brittain and Robin Soans talked about their differing approaches to verbatim theatre, while Alistair Beaton described his efforts to inform through laughter in plays such as Feelgood. Victoria Brittain suggested that the Tricycle's verbatim plays (transcripts like Richard Norton-Taylor's editing of the Macpherson, Saville and Hutton enquiries as well as her own interview-based Guantanamo) were necessary as a reflection of the lack of attention such vital topics received in the media themselves. Robin Soans thought that the value of verbatim theatre was that it opened up the debate to voices that are not usually heard, and could act as a counter to the "official version" of events. With manipulation the essence of today's politics (a true Blair legacy), such voices needed to be heard. Alistair Beaton warned that verbatim theatre, if not shaped by a talent like that of Robin Soans, could be undramatic, necessarily lacking in metaphor. He placed today's satirists in a context where the old liberal leftcertainties were less clear. Can political theatre change anything? It doesn't matter, he said. What matters is to give audiences hope and heart.
Star-fuck casting
Mark Lawson led off the next session, which turned into something of a get-thetheatre-critics event, since his fellow speakers Mark Ravenhill, Katie Mitchell and Emma Rice had all recently suffered at our hands. Mark Lawson hit at some theatre critics' ignorance of television and film, which meant that they were surprised to see "new" techniques on stage which were commonplace in the other media. He tracked the change from the early days of TV, when actors recorded on Sunday because they were busy on stage during the week, and TV series credits included mentions of where in the West End their leads were appearing. Now there are few star names, other than film or TV ones, that can automatically fill a theatre; touring productions are sold on the basis of their casts' (sometimes dubious) TV and film appearances. He foresaw a time when live performance would be restricted to Sundays, because actors were devoting their weekdays to TV recording and rehearsal. During the week, the West End could present musicals, most of them adapted from films or TV.
Mark Ravenhill followed with a typically provocative piece, suggesting that there was too much "new writing", driven by producers' feeling that new writing means new audiences, new consumers for theatre "product". He made the plea that we should not cut ourselves off from the canon. Although he regretted that the "new writing" nineties had supplanted visually oriented approaches to the classics from imaginative groups like Cheek By Jowl and Complicit& he must have had his tongue in his cheek when he criticised the 'jigging around" of today's groups with puppets, mime, technological intervention and physical theatre – this from someone who has just finished working (to the disgust of some critics) with arch-jiggers Frantic Assembly.
Katie Mitchell, too, regretted that we had lost the '80s' rich seam of physical theatre – lately there has been an erosion of interest in experiment for its own sake. She loved the European scene, where directors topped the billing, and hated London's "star-fuck" casting system. Obsessed with such performers, critics could not spot the precision of her own, highly trained actors; they had no interest in the craft of theatre-making. She had a real fear that her work would be killed off by the critics – yet her recent production of Waves, loathed by her elderly tormentors, had attracted the youngest NT audience for years. This fear was echoed by Emma Rice, another auteur. She is not interested in self-analysis, but wants theatre makers to be preachers, doers: "I wish to retell stories, ones that I have enjoyed, that are a part of my psyche." She wants to give a good night out, to create what Tim Etchells of Forced Entertainment has called "temporary community".
Tribal thinking
The final session looked at cultural diversity, but began with Michael Boyd telling us a little about the RSC's remarkable recovery, the result of his building trust, rebuilding respect in a stricken company. Under cover of the Complete Works season, he had been able to give the Histories company 2Y2-year contracts, and would be hiring for three years in 2008. It also brought European, African and Asian companies to Stratford.
Kwame Kwei-Armah declared himself a product of the wave of optimism generated by New Labour, emphasising its inclusiveness, its desire to create a world that is not simply dominated by the white, male middle class. For him, pditical correctness changed the quality of his life for good, cutting out the derogatory descriptions he had so long suffered. He did not like the retreat from liberal ideas triggered by 7/7. The window of opportunity has got smaller again, and TV and film in particular only want black writers to see through a lens that offers pictures of a violent, drug-fuelled underclass. He has no wish to write about racism, which he sees as "a white problem". We must attack this tribal thinking and show the richness of black writing, not ignorantly lumping him together with Roy Williams, who comes from a very different black writing tradition, let alone adding a passing reference (as one article did) to Tanika Gupta, the panel's third speaker, as "one to watch".
Tanika Gupta pointed out that she had had a long career writing for TV before her first stage play over a decade ago. She followed Kwame Kwei-Armah in calling for more metaphor in theatre writing, less council estate realism. She also wanted to be judged as a writer pure and simple: the critics compare her to black writers, not to the whole field. Being asked, as she often is, to write "Bollywood" treatments of the class* gives her the shivers.
The day passed far too quickly, and we can hope for longer events like it to follow, perhaps over a whole weekend. It produced no manifesto, but many challenging ideas, perhaps the most important of which was Nick Hytner's plea for better, more informed governance of theatre companies nationwide.
Ian Herbert | ian@herbertknott.com
Contents / Reviews
London |
||||
THE BEAUX STRATAGEM Revival of play by George Farquhar (Centurion TC) |
Courtyard |
21 Nov |
16 Dec |
1419 |
CHET BAKER: SPEEDBALL Revival of play by Mark O'Thomas |
606 Club |
19 Nov |
29 Nov |
1414 |
COPENHAGEN Revival of play by Michael Frayn |
Tabard |
9 Nov |
1 Dec |
1414 |
CRESTFALL New play by Mark O'Rowe |
Theatre 503 |
28 Nov |
15 Dec |
1435 |
DOUBT: A PARABLE New play by John Patrick Shanley |
Tricycle |
26 Nov |
12 Jan |
1425 |
THE DYSFUNCKSHONALZ! New play by Mike Packer |
Bush |
20 Nov |
22 Dec |
1415 |
HAPPY CHRISTMAS Revival of play by Paul Birtill |
New End |
29 Nov |
23 Dec |
1434 |
INVISIBLE BONFIRES New piece by Forkbeard Fantasy |
Toynbee Studios |
20 Nov |
1 Dec |
1418 |
KING LEAR Revival of play by Shakespeare (RSC) |
New London |
28 Nov |
12 Jan |
1431 |
NIGHT FOR ORPHEUS New play by Bisera Winters (La Scene Infemale) |
Camden People's |
22 Nov |
1 Dec |
1419 |
A Play, A Pie, A Pint New plays by David Greig, Rona Munro et al. (Paines Plough) (see pages for full details) |
Shunt Vaults |
31 Oct |
24 Nov |
1412 |
THE SEAGULL Revival of play by Anton Chekhov (RSC) |
New London |
27 Nov |
12 Jan |
1429 |
THE SIX WIVES OF TIMOTHY LEARY New play by Philip de Gouveia |
Etcetera |
21 Nov |
9 Dec |
1419 |
THE SIX-DAYS WORLD New play by Elizabeth Kuti |
Finborough |
30 Nov |
22 Dec |
1436 |
THE SLOW SWORD New play by Yuri Klavdiyev (Sputnik Th) |
Old Red Lion |
23 Nov |
8 Dec |
1424 |
SOME KIND OF BLISS New play by Samuel Adamson |
Trafalgar Studio 2 |
22 Nov |
15 Dec |
1420 |
WILLIAM BLAKE'S DIVINE HUMANITY New play by Tim Bruce, after William Blake (Th of Eternal Values) |
New Players' |
22 Nov |
2 Dec |
1428 |
WOMEN OF TROY Revival of play by Euripides, from adaptation by Don Taylor |
Lyttelton |
28 Nov |
22 Feb |
1437 |
Regions |
||||
A CONVERSATION Return of new play by David Williamson |
Manchester, Royal Exchange |
19 Nov |
8 Dec |
1442 |
HONK! Revival of musical by George Stiles and Anthony Drewe |
Newbury, Watermill |
1 Dec |
5 Jan |
1447 |
JANE BOND New piece by Maggie Fox and Sue Ryding (Lip Service / Dukes Th, Lancaster) |
York, Theatre Royal / touring |
27 Nov |
1 Dec |
1446 |
MISS BOLLYWOOD New play by Miranjan lyengar et al. |
Manchester, Opera House I touring |
3 Nov |
6 Nov |
1442 |
SHADES OF BROWN New play by Rani Moorthy (Rasa Th I Lyric Hammersmith) |
Manchester, Library / touring |
20 Nov |
24 Nov |
1445 |
THE SUNDOWE New musical by James, Gerry and John Kielty |
Inverness, Eden Court / touring |
30 Nov |
15 Dec |
1447 |
VIVA LA DIVA New piece compiled by Kim Gavin |
Salford Lowry / touring |
25 Nov |
27 Nov |
1445 |