Education and Training: I know I’m sometimes too focused on London and the south-east. It’s partly because that’s where I live and operate and partly because it’s where a huge concentration of fine performance and education happens. But, for the record, I do worry about it and I’m well aware that most of Britain is, as it were, somewhere else and that there is good work going on in many parts of it. That’s why I was so pleased to hear from Sarah Osborne, Artistic Director of Yew Tree Arts in Wakefield. Her...

Shenton's View: While SOLT is putting a brave face on the prospects of audiences holding up during the Olympics, whatever Andrew Lloyd Webber may say, it’s possible that one way of meeting the reduced demand will simply be to reduce the possible supply. The house of cards is beginning to fall, and just this week two West End musicals announced an early closure: Crazy for You will depart the Novello on March 17, though it was originally booking through July 28; and Legally Blonde the Musical will leave the Savoy on April...

Newsblog: In the week that Equity publishes the findings of its survey asking performers whether it safe to be ‘out’ as an actor, two performers share their experience of being openly gay in the industry. Sophie Ward: In 1994, I was in a TV series called...

Shenton's View: The other day I hosted this year’s Critics’ Circle Awards, an event at which actors and artists meet the critics who nightly judge their work. Of course, we’ve come to praise them on this occasion, so it’s an afternoon where we treat each other with kid gloves; but there’s an underlying tension, of course. “So those are the bastards who write those things about us!”, you can feel some muttering. And one even said it out loud: in collecting his award for Best New Play for One Man Two Guvnors,...

Grads' Club: I’m not quite sure where January went but I hope it was an enjoyable start to the year for everyone. It’s been a month of getting back to routine for me with a good muggle job, teaching and preparations for the NYT’s 2012 auditions. All...

Education and Training: I’ve written a lot about Charles Dickens lately in various publications(http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/charles-dickens-a-tale-of-two-centuries-6292734.html)(http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/charles-dickens-a-tale-of-two-centuries-6292734.html)because, of course, 2012 is the bicentenary of his birth. So I was particularly pleased to see that West End Kids is performing at the Dickens Bicentenary Banquet at the Mansion House on February 7 - the great man’s birthday. West End Kids was formed by Musical Director and specialist vocal coach Martin-Gwyn Williams in September 2001. It is based on the American system of training young Broadway performers. Now pretty well known as a musical theatre song & dance...

Shenton's View: In a year when the Olympics may well be emptying theatres, the Critics’ Circle’s theatre section yesterday joined forces once again for our annual celebration of the shows that actually filled them — and our columns — last year with champion performances that yet again prove the undoubted excellence of our vibrant theatrical culture. I hosted the Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards, generously sponsored by Nyman Libson Paul, in my role as chairman of the Critics’ Circle, so I have to declare more than a passing interest in them, of course....

Shenton's View: Last Friday, I went to Leeds, a city I’ve been to on theatre-related business on many occasions, but always to see shows at the West Yorkshire Playhouse — a venue whose opening I can remember. This time, however, I visited a venue I’ve never been to before, even though it has been there far longer than I have, or even Michael Billington! Yet as I sat in City Varieties — a venue that was built in 1865 and recently underwent a £9.2m refurbishment — reading the programme before the show...

Education and Training: I have mentioned here before that Britain is now producing almost no ice dancing champions. And it isn’t difficult to see why. One by one most of our ice rinks seem to be disappearing - Streatham’s -81-year old ice rink became the latest casualty when it closed its doors just before Christmas. The problem with ice skating is that you need ice - just as swimmers need water - and it’s an expensive facility to maintain. Or do you? Enter Karen Coombes of Dragon’s Den fame who has invented an...

Shenton's View: The Broadway production of The Mountaintop closed yesterday, after a run of 24 previews and 117 regular performances, and just under the wire, it was announced last Wednesday that the show had managed the rare Broadway feat of actually recouping its entire initial investment. That’s an acomplishment, of course, but first of all it’s interesting that it only happened so late in the day — the announcement came five days before the show actually ended — but even more compelling is the sum of that initial investment: $3.1m. 

That’s quite...

Education and Training: I’ve been chatting to Simon Dunmore, author of An Actor’s Guide to Getting Work, the fifth edition of which publishes next month. He’s also editor of Actors’ Yearbook 2012: Essential Contacts for Stage, Screen and Radio, now in its 9th year. Both books are published by Methuen Drama. As soon as I mentioned on Twitter that I was about to do this interview I was spontaneously contacted by rising young actor Peter McGovern, who appeared as Braun alongside David Haig in the recent, highly successful tour of The Madness of...

Shenton's View: Welcome to the first “short shorts” column of the New Year, a weekly round-up of notes and quotes that don’t fit into the blogs on individual subjects I file on the other four days of the week. After the usual slow start to the year’s theatre activities which meant that Quentin Letts’s Daily Mail theatre page last Friday, for instance, comprised reviews of shows at three studio theatres from Jermyn Street to the Gate and Trafalgar 2, we’re back to the full tilt of multiple openings every night again: next...

Shenton's View: A leading Australian website critic last week made an astonishing admission: she fled from the opening night of the Sydney premiere of Love Never Dies at the interval. Yet she reviewed as much as she had bothered to see nonetheless. Apart from the gross discourtesy that her behaviour represents — she should be reminded that she’s a guest of the management, and having accepted the privilege of a free ticket and their hospitality, she had a duty to sit it out, however painful it was for her — it was...

TV Today: If you give a documentary an all-encompassing title like The Story of Musicals, but then only devote three hours’ worth of airtime, it’s inevitable that some areas will be glossed over. BBC4’s documentary series, which finished last night (but is currently still available on iPlayer),...

Education and Training: Can you start an effective vocational school with just five students? Well, although they would obviously have liked more, James Bowden and Laura Roxburgh decided last year that, yes, they could. And Dorset School of Acting’s one year foundation course launched last September. I went to the Lighthouse in Poole, where DSA is based, to find out more....