In The Paper

This week’s edition of The Stage contains our annual supplement covering tribute bands and shows. If you’re involved in performing, managing or hiring in this growing sector, then look no further for all you need to know.

Also this week:

• In Curtain Up, we have the first photos of the Lord of the Rings set, newly installed at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane. Set and costume designer Rob Howell walks us through one of the largest get-ins in West End history.
• In the light of Equity’s campaign for an increase in West End actros’ pay, Mark Shenton looks at why Broadway pays its actors more, despite having lower ticket prices
• Louise Finn looks at the comedy awards designed to recognise and further promote women on the comedy circuit
• Actor David Suchet talks about his two latest roles: playing Robert Maxwell on TV, and Cardinal Benelli in a new play, The Last Confession, at Chichester Festival Theatre
• We reveal the plans for Merseyside’s proposed new indoor Shakespearean theatre
• Actor Matthew McNulty talks about his role in Channel 4’s controversial army drama, The Mark of Cain
• We look back at seven successful years of touring for The Vagina Monologues
• Jodi Myers remembers the technical training she received from CSSD’s Peter Streuli, and expresses her fears about comparable courses today.

And of course we have our columnists:

• Maggie Brown on the need for contemporary drama to catch the nation’s mood
• Dillie Keane on life on tour in Australia
• Dear John is asked: “As someone aiming to build a long-term career, do you think showbusiness reality shows can teach me anything?”
• Flyman on certification schemes for technical roles backstage
• Patrick Newley remembers a gone, but not missed, drag venue

Continue reading for more previews.

Best known as Poirot, David Suchet is a master of creating depth in roles that could easily become caricatures. Next week, he stars as tycoon Robert Maxwell in a BBC2 drama.

I liked the fact that [Craig Warner’s] script wasn’t a hatchet job. If I’m asked to play a villain, I look for what’s good in them. If I’m cast as a good guy, I look for the bad. Everyone has a good side and a dark side, a lustful side and a puritanical side, we say one thing and mean another. Nobody is straightforward. I believe all bullies have a weak, vulnerable side, and I tried to look for that in Maxwell.

He is also to play Cardinal Benelli in a new play, The Last Confession, about the death of Pop John Paul I in 1978, coming to Chichester Festival Theatre.

This is not a docu-drama, but all the characters are taken from real life. It is all documented in the book, In God’s Name, by Davis Yallop. Cardinal Benelli was Archbishop of Florence and extremely influential in getting John Paul elected. In the play, he conducts the investigation into the Pope’s death, but he is not a detective. I haven’t swapped my Poirot moustache for the cardinal’s skull cap.

When I first read Roger Crane’s play, I couldn’t put it down. He is an American lawyer and I was most impressed by his language and structure. This is his first professional production. What I hope I’ve brought to the text is Benelli’s driving ambition and his struggle with his own faith.

Plans are afoot to build a Shakespearean theatre in Prescot, Merseyside. Unlike London’s Globe, the Cockpit will boast an indoor stage, says Shakespeare North’s executive director David Thacker:

Think of all the plays that were commissioned precisely for indoor events – such as Measure For Measure. So it would be fantastic for actors to play Shakespeare in a theatre that is authentic in that sense as well. And there are exact records for the 1629 theatre, whereas the Globe has been created quite necessarily from speculation, to a large extent. So the Cockpit will supply the missing piece of the Shakespearean jigsaw.

When Hamlet says, ‘Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounc’d it to you trippingly on the tongue,’ you can be sure that you can do that in a court theatre – but it’s not so easy to do that at the Globe. If it’s too ‘trippingly on the tongue’, no one is going to hear it at the back – you have to whack it out a bit.

Tony Marchant’s controversial drama The Mark of Cain, about two young soldiers’ experiences in Iraq, has been released on DVD by Channel 4. Matthew McNulty, who plays Private Shane Gulliver, described it was the toughest script he had ever had to film:

The subject is extremely sensitive and the preparation for filming, and the film in itself, was — no other word for it — gruelling. To know that Tony had grounded his script firmly in truth was chilling, in a lot of ways.

He interviewed about two dozen soldiers, from ranks ranging from the simple squaddie up to a major, to get to the bottom of this appalling abuse, and discovered that it did go on, that it probably goes on still and that, when the army is confronted with the evidence, it just literally closes ranks…

…But – and it’s a big ‘but’ – you have to understand the way the army works. To do that I talked to a lot of my mates, and one in particular, who are, or were, in the army.

The first thing you realise is that they never see things in shades of grey. They are completely blinkered, looking straight ahead. Black and white, that’s it… Tony argues that there is also a moral responsibility laid on them to refuse to take part in something if they consider it to be repugnantly wrong, but then the army would argue that they are there to obey orders. No questions.

The Stage is available in most branches of WH Smiths and many other leading newsagents every Thursday, priced £1.30. Subscription packages are also available.

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In this week’s edition of The Stage:

• Susan Elkin reports on the growing number of schools applying to become official specialist performing arts schools
• Jeremy Austin goes behind the scenes at Tribfest, this summer’s festival comprising nothing but tribute acts
• Playbox Theatre Company celebrates 21 years of youth theatre.
• Paul Vale advises on exercise, well-being and beauty treatments to help actors maintain physical fitness in an ever-demanding industry
• Lisa Goldman, newly in charge of Soho Theatre, talks about her plans for her first season
• Japanese director Yukio Ninagawa talks about his version of Coriolanus, which he is brining to the Barbican this month
• BBC Worldwide’s live events manager Craig Stanley talks about the challenges of bringin children’s TV programmes, such as The Tweenies and Bill and Ben, to life on stage
• Liz Thomas looks at former US Vice President Al Gore’s new television venture, Current TV
• Pilot Theatre’s Marcus Romer talks about his trip to the Technology Education and Design conference in California, and how the internet can help build audiences
• Brian Blessed reflects on a life in acting as he prepares to celebrate his 70th birthday

And as usual, we have the best commentary and opinion on all aspects of the industry from our columnists:

• Ian Herbert on the importance of awards ceremonies, regardless of the media attention they may or may not receive
• Richard Jordan on what we can learn from Brazil’s model of state funding for the arts
• Dear John advises singers on whether working with backing tracks, as opposed to live bands, could hold them back
• Clive Barnes on the state of the new Broadway musical
• Barbara Eifler on the SMA Awards
• Patrick Newley on the many uses of Spotlight

Continue reading for some previews of the inside pages.

Lisa Goldman’s first season at Soho Theatre will comprise a series of challenging, political works. But she’s not one for the ‘traditional liberal approach’, she tells Jeremy Austin:

I think when you say something is political, that’s what people immediately think you mean, and that isn’t what I mean by that, and if you knew my previous work, you would know that’s not the case.

Because [Iraqi writer Hassan Abdulrzzak’s Baghdad Wedding] is about Iraq, people will make assumptions about that play. They will assume it is dealing with a particular terrain, and although that is given to the play, it’s from a perspective we haven’t heard yet, and that is sort of what I am trying to do. I think the most interesting art always has an act of rebellion at the heart of it, and that for me is a political act. It’s the rebellion of imagination.

As live events general manager for BBC Worldwide, Craig Stanley has a hand in a growing number of stage shows based upon the Corporation’s shows.

With Tweenies Live!, we’re doing one of the largest theatre tours in the UK, and we are also looking at what we can do with our comedy shows and even straight dramas – the BBC is one of the world’s largest commissioners of original play writing for our radio and TV. We have an established history of supporting emerging writers.

[…] What’s interesting is talking to the theatre managers. They certainly welcome working with us, because they know they can now encourage young families to come to the theatre, since so many of their established plays are aimed at a much older audience. They know that if I say that I will play in a particular venue in November 2008, we will be there, and we will be there with the right sort of show. That’s a great partnership between us and the theatres.

The Stage is available in most branches of WH Smiths and many other leading newsagents every Thursday, priced £1.30. Subscription packages are also available.

Posted by Scott Matthewman at 12:42 PM | Permalink

In this week’s copy of The Stage:

• Alistair Smith reports from the press launch of ITV’s Grease is the Word
• Nick Awde looks at how television is serving minority groups
• Dear John looks at the magician’s dilemma — should a new act have to go for David Blaine-style trickery to be noticed?
• Get 2 for 1 tickets to see Howard Goodall’s music Days of Hope at the King’s Head Theatre, Islington
• Five successful Edinburgh Fringe regulars talk about how they are preparing for the world’s biggest arts festival
• Martin Shaw talks about his new detective role as George Gently, and what future he sees for Judge John Deed
• Doctor Who executive producer Julie Gardner on the series, the new companion and the future for Torchwood
• Improbable Theatre Company talk about their collaboration with the ENO and the Met in New York to produce Philip Glass’s opera, Satyagraha
• Simon Grover looks at the decline in full-mask theatre.
• Backstage Focus looks at Artsadmin, which has reopened its East End base after major renovation.

Continue reading for some article extracts and page spreads.

It may not happen until August, but planning is already well underway for the thousands of arts professionals who will be taking part in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this year. Pleasance Director Anthony Alderson, Grid Iron producer Judith Doherty, PR agent Dan Pursey, comedian and actor Lizzie Roper and actor Mike Maran all talk about how they are preparing.

Martin Shaw, who is about to star in a new 1960s-set detective mystery as copper George Gently in a pilot based on the novels by Alan Hunter, says he is bemused by the ‘sex symbol’ tag he has often been labelled with:

It’s not something I seek, it’s just something that goes on and I don’t take it very seriously at all. It’s not difficult to be glamorous on TV, it’s trying to sustain it daily in real life. The sexy thing can’t go on forever and I won’t allow it to – you have to be careful because you don’t want to look silly.

As well as talking about his TV career, Shaw explains what inspired him to become an actor in the first place:

I knew instinctively how to do it from the age of about 14, when we started studying for our exams. We would read Shakespeare plays out loud and most of the kids in the class would say, ‘I don’t understand it, it don’t mean nothing’. It was a foreign language to them and I thought, ‘What’s the problem? It’s crystal clear’. I just knew what it meant and I knew how to say it. It was nice to be good at something instead of being crap at everything else, which was my experience at school.

Shakespeare also features in the next episode of Doctor Who, which started a third series last week. Executive Producer Julie Gardner, who is also Head of Drama at BBC Wales and the BBC’s Controller of Drama Commissioning, talked to The Stage Podcast ahead of the series’ debut.

She reveals that the second series of spin-off show Torchwood will not air until January 2008, after the first got to air by the skin of its teeth:

Last year, we started filming in March and we were on air with 13 episodes from late September, which was just so, so hectic. And we didn’t really have enough time – it was absolutely frantic from day one of prep, it was all hands on deck.

And so, it just works for the BBC2 schedule that we can go in January. So it’ll just give us a little bit more time in our post-production. Which would be lovely, because we were delivering an episode every single week for transmission. It was incredibly tight. So it was just as well we didn’t have any last-minute technical difficulties last year!

Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch, of Improbable Theatre Company, talked to Mark Shenton about their production of Philip Glass’s opera, Satygraha:

I remember the first week here, working with the ENO chorus for the first time. There are 40 people and they don’t know what you’re like or where it’s all going to end up, so there’s all that watching of each other that goes on — arse-sniffing, as someone called it — and I’m saying, ‘This will be a really big puppet’, but actually I’m waggling some newspaper around, and they’re thinking, ‘What the hell?’. But as it was being made and formed, they would begin to see that it’s actually going to be quite exciting. But at the early stages, it can look really, really bad.

The Stage is available in most branches of WH Smiths and many other leading newsagents every Thursday, priced £1.30. Subscription packages are also available.

Next week: A special edition of The Stage celebrates 80 years of Spotlight, the performers’ directory.

Posted by Scott Matthewman at 12:43 PM | Permalink