December 2008 Archives

Tomorrow sees the publication of the Stage 100, our annual list of the most influential people in Theatreland.

So, who is top? Well, like last year it was something of a two-horse race.

Nobel Prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter has died, aged 78.

He passed away on Christmas Eve, following a long battle with cancer.

Pinter was undoubtedly one of the greats of UK theatre, his plays included titles such as The Homecoming, The Birthday Party and The Caretaker. He was also a well-regarded poet and actor.

His final stage appearance was in Krapp’s Last Tape by Samuel Beckett - one of the big influences on Pinter’s own writing - at the Royal Court in 2006. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2005.

A full obituary will appear in due course on this website and in a future edition of The Stage.

Over the last decade, Andrew Lloyd Webber has been the most influential figure in UK theatre. We at The Stage have always suspected that this might be the case, but now we have proved it in a semi-empirical fashion.

We totted up the results from our last ten Stage 100s (and for those of you who are unfamiliar with this, it’s our annual list of the movers and shakers in theatreland) whereby if you came top you got 20 points and if you came 20th, you received one point.

We then added these up and produced a league table - the Premier League of theatre, if you like. And it looks like this:

Kevin Spacey’s artistic directorship at the Old Vic has come under quite unparalleled levels of scrutiny since the actor jetted in from the US and set up shop in Southwark in 2003.

At first, the decision was treated with almost Beatles-like levels of hysteria. People could scarcely believe that a bona fide movie star had decided to come to try to secure the future of one of London’s most historic and beloved venues. This soon turned to suspicion - why would a bone fide movie star want to come and secure the future of one of London’s most historic and beloved venues? And then to outright opposition, as various critics and commentators started to call for Spacey’s head when the artistic programme suffered a run of duds.

Now, it’s all change again.

Last month, Spacey picked up a special prize at the Evening Standard Awards in recognition of the artistic turn-around at the venue.

And there has certainly been a solid (although not spectacular) run of hits over the last year or so. The Norman Conquests - and the overhaul of the Old Vic to create a theatre-in-the-round - has been a resounding success. Last season’s The Entertainer and the earlier A Moon for the Misbegotten were undoubted hits and, looking forward, The Bridge Project , is a mouth-watering prospect.

Perhaps, though, Spacey’s greatest achievement since he took over the Old Vic has nothing to do with any of this.