One of the ongoing problems — or challenges, depending on whether you see the glass half-empty or half-full — of London as against New York theatre is the nearly complete absence of a commercial middle-ground in London between the high-cost (to audience as well as producers) West End and the low-rent (in every sense) fringe.
While New York theatre can healthily embrace a happy spectrum with a plethora of houses of 499 seats or less (to qualify them as off-Broadway) where producers can actually make money without the crippling risks of Broadway, London has little to offer inbetween the two extremes, though various initiatives — like the Trafalgar Studios and, when it finally gets built, the Sondheim Theatre above the Queen’s — are intended to plug that gap.
Off-Broadway, but very near Broadway geographically, is meanwhile continuing to thrive, as witness the extraordinary conversion of a multiplex cinema on 50th Street, behind the imposing skycraper of Worldwide Plaza on 8th Avenue, into a multiplex theatrical complex. Called Dodger Stages, it has five theatres ranging in size from 199 to 499 seats, and the conversion — all bare floors and walls and artfully arranged furniture in the public corridors — is so hip that it hurts. It’s like walking into a futuristic Manhattan hotel; the personification of ‘cool’ in every sense. And it makes for a very hip and happening place to see theatre in. Each of the theatres is beautifully appointed. This is a theatre for the future — and London should come and learn a lesson from it. Perhaps the Vue (formerly Warner) West End in Leicester Square could have a new life as a theatrical multiplex?
