November 2005 Archives

It seems that operatic plots and emotions are not confined to what happens on the stage at English National Opera. The tumultuous last few years have seen the company lurch from crisis to crisis, with the acrimonious departures of artistic director Nicholas Payne in 2002 and music director Paul Daniel earlier this year (who was booed by the company’s marketing director Ian McKay during his final performance as conductor), a strike by the chorus and an ACE financial bail-out of “one-off” emergency payments.

Now comes the news that Sean Doran, its current chief executive and artistic director, has resigned with immediate effect, though he is being retained as an ‘artistic consultant’ for the rest of the season that he has already put in place. Though his reign has not been without huge controversy, there have also been notable recent hits, including the current sell-out run of a new production of Madam Butterfly by director Anthony Minghella, the summer hit of Bernstein’s On the Town and the intriguing autumn success of a new contemporary opera adapted from Fassbinder’s film The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. I have seen each of them, and they’re just the kind of exciting new takes on established pieces or radical new ones that have lured me off my regular patch and into the opera house.

But critics and cultural commentators have long thought that Doran was, in the Daily Telegraph’s Rupert Christiansen’s words, “way out of his depth”, never having run an opera company or theatre before. Those sentiments were echoed by Paul Daniel in a departing interview that led to his pubic booing: “He needs very strong people within the company to actually run the whole business of putting an opera company together,” he told The Guardian.

Two of those strong people remain in place, with John Berry – ENO’s director of opera planning – now expected to take over the artistic director duties, with Loretta Tomasi, executive director who was formerly MD of Really Useful Theatres, taking over as the new chief executive.

The double triumph of Southwark’s Menier Chocolate Factory – who yesterday took the Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Newcomer and last week were named the Up-and-coming studio venue of the year in the Peter Brook/Empty Space Awards – is a rare testament to how sheer energy (and a little bit of good luck) can put a venue on the map very quickly indeed.

It was only in the February before last that David Babani and his business partner Danielle Tarento stumbled upon the Menier Chocolate Factory – a building that had already helpfully been converted into a theatre and restaurant complex, but was not as yet functioning at full capacity.

I remember actually going down there to review a production of The Master and Margarita for The Stage a few months before they took it over, in October 2003, and I wrote then: “First of all, a warm welcome to a splendid new fringe theatre, the Menier, located in the former Menier Chocolate Factory building in Southwark, a stone’s throw from the Tate Modern. This spacious and smartly appointed flexible room has the potential to be the next Arcola, with the added attractions of an attractive restaurant and art gallery in the building, too, not to mention that it’s far easier to find! But my welcome to the opening production it is hosting, a highly ambitious but over-complex stage version of Bulgakov’s sprawling anti-Stalinist allegory of good and evil, The Master and Margarita, has to be altogether more guarded….”

But within six weeks of Babani and Tarento finding it, they had taken it over and re-opened it for business – and by that summer, had their first fully-fledged hit when they imported the potently funny one-man show Fully Committed from off-Broadway with Mark Setlock, the original New York actor around whom it had been written, recreating his performance here. Given that the show was set in the reservations room of a swanky restaurant, it’s appearance here (though the restaurant is more homely than swanky) was virtually site-specific theatre. It attracted the critics in dribs and drabs, but word got out that here was something special; that show transferred to the Arts; and by the time of the Menier’s next opening, the first night critics were all out in attendance together here.

In other words, within a few months the place had acquired an indefinable sort of energy; and it has never left it. A Paines Plough curated season of new plays earlier this year made it a compelling place for new plays, while Babani’s particular producing passion for musicals has paid dividends with the UK premiere of Jonathan Larson’s Tick Tick Boom that followed. Tonight, the theatre hosts London’s first sighting of Sondheim and Lapine’s Sunday in the Park with George since it received its UK premiere at the National 15 years ago.

All of this is achieved without any subsidy at all; just the commercial imperative of producing shows that people want to see, and giving them food they want to eat beforehand, both at reasonable prices.

Compare and contrast this state of affairs, say, with what happened at the late, still-lamented by some but ultimately lamentable Bridewell Theatre Company. Despite a decade-long run at its premises near Blackfriars (most of them rent-free, thanks to the good graces of their landlord, the Bridewell Institute), the theatre never put itself on the map in the same way.

It bleated on about lack of subsidy to do its self-appointedly “important” work with new musical writers, but that work was seldom actually supported by either big audiences or big critics. I always tried to support their work as much as I could, but it was a losing battle. Partly, it was a problem of identity: by letting out the premises to other producers all the time, confusion was sewn in the public mind; when you saw a bad production here – and there were many – it was easy to think it was thanks to the artistic policy of the theatre, not the quality of the incoming company. (The Menier, by contrast, is now set to produce all of its own work).

But though it was a fantastic “found” space, and endlessly versatile, too, in the configurations it could be adapted into, it also failed to bring on more than the narrow coterie of dedicated musical fans to its cause. Musicals are one of the most popular of all theatrical activities in the West End, yet here was a fringe house dedicated to them that failed to get that message to those theatergoers. The Menier, again, is managing to make itself hip and news, both at the same time.

This has been a banner year, in many ways, for black theatre in London: remarkably, both the transfers of Kwame Kwei-Armah’s Elmina’s Kitchen (to the Garrick) and Stratford East’s production of The Big Life (to the Apollo) marked the first time that a living black British-born playwright and an indigenously created black musical about local people respectively appeared in the West End. The Big Life also marked the first time that a black British director had ever directed a show in the West End, too: as Clint Dyer remarked to me at the time, “The wonderful thing about being black in this country, and how backward Britain is, is that as a black person you have an amazing opportunity to be the first at a lot of things”.

Plans for London’s first dedicated full-time black theatre, to be set up by Talawa on the site of the former Westminster Theatre, may have run aground earlier this year when the Arts Council withdrew its £4m capital funding of the £7m project to build the theatre, but the company’s revenue grant that was also under threat has at least been reinstated to 2007, so that the organisation can start “a positive new chapter” in its life.

But it’s not the only game in town. Tonight, Kilburn’s Tricycle Theatre – which has never shirked its commitment to black theatre – continues to break new ground, by launching a three-play season of black plays that between them chart 101 years of black history and are also being performed by the same resident company of actors who will appear in all three productions over a six-month period. Partly, it was driven by financial necessity – according to artistic director Nicolas Kent, there wasn’t enough money to do it, until “I realised that if we held a company together over three plays, we could cut down considerably on expenses.” But, he adds, “it’s also very exciting – it’s never happened to black actors, being in one place and doing three plays about their own history.”

But though the next two plays will be directed by Paulette Randall and Indhu Rubasingham respectively, Kent himself directs tonight’s first play, Walk Hard, and defends the fact that he is doing so despite being white by commenting: “On the whole, I am sympathetic to the idea of black plays being directed by black directors.” He adds, “Of course, I’d never say I know what it’s like to be black, but I know as much about black history in the thirties and forties as most of the cast.” But ultimately, too, he’s in charge of the theatre, and found the play, too, so he admits, “there’s an elmeent of me exercising my droit de seigneur as artistic director.”

In an age of Pop Idol, Who Wants to be a Millionaire? and Big Brother, where anyone can become a pop star/millionaire/celebrity in the flash of a television minute, it seems that theatre reviewing, too, is open season nowadays. It’s not just that parliamentarians like Michael Portillo have managed to achieve a regular spot doing so, in the pages of the New Statesman; but also that his replacement recently in a week when he was off was none other than Julian Clary, to review I Am My Own Wife currently at the Duke of York’s (presumably on the grounds that it’s one homosexual reviewing a play about another).

Clary comments on the dexterity of the solo actor Jefferson Mays who has to play the characters – whom he proceeds to list as “trannies, Nazis, commies, cockneys, even Japanese reporters” – and adds, “He’ll need a baked potato in the interval to keep his strength up, I thought to myself.” Clary tells us that he himself was fortified by booze, admitting, “I was giddy with admiration by the end, unless we put that down to the two cheeky glasses of Sauvignon Blanc I drank in the interval.”

So that’s how you review a play!

Rather more diligent work, however, has been turned in for the last 14 years by Beryl Bainbridge, who – I’ve obviously not been keeping up here! – I’ve just discovered has been reviewing theatre for all that time for The Oldie magazine. I found this out thanks to a recent book review in the Sunday Times for a collection of her reviews that has just been published, entitled Front Row: My Life in the Theatre. Perhaps I’ve not noticed, however, because she’s not exactly on the first night list, it seems: according to this review of her reviews, “Bainbridge knows that there is nothing like a matinée for taking the true temperature of a production, and she must be the only critic to make a habit of attending these slightly despised afternoon performances”, to which she goes, “often disguised as an ordinary member of the audience”.

Bainbridge, contends her reviewer Kate Saunders, “can never be a great critic of the theatre because she loves it too deeply and still identifies with the people on the other side of the proscenium arch”. Though we’ll pass over the assumption that the rest of us professional critics, by inference, don’t love the theatre deeply enough, Saunders quotes Bainbridge as saying regarding the fact that she identifies with the participants, “I’ve found it impossible to condemn out of hand anything I’ve seen in the past 11 years. Alas, I’m too conscious of the hopes, the money and the effort that goes into each production.”

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’s Child Catcher isn’t the only theatrical character who likes to prey on young kids; so, for the last 58 years, has the Unicorn Theatre, but with far less sinister motives.

Employing professional actors to perform to audiences of children, families and schools, the company was born not so much in a trunk but rather literally a truck, when founder Caryl Jenner started it in 1947 as a touring outfit travelling around the country in two ex-MOD trucks. It has been largely peripatetic ever since, though for 32 years from 1967 to 1999, it shared the Arts Theatre in Covent Garden with a raft of other companies (for many of those years, it as home to the long-running Dirty Linen).

But even as it continued its work by touring to such London venues as the Open Air Theatre, Regent’s Park, the Cochrane, Pleasance, Linbury Studio and The Place, as well as around the country, the last five years have seen it finding a place it can call home.

Yesterday they unveiled the result to the press – as well as giving a first performance to teaming parties of schoolkids – ahead of next Thursday’s official opening, of their new, purpose-built complex off Tooley Street, behind City Hall, on the South Bank. The walkway in front of the theatre that links Tooley Street to the river is called Unicorn Passage – but not, as you would expect, to honour the new building, but because it has been called this ever since 1746: one of those wonderful coincidences that no one could have planned.

Visiting it just two days after the building was officially handed over by the builders – though there’s still some finishing touches being applied – it was amazing to see it coming to life for what it was intended.

But as architect Keith Williams escorted us around the building, it was also wonderful to see the detail and thought that had gone into it: double sets of handrails, for instance, on the staircases, with one of them at kids’ level, and balconies with glass cut-outs so that children would be able to look down onto the foyers, too. In what Williams called “a grown up building for kids”, the keynote to this strikingly beautiful modern building is the simplicity and the cleanness of its architectural lines.

Completed at a cost of £13.7m (of which £9.4m was construction cost), it contains two theatres – the main house Weston (seating 340) and a 120-seater studio, plus rehearsal studio and a purpose-built education space. The Weston offers a flexible thrust-stage configuration with blue bench seating curving round in amphitheatre style, on two levels (with a second circle for technical use only); it reminded me of Hampstead’s new theatre. The studio is simply a versatile black box.

But though they now certainly have one of London’s most handsome new theatres – which is only the third completely new theatre build in the capital since the National opened in 1976, after Hampstead and Stratford Circus – it’s the work that ultimately matters. Though storytelling kids’ theatre that goes beyond the annual panto is in greater supply nowadays, there’s still a question of escalating ticket prices that often puts the theatre beyond the pockets of many families. (Take a family of four to see The Lion King, for instance, and by the time you’ve bought programmes and ice-creams, let alone the pervasive merchandise, there won’t be any change from £200).

By contrast, The Unicorn charges a top price of £12.50 for adults, with children at £8.50 and school prices at £6.50 (with one free teacher place per ten pupils). With a permanent home in the heart of a burgeoning theatrical district on the South Bank that it now completes between Westminster and Tower Bridges and embraces the National, Old Vic, Young Vic (currently also being entirely rebuilt), Shakespeare’s Globe and the fringe Union Theatre and Menier Chocolate Factory, the Unicorn is now finally on the map of major players.

Someone has belatedly noticed that the Bristol Old Vic production of Marlowe’s Tamburlaine – which transferred to the Barbican Theatre and played its final performance last Saturday – had some cuts imposed on it. According to a headline in The Times today, “Marlowe’s Koran-burning hero is censored to avoid Muslim anger.”

Of course, it will be remembered that Salman Rushdie’s books were publicly burnt when they provoked Muslim anger, but a stage direction that called for the same to happen to the Koran would, according to Simon Reade (the BoV’s artistic director) “have unnecessarily raised the hackles of a significant proportion of one of the world’s great religions” and therefore have been “unnecessarily inflammatory” (so to speak). Lines referring to Mohamet, too, were excised; and according to a story in the Daily Mail today, Reade commented, “We did want to get distracted with an issue that was totally not relevant. It’s not to do with contemporary religion or terrorism.”

But Terry Hands, who directed London’s last Tamburlaine for the RSC in 1992, has responded, “I don’t believe you should interfere with any classic for reasons of religious or political correctness.”

So Marlowe may have been censored; and in other news, so is Mary Poppins. After being asked to re-review the show and its new set of principal performers next Tuesday, critics have now had that invitation suddenly withdrawn. Given the onward rush of Christmas shows that will be opening in the coming weeks and thus entirely filling our diaries, I suspect it is unlikely that we’ll be asked back now till the New Year.

Richard Griffiths has been at it again! Last year he stopped a performance of The History Boys at the National to berate a member of the audience whose mobile phone kept going off: “I am asking you to stand up, leave this auditorium, and never, ever come back” he told the offender.

Now the actor, currently appearing in Heroes at Wyndham’s, stopped the show again last Saturday when a phone went off repeatedly in the penultimate scene: “Could the person whose mobile phone it is please leave?” And when she got up to do so, he stepped forward and asked her, “Is that it, or will it be ringing some more? The 750 people here would be fully justified in suing you for ruining their afternoon.”

Griffiths was pushed to breaking point, he said afterwards: “It was one of the last scenes of the play and I had already had to restart the speech twice because her phone had gone off. I didn’t say anything until the third time, when I just thought it was too much.”

Mobile phones going off certainly bring breach the fourth wall of the theatre; but Griffiths’ reaction, understandable as it is, no doubt breached it even further. At the RSC, I once saw John Wood stop mid-speech as King Lear, and admonish the audience: “Will you please stop coughing?” And then, after briefly apologizing, he continued.

In the tiny confines of the Donmar, however, I have seen professional audience members frequently falling foul of such strictures. At one recent press night, the offending mobile phone belonged to Evening Standard theatre critic Nicholas de Jongh; at another, Michael Colgan of Dublin’s Gate Theatre phone kept bleeping with the sound of arriving text messages – which he was then observed replying to – thus creating another bleep every time the reply arrived, too! Confronted afterwards by a disgruntled colleague of mine, he told him, “I’m sure Chekhov is robust enough to withstand the intrusion!”

But at least Griffiths will be legally protected when he takes The History Boys to New York next spring. There, it’s illegal to let a phone ring during a performance, and offenders can get fined. “Yes, absolutely fine them £50 and hit them in their pockets,” he says. “Failing that, we could issue people with machetes and tell them to hack other people’s mobile phones to bits when they go off — that should do it.”

It’s hard enough to keep up with the onstage parade of actors who pass through the West End’s long-runners; but there’s often an even more compelling drama being played out off-stage that most people aren’t aware of, but can have a potentially even bigger impact on what happens on the stage. That’s the sometimes-revolving door of who runs what amidst our leading production companies.

It was announced last week that Andre Ptaszynski, already Chief Exec of Really Useful Theatres, had now been appointed acting chief exec for the entire Really Useful Group of which RUT is a subsidiary. But with the consolidation of all of RUT’s theatres under Andrew Lloyd Webber’s sole ownership – having recently bought out the investment partners Bridgepoint that they were bought with – Really Useful is now putting all of its eggs in the one management basket so that Ptaszynski – a former president of SOLT and independent producer – will now oversee both the theatres and production arms, including overseeing next year’s revival of his paymaster’s Evita, while Lloyd Webber will himself concentrate on a pet project to bring The Sound of Music back to the London stage. Meanwhile, of course, the disposal of four of RUT’s theatres to the newly-formed Nimax Theatres saw RUT’s former production director Nica Burns (the Ni in Nimax) departing its fold, too.

Things are also in considerable flux at Clear Channel Entertainment, where global changes inevitably now impact on local matters, too. While CCE have, since acquiring Apollo Leisure, become a major local theatre owner and producing operator over here, the parent company Clear Channel Communications in the US is preparing to spin off the entertainment division into an independent, publicly traded company under president/CEO Michael Rapino. In the process, Chief Operating Officer of CCE Miles Wilkin was let go last month, with Britain’s David Ian – Managing Director for European theatre, sports and motorsports – assuming overall control of the theatrical division. But as the company seeks to reduce operating costs, staff overhead has had to be reduced, and further layoffs are expected here at CCE’s London HQ as well as at CCE venues around the country.

In a time of not just corporate financing but also corporate control of theatre producing companies, the days of the independent producer are clearly numbered. No wonder that the billing for the current Broadway musical Dirty Rotten Scoundrels quotes, above the title, not just the names of the legion of producing entities, but also wittily adds, “and the entire Prussian army”.

Most newspapers (The Stage included) do not have the space to cover everything in the kind of depth we would like to, though The Stage does in fact do better than most; but with roughly 105 theatres in London, it’s only the hardiest theatre critic who ever ventures too far afield. I am often out seven nights a week as it is — and sometimes twice on matinee days — and still I don’t see everything, not even all of the major stuff that’s going on, let alone tracking down what might be gems elsewhere. There isn’t, alas, an eighth (or ninth or tenth) night to the week….

So I rely on what I call my fringe ‘canaries’ — those that go down into the mines first to check that its safe to proceed! The pages of Time Out and What’s On in London have always been a good source for such tips; as are the ever-diligent efforts of Lyn Gardner in The Guardian, who not only covers much of the London fringe but is also the paper’s lead regional critic, too, and is constantly on the road to do so. (The Daily Telegraph’s second-string Dominic Cavendish also travels heavily, but more regionally than on the fringe).

But papers are still confined not just by the enthusiasms of their staff but by space, and that’s where the web usefully comes in: there are no limitations in cyberspace, and The Guardian website now affords a new voice space to breath there. Maxie Szalwinska already contributes to their Culture Vulture blog, but has now also introduced a new fortnightly column, called Fringe Benefits, in which she reviews three or four shows further afield.

As she comments in her introductory column, “Too often the arts pages of newspapers are stuck in the charabanc land of tired West End revivals when many of the most electrifying, clever and playful theatre takes place at off-West End and fringe spaces.”

Of course, the fringe has long been a feeding ground to the mainstream: “Old institutions with their ageing audiences have discovered that they must tap into fringe innovation to draw young crowds; it’s a matter of survival (the National Theatre hiring the Battersea Arts Centre’s impresario Tom Morris is just one example of this).”

For audiences, there’s often the pleasure of discovering talent early: “Playwrights, directors and actors don’t usually burst fully formed onto the mainstream theatre scene, and the fringe is where audiences can get their first sightings of theatre-makers who have something special about them.”

But it’s tough for fringe theatres to get noticed amidst the clamour of productions that are already demanding our critical attention. So Maxie’s new column is a welcome new ‘canary’!

I have previously blogged (on October 10) about the phenomenon of how critics sometimes openly contradict each other: one (wo)man’s one star review is quite literally another’s five star. But as a working critic, it does (at the very least) give me pause when I suddenly feel completely out of synch with the majority of my colleagues: how often have you heard it said by members of the public, “the critics must have been watching a different show to the one I saw”, and that’s precisely how I now feel about last Thursday’s opening of the Almeida’s new production of Moliere’s The Hypochondriac.

Perhaps, on this occasion, I’m being another of Moliere’s famous comic creations, a Misanthrope, but I found the production an almost entirely laughter-free zone. And said as much in the one-star review I filed the next morning to the Sunday Express (where it has been published today). But virtually all of the colleagues I have read – from The Guardian’s Michael Billington and Benedict Nightingale in The Tmes who both awarded it four stars, to raves by Paul Taylor in The Independent, Charlie Spencer in the Daily Telegraph and Susannah Clapp in today’s Observer – have loved it.

Perhaps, in fact, I’m in dire need of a critical enema of the sort so beloved by Henry Goodman’s title character in this play; but a text message received from a friend who saw it last night told me that he agreed with what I’d warned him to expect – and that “the last 20 minutes were nearly unendurable! How does it get those notices? Aggh!” And he added, “Were you at the deadly Royal Court Upstairs play this afternoon?”

Funny he should ask about that one, which another friend told me he abandoned half way through, even though there was no interval; but after reading last Sunday’s five star rave review by John Peter of Gregory Motton’s The World’s Biggest Diamond, I ignored my friend’s advice and did indeed see this “deadly” play yesterday afternoon. Sometimes friends are more reliable than critics, it seems — which makes me start to feel a bit redundant. But then I have to remind myself that critics are only human, and therefore fallible; and that ultimately it’s a question of taste, so neither party may be exactly ‘wrong’, just expressing a different opinion.

A sell-out, returns-only run for physical theatre/dance company DV8 that ends at the Lyttelton tonight sees the National acting as a receiving house rather than a producing one for a change, but producing something else radical instead: a stretching of the parameters of the kind of theatre that the building is there to embrace, and a corresponding stretching of the audience that comes to it (whether of DV8’s established fan base who may not usually venture to the National but might more typically be found at the Place or Queen Elizabeth Hall next door, or of the National’s more regular constituency whose own tastes might be tested and expanded in the process).

Seeing their exhilaratingly playful and at times achingly beautiful new piece Just for Show (and the astonishing technical proficiency of its melding of video and live action that literally become one at times), I found that it’s themes of theatrical illusion and life-sustaining self-delusions are perfectly mirrored, so to speak, just across the river at the Playhouse Theatre right now in Pirandello’s As You Desire Me.

It’s thrilling, too, that the National is becoming a receptive home to seriously different kinds of theatre making like this. As barriers are increasingly tumbling down, anyway, between different genres, the National can no longer simply be a place for the well-made play; it’s there for well-made theatre of any kind, and DV8’s show is exceedingly well-made.

Andrew Lloyd Webber should, by now, be accustomed to the hostile press he routinely receives in New York; but then with the two longest-running shows of all time there to his name, Cats and The Phantom of the Opera, he’s laughed all the way to the bank. But now with his first new show to open there in over a decade, maybe it was time to be taken seriously? Or maybe not.

“Bravely flouting centuries of accepted scientific theory, the creators of The Woman in White have set out to prove that the world is flat after all,” declares Ben Brantley in today’s The New York Times. Saying that the show “seems to exist willfully and unconditionally in two dimensions,” he goes on to cite not just the design (“computer-animated projections that make you feel as if you’re trapped inside a floating upscale travel magazine”) but everything else: “Plot, characters, words and most of the performances…emanate the aura of autumn leaves ironed into crisp immobility between sheets of waxed paper”.

And following hot on the heels of the Watermill, Newbury production of Sweeney Todd that has newly transferred to Broadway and Brantley recently raved about, he is drawn to make the comparison: “Sweeney Todd draws you straight into an anxious fever dream; the songs seem to come from within you. By contrast, The Woman in White feels as personally threatening as a historical diorama behind glass.” And he damns with very faint praise to then conclude, “It’s not a terrible show, but it’s an awfully pallid one. The difference between it and Sweeney Todd is the difference between water and blood.”

But at least Maria Friedman, whose return to the show just a week after went under the medical knife with treatment for breast cancer, ha been spared the critical one: “In the best tradition of backstage stories of determination and triumph, Ms. Friedman, a longtime favorite of London musical audiences, makes an impeccably professional Broadway debut”, Brantley writes. “When she sings of hope and heartbreak and honourable vengeance for dirty deeds, her deeply expressive voice has the sheen of emotional truth. Ms. Friedman’s Marian clearly believes every word she sings. Would that the audience could share her conviction.”

But two of Brantley’s tabloid colleagues don’t share his misery. In the New York Daily News, Howard Kissel calls it a “breathtaking piece of musical theatre”, and New York Post critic (and Stage contributor) Clive Barnes has named it a “must-see”, writing: “Make no mistake about it: This is a thrilling musical.”

Cameron Mackintosh may be about to rename the Strand and Albery Theatres in honour of Ivor Novello and Noel Coward respectively, but can the days be far off when we follow Broadway’s lead in actually honouring corporate sponsors and company chief executives instead? Already Broadway has the American Airlines Theatre, the Hilton Theatre (formerly the Ford, so swapping one sponsor for another), and the Cadillac Winter Garden; it also now has two theatres named for the Shubert Organisation’s long-presiding chief operating officers, the late Bernie Jacobs and the still current Gerald Schoenfeld.

In London, we have so far resisted putting such names above the title, though the Royal Court compromise that was struck was to re-name the theatres within it the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs and Jerwood Theatre Upstairs to recognise their involvement. At the Royal Opera House, the grand floral hall was renamed the Vilar Floral Hall when benefactor Alberto Vilar pledged £10 million towards the Development Appeal, and subsequently also pledged money for the Young Artists Programme, several opera sponsorships, and for the installation of seat back titles in auditorium seats. But when Vilar repeatedly failed to meet his payment obligations, the Royal Opera House announced in September that it was removing his name “from all printed material, and signage around the building will be altered over the forthcoming months.”

So that’s one blow for corporate naming; but meanwhile, another has discreetly arrived in the West End. When I re-visited the Piccadilly Theatre yesterday afternoon to see Guys and Dolls again, I noticed that the stalls bar on the house left of the auditorium had suddenly been renamed the American Airlines Bar, to reflect the show’s company sponsor. Will the name, however, continue beyond the run of the show — or simply be replaced by that of the next tenant’s sponsor?

And one more thing I also noticed there: a whopping new high price for souvenir brochures of £10 each! Now I know that these are an ‘added extra’ and there is no compulsion to purchase them on the part of audience members; but Ewan McGregor is the kind of star around who fans will collect anything, and it seems to me that price gouging like this is an attempt to cash in on that devotion. I only hope Mr McGregor is getting a cut, and not merely having his image used to generate income for others.

A worrying marginalisation of much of the Evening Standard’s cultural coverage has occurred, with all but the lead daily review (which sometimes warrants an upfront early page splash) relegated to a 150-word blurb. Apparently the official reason is to get more reviews in; but the theatre reviewing staff – once a team of three and long now just two – have to fight to squeeze into a tight corner now more than ever. That’s fewer words than even Metro or Time Out affords its reviewers.

And talking of Time Out, we have yet to see the six-star rating that the magazine curiously introduced a couple of months ago yet see any show earn its highest accolade. Star ratings – that all but The Times and Telegraph now seem to do – are a subject of constant debate amongst critics; do their presence detract from people actually reading our words, since our opinions can be gauged by how many stars we award something? (In fact, we even do it amongst ourselves. Instead of asking each other what we thought of a show, we simply ask a fellow critic, “How many stars did you give it?”) Expanding the number of stars available may allow a little bit more nuance; but a six-star rating doesn’t allow for a middle ground anymore. There’s no half way point; you’re either on the way to being brilliant (four stars) or below par (three).

One of the most ubiquitous – and distinctive – presences on the first night circuit, whether in the West End, on the fringe or at regional theatres up and down the country (and the week before last, in New York, too), is always Blanche Marvin, an 80-year-old American, a former actress and literary agent who has long been resident in the UK.

It has often been Americans who have appreciated our theatrical heritage even more than we have, particularly in its quirkier parts, and just as it took the late Dan Crawford to kick-start the fringe pub theatre network when he founded the King’s Head, so Blanche found a way, all of sixteen years ago now, to honour and reward the fringe toilers whose work isn’t typically recognized by the larger awards ceremonies, and beyond the award itself, to actually give them what many of them need most: a sum of money, from a fund that Blanche has endowed herself into perpetuity. The Awards, called The Empty Space/Peter Brook Awards, are the only awards originated to recognize the artistic standards in the body of work of studio venues, rather than specific single productions, across a particular year.

Today duly saw the latest set of awards presented at the Theatre Museum to an established studio theatre, to an up-and-coming venue (that may indeed be long established, like this year’s 40-year-old nominee the Little Angel Theatre, but has recently been grabbing attention), and for the newly created Dan Crawford Pub Theatre Award to recognize the pub theatre movement that he initiated some 35 years ago; the awards respectively went to Notting Hill’s Gate, Southwark’s Menier Chocolate Factory; and the Finborough Theatre in Earl’s Court.

I ought here to declare an interest: I am one of the judges for the award, along with the Guardian’s Lyn Gardner, the Daily Telegraph’s Dominic Cavendish and the Evening Standard’s Fiona Mountford. But even if this is an under-funded initiative in a chronically under-funded sector of the theatrical industry, it has great symbolic value, and Blanche is to be applauded, not just for her determination in keeping it going, but also in her unstinting professional support of theatre that she travels constantly to keep up with.

Undaunted, clearly, by the current failure of the West End to Broadway transfer of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (see blog entry for Friday November 4), another British-born stage adaptation of a popular family film, Mary Poppins, is chancing the transatlantic crossing, heading for a Broadway opening at the New Amsterdam next November 16 (following previews from October 14), displacing current tenant The Lion King that transfers to the Minskoff (just as Beauty and the Beast transferred from the Palace to the Lunt-Fontanne to make way for Aida in 2000).

But while co-producer Disney have yet to go belly-up on Broadway, the stakes this time are even higher for their British partner Cameron Mackintosh, who hasn’t had a fully-fledged Broadway hit since the opening of Miss Saigon in 1991 that then ran for a decade. In the years inbetween, he’s opened Five Guys Named Moe (for a run of just over a year from April 1992), seen the NT’s revivals of Carousel and Oklahoma! transfer to Broadway for runs of just 9 and 11 months respectively in 1994 and 2002, and the Sondheim revue Putting It Together run for just 3 months in 1999. He also produced the four month Broadway run of Adventures in Motion Pictures’ Swan Lake in 1998. But Mackintosh has also closed Cats (in 2000) and Les Mis (in 2003) since; and now only has The Phantom of the Opera on the Broadway boards.

So it’s not just a lot of money, but reputations, too, that will be riding on this one.

I reported here last week (on Wednesday November 2) that Maria Friedman, about to make her Broadway debut reprising her turn in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Woman in White, was diagnosed with breast cancer and was about to undergo surgery. On Thursday — just a week after her surgery — she had already returned to the show, and with a doctor waiting in the wings (and reapplying a bandage in the interval that was wrapped around her upper torso and made it difficult, she reported, to breath in the first act), she got through it.

That’s despite surgery that, according to a New York Times report yesterday, left her dark, painful bruises on her chest, a still raw incision and extremely tender ribs; Friedman was quoted as saying, “It’s like a large elephant sat on me”.

Meanwhile, the doctor who was on hand — Abraham Pollack, the radiologist who also first detected the tumour – was also quoted, saying, “I’m not an avid attendee of the theatre; I usually fall asleep. But I didn’t fall asleep in this one.”

So the old adage about the show must go on has certainly applied here; but having faced this stern personal test, facing the critics this week must be small potatoes by comparison. The musical, which revolves around two sisters supporting each other, has ironically turned into an offstage story of two sisters supporting each other, too: Maria’s sister Sonia, of course, is the show’s producer. As Sonia commented to the New York Times, “To open a show on Broadway is bad enough,” she said. “But then to have this?” But she added, “What kept me going is that Maria is not going to let this thing get in the way of her Broadway debut. She’d be damned before she’d let that happen.”

And Maria, in turn, says, “We have a deadline, a committed company, a lot of people’s livelihoods riding on this show. And I felt I dropped the baton at the last hurdle”. But she’s picked it up again, and adds, “I wouldn’t do it, except for I’ve watched Sonia work round the clock for a year to get this show here. I’m not going for hero status. I’m doing what I can do, with enormous support.”

The show will duly open, on schedule, this coming Thursday.

In 2002, the Shunt Collective created a sensation with their work, Dance Bear Dance that took place in a Bethnal Green railway arch, and saw them propelled to national attention – and the attention of the National’s Nicholas Hytner who, on taking charge of the National the next year, immediately wanted to bring that kind of new and innovative work into the embrace of what a National Theatre should be about. Helping to facilitate the company’s move to a new, semi-permanent base in arches beneath London Bridge station, the National would also provide box office and marketing support for their first show there, Tropicana – but Shunt, who make a virtue of developing their work in what they call “a very organic and unrushed fashion”, found themselves unable to adhere to their original press night schedule on that occasion and postponed it accordingly. When it finally opened last October, it received a batch of mostly negative notices.

But the National have not lost faith in their arms-length prodigy, and continue to both publicise (via their repertory leaflet and website) Shunt’s latest show, Amato Saltone, that began performances from October 18; news now comes that once again the press night is to be moved, “because the development of the show has taken longer than originally planned”; but given their desire to play ‘outside the system’ (my italics), it seems strange that they’re bothering with anything so old hat as a conventional press night at all. If the work is as organic as they claim, surely a press night is virtually redundant, since it’s always going to be something of a work-in-progress.

But just to be sure, they’re giving themselves plenty of time to breath: “When the decision was taken to move the press night, it was clear immediately that there was no point moving it to a date in December as the press night diary was already very overcrowded. So a decision was taken to move the press nights to January which at least for the time being is less busy,” says the press release, without committing to a specific new date. Yet the same press release also states, in the small print of the listings data, that previews (at reduced prices) run to November 23, and thereafter the full price kicks in; also, the show is currently booking to December 23 only. Could they be trying to avoid reviews altogether and never officially opening? A two-month performance period (whatever you call it) is surely unprecedented without press scrutiny. And once full prices start being charged, they are surely, too, officially open for business – and therefore, ready for criticism.

Performers are no doubt well accustomed to the slings and arrows of outrageous bad reviews, but seldom can one have received such a sustained personal attack as Tommy Steele has just had from the my esteemed colleague Charles Spencer of the Daily Telegraph for his performance in Scrooge. Or rather, for simply being alive, it seems.

Below a headline “The most terrifying grin in showbusiness” (which in the online version of the review stands right beside a terrifying mugging picture of Charlie himself!), he writes:

“Though Steele is almost invariably described as a “much-loved entertainer”, I have never met anyone (with the exception of this show’s producer, Bill Kenwright) who admits to liking him, let alone loving him.”

He repeats an idle bit of showbiz legend – that when Steele appeared in Singin’ in the Rain at the Palladium (in a long run that helped him set the house record for appearances by one actor at that theatre), he was so disliked by the backstage crew “that they would regularly urinate into the water tanks that were to rain down on to Steele’s head during his performance of the show’s title number.”

Whether that’s substantiated or not or just an apocryphal theatrical anecdote, he then takes great glee in declaring, “I fear this review is about to perform the verbal equivalent.”

Proceeding to rain vitriol on Steele’s head, he says, “Doubtless blameless in his private life, he comes over on the stage as the most obnoxious ego-tripper, basking luxuriantly in the glory of an extremely modest talent which doesn’t extend much beyond an OK singing voice and an irritatingly chirpy charm.”

But it’s only setting Steele up only for a double fall: “Actually, chirpy charm isn’t the first quality one associates with Scrooge and it initially looks as though Steele is going to break the habit of a lifetime and try to do some acting for once.”

He damns him with (very) faint praise: “At 68, he is certainly beginning to look the part of the old miser, with his leathery tortoise face, dismayingly lank mullet haircut and arthritic walk, and in the first scene he scowls and growls and snorts “Bah Humbug!” with something approaching conviction.”

And then really puts the knife in. “But you know it can’t last, and it doesn’t…. Before long the people’s star is treating us to comic capers and his Bermondsey lad’s version of an allegedly posh voice, which Steele clearly finds a hoot even if no one else does. This Scrooge proves quite nauseatingly sentimental, and when he finally discovers the milk of human kindness - just as my own was curdling - Steele starts flashing that dazzlingly insincere smile at us, the one thing about Bob Tomson’s anodyne production that is certain to give the children in the audience nightmares.”

Just in case we’re not entirely clear about how frightening he finds it, he then says of Steele’s grin, “There is no more terrifying sight in showbiz. “Love me! Love me! Love me!”, it silently screams. “Tell me I’m a star.” And sure enough the audience rewards him, as Tommy Steele’s audiences always do, with a standing ovation. There is nothing the British love more than the second-rate.”

So now the audience itself gets it in the neck, too, for admiring their star. And, he concludes, “anyone who cherishes style, talent and taste should give it a very wide berth indeed”.

Undoubtedly amusing though Charlie’s review (and/or rant) is, critics have a privileged position of power, and we must be vigilant against allowing our personal opinions to not merely cloud our critical judgement but entirely overwhelm them. As chairman of the drama division of the Critics’ Circle, Charlie might be our spokesperson; but a review like this doesn’t speak for us all.

When I reported on the reception of the transfer of the Watermill Theatre (216 seats) production of Sweeney Todd to Broadway’s Eugene O’Neill Theatre (1,200 seats) last Friday, I commented that although I had not been a fan of this production when I saw it at home, I would give it a second chance here. I have now just done so, at today’s (Wednesday) matinee performance, and two facts are immediately apparent: first of all, having been anointed a hit, the audience now duly respond as if they’re particularly privileged and honoured to be there, so objectivity for them has gone out of the window. But secondly, it hasn’t for me, and although there are still some distinct problems with John Doyle’s concept (which, by reducing the size of the company and making those remaining work extra hard by being engaged as musicians when they’re not acting, and often being engaged as both simultaneously) which places the idea above the plotting, at least the execution of it here is a whole lot more accomplished than it was in the UK.

It helps, of course, to have a much wider talent pool to draw on over here, to find actors willing and able to accomplish the demands of this way of working; but also distance has lent enhancement, not just in terms of the time I’ve had to grow used to this concept since I first saw it, but also in terms of my distance from the stage. This is a chamber staging that paradoxically looks better from further away.

I have also now seen Sweeney in so many different incarnations — from the Hal Prince original staging that came to Drury Lane (and was a famous flop) in 1980, to subsequent stagings on both sides of the Atlantic, from the Half Moon (now no more, on the Mile End Road) and National Theatre to a promenade staging at the Bridewell; and from Broadway’s Circle in the Square to Washington DC’s Kennedy Center (as part of the Sondheim Festival three years ago); and from New York City Opera to the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. It is true that this version is a Sweeney like no other; but although the show is strong enough to withstand any number of different interpretations, it also remains my own opinion that this approach takes away more than it adds.

A blog reader, noticing that I’m currently in New York, has written to me wondering if I could answer why it is that the League of American Theatres and Producers releases weekly box office figures to the trade press here, while SOLT publishes only annual cumulative numbers, never by show? “Is there any way (besides calling each producer) to find out which shows are bestselling, or sold out?”, she asks.

It’s a good question, but there’s no ready answer. It seems less strange that the West End doesn’t share this commercially sensitive, private business information than that Broadway does! Why on earth would you want your competitors to know exactly what sort of business you’re doing? I have no idea why it has become standard practice for this information to be traded so freely over on Broadway, but I know that West End producers would never wish to do the same the UK. The only way you can find out how something is doing in London is to actually do the sight test — going to the theatre in person and buying a ticket and looking around the auditorium yourself! There is no other way! But that doesn’t anwer the question, either: it may tell you how a show is doing at that performance, but you cannot extrapolate from that to look at the monthly or even weekly turnover.

The prompt failures of Good Vibrations (The Beach Boys), All Shook Up (Elvis) and Lennon (you guessed it) on Broadway have led to the death knell being sounded for the jukebox musical, constructed — whether as new book musical, biographical revue or simply songbook showcase — out of the back catalogues of past (or sometimes just passed-it) musical greats. But last night’s Broadway opening of Jersey Boys — built out of the lives and pop careers of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons - may just have single-handedly revived the form, since this morning’s reviews have been almost uniformly favourable, and more importantly prove that if the songs are good enough, there’s always an audience for well-packaged nostalgia. Even if the group itself has largely faded from popular memory, the songs most certainly haven’t, and the back-story to how the group came into existence proves to be surprisingly compelling, too….

The season is duly simultaneously seeing jukebox shows built out of John Denver’s catalogue — Almost Heaven, opening this Wednesday’s at off-Broadway’s Promenade Theatre — and Ring of Fire, a new revue based around the songs made famous by Johnny Cash, heading to Broadway’s Barrymore Theatre next February.

The musical chairs of West End theatre ownership that has this year alone seen the Really Useful group dispose of four of their smaller houses to Nica Burns and Max Weitzenhoffer’s newly-constituted Nimax, the Albery and Wyndham’s move to the control of Delfont Mackintosh, and the Savoy newly under ATG management, has now taken another startling turn. Andrew Lloyd Webber, who has long been rumoured to be looking at disposing of his remaining theatre interests, has in fact just consolidated them instead, by buying out the investment partner, Bridgepoint, with whom he bought what used to be Stoll Moss for £87.5m five years ago.

While it was widely thought that they paid too much — and in fact have spent most of their profits made since simply servicing the interest on the debt on which it was bought — it has prevented them from investing in the actual fabric of the buildings in their care. But when the four theatres were disposed to Nimax for £10m, Lloyd Webber pledged to re-invest the sum in their remaining theatres; it’s a good start, but won’t go very far towards improving a portfolio of theatres that are in dire need of reinvestment. Perhaps now that Lloyd Webber is in overall control of all the houses, he can now take a leaf out of Cameron Mackintosh’s (pocket) book and actually spend the money required towards securing his own legacy as a theatrical philanthropist.

Alternatively, it could be a smart way towards removing the obstacles that joint ownership presents towards the disposal of Lloyd Webber’s entire theatrical empire as has also long been rumoured, and by owning it all outright, it would be easier (and more profitable) to do so. This one, like Cats, is clearly set to run and run….

You win some, you lose some. After the long-running success of The Play What I Wrote, the Right Size’s follow-up Ducktastic! has failed to take the town in London, and has announced an early closing of November 19 after a run of just a month from the opening; although some of the critics, myself included, were ‘softened’ up by a pre-matinee lunch, it didn’t stop me declaring that after being fed duck for lunch, I as served a turkey thereafter. How right it turns out I was; but most of my colleagues were considerably kinder, even favourable.

But one I may have been wrong about is the reduced (and I thought, traduced) version of Sweeney Todd that has gone from the tiny Watermill Theatre (where its doubling of cast and musicians was partly a decision born of economic necessity) all the way to Broadway, where it opened last night and early reviews — incuding the all-important New York Times — seem to signal a major reclamation of this enduring masterpiece. Calling it “a thrilling new revival”, Brantley declares that it “burrows into your thoughts with the poisoned seductiveness of a campfire storyteller who knows what really scares you”. Reviewing it in London, though (when it transferred from Newbury to the Trafalgar Studios), I declared that a great show had been comprehensively diminished, and that you see and (more importantly, hear) less of it than you’ve ever done before; but according to the New York critics, it opens up a new way of looking and hearing the show. Since I arrived in New York myself last night, I shall take another look at it myself in the next few days, and will report back….

Other news from Broadway is less good for another West End to Broadway transfer: Adrian Noble’s stage version of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang only opened here in April, but it has just been announced that it will close on New Year’s Eve, after a run of just 285 performances and a massive financial loss. According to a story reported in the New York Post today, producer Frank Gero has sent an e-mail to his investors saying that the $15 million show “will close at a complete loss”.

No, I’m not referring to Elaine Paige or Ruthie Henshall – though both could blast your socks off at 100ft if they chose to – but to Florence Foster Jenkins, an American socialite who vanity-produced her own recordings of her soprano atrocities and even funded her own solo appearance at Carnegie Hall in 1944 and was variously dubbed “the dire diva of din” and “first lady of the sliding scale”.

By a bizarre coinci