A few years ago the RSC was the favourite whipping post of the press following a series of decisions by then-artistic director Adrian Noble, who might have been adapting the company’s model to survive into the new century but almost saw it self-destructing before it got there. Perhaps elements of it were misrepresented by the press, or at least not well presented by the RSC, such as the idea that Stratford-upon-Avon would be converted into a Shakespearean village, a kind of theme park for the Bard. The Royal Shakespeare Theatre there was to be demolished; so was their London relationship with the Barbican, which was curtailed first to six months then to none at all, even though nothing was secured to give the company an alternative London residency.
But then Noble lost his nerve, and undermined it all by getting out of the kitchen when the heat became too hot when he announced his resignation, as soon as the reviews were in for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang that he had directed in the West End. Michael Boyd’s new regime has swept a new broom through the RSC, and not only stabilised the company but also brought it into the black for the first time in years.
But the arts always needs a whipping post, and this year’s one has unquestionably been English National Opera. It has seen the year lurching from crisis to crisis – the noisy departure of respected music director Paul Daniel (made noisier by the public boos from a Coliseum executive on his last night), the subsequent departure of artistic director Sean Doran, his replacement (without proper process being followed) by John Berry as artistic director and Loretta Tomasi as chief executive, the (some might say overdue) departure of board chairman Martin Smith, and yesterday the news of the departure of incoming music director Oleg Caetani before he’d even picked up his baton. All that and a strike vote, too, yesterday from the the Coli’s Bectu members.
ENO may be in the wars at the moment, but if the lesson of the RSC is anything to go by, if it can survive the current crises it will emerge a stronger and more robust arts organisation. But it needs the opera equivalent of Boyd to take on its poisoned chalice and reinvent it in his (or her) own image. Exciting work is still being done there — new productions of Madame Butterfly and Billy Budd were big commercial hits this year, and The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant may not have scored big at the box office, but was one of the best events of my theatrical year.
The ENO receives far too much flak these days. Just like the Millenium Dome was an easy target so too has the ENO become the latest predictable casualty and target of the publics self righteous sniping. If anyone has complaints about how the glut of tax payers, lottery and now european subisidy is spent I think that they should take a much closer look at institutions such as the Birmingham Rep and the West Yorkshire Playhouse. Despite the fact that these two theatres consume more than their fair share of public subsidy they continually fail to mount any new productions or plays that dare to say anything. Should a playwrite want to develop and then stage a production about the integration, assimilation and conflict of cultures, values and religions in Britain today they would very quickly come up against a brick wall. New playwrites today often find that their work is passed over for much safer and financially successful work from either our now aging and senior citizen 1950/60's writers or from the even safer and much younger 18 to 23 gene pool.
It is the institutionalised ignorance of our major repertory theatres that should be addressed and not the reputation of the English National Opera.