January 2006 Archives

Arts journalists won’t know our arts from our elbows today, as we are sent hither and thither by a revolving door of public (and online) engagements. First up, at 10am, there’s a press launch for the latest incarnation of the Roundhouse, that magnificent brick former railway shed at Chalk Farm. An hour later, the new Eva Peron for this summer’s Evita will be announced (to those who haven’t read the Sunday Times, that is, or this blog). And an hour later again, this year’s Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards take place at the Prince of Wales Theatre. I’m not sure I can get to all three, but I will certainly be at the last, as I’m presenting an award (to the winner of this year’s Best Designer category). And you can all be there for the announcement of the Whatsonstage.com Theatregoers’ Choice Awards, which will happen online simultaneously with the Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards. And then of course tonight there’s the opening of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at the Apollo. I’ll update this blog as events unfold….

Roundhouse re-opening
The Roundhouse, built in 1846 and capable of housing 23 steam engines for repair, was redundant within 8 years of its construction, and subsequently became an alcohol storage depot. In the 1960s it became known for the rock gigs it housed, including a now legendary appearance by The Doors in their only-ever UK gig. Subsequently it became well known for presenting cutting-edge theatre, from Peter Brook and the Living Theatre (that saw a naked conga proceeding from here to Camden Town), and even the original home of Kenneth Tynan’s Oh! Calcutta!, not to mention a transfer house for Michael Elliot’s Royal Exchange, Manchester, for a time. But various efforts to put it on a permanent theatrical standing have floundered, including a season when it became the RSC’s temporary London home after it had abandoned the Barbican; but a 1998 run of Argentinian theatre troupe De La Guarda gave the Roundhouse its biggest theatrical hit of all, when it ran here for 11 months.

Then there were plans for it to become a black arts centre; but finally the Roundhouse is being put back on the map and as a multi-purpose contemporary arts (and part-time conference) space – the largest, non-arena performing space in North London, capable of housing up to 3,300 standing or 1,800 seated spectators. At this morning’s press conference to launch the venue, it was announced that it will re-open in June with Fuerzabruta, a new show from the creators of De La Guarda, that promises to be another interactive event, by the look of the video they screened of it (but looked like a bad evening at a nightclub to me). Still, the venue looks fantastic, and it will be great to have this endlessly versatile, ultimate “found” space back in action.

Eva Peron lives again
I wasn’t sure when I wrote my introduction this morning whether I would actually get to the Langham Hilton near Oxford Circus for the launch of the new production of Evita, but thanks to the enterprising persuasion of The Independent’s arts correspondent Louise Jury we managed to hear the end of the Roundhouse speeches before hastening on the tube to the Hilton, where we arrived in time for the 11.15am kick-off for the Evita launch, introduced by producer Andre Ptsaszynski for the Really Useful Theatre Company, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber (and, by pre-recorded video, lyricist Tim Rice, who happened to be in Argentina right now on a cricketing tour) and man-of-the-moment, director Michael Grandage. Lloyd Webber spoke of his enthusiasm for re-visiting the show (and updating the orchestrations), and Grandage called it “one of the great musicals of the last century” that he saw as a student.

When I asked Grandage from the floor how he would deal with the “iconic moments” of the show, such as the famous balcony scene, he responded, “We have to remember that some of those were invented by Peron herself,” and Lloyd Webber pointed out that staging moments like that were actually specified in the stage directions that they wrote before it came to production, so would be retained.

Elena Roger, the diminutive Argentine star who will be playing the title role, was introduced and sang ‘Don’t Cry For Me Argentina’, proving that when the show opens in June at the Adelphi there won’t be a dry eye in the house.

Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards
…And then it was on to the next event of the day: the Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards, held this year for the first time in the downstairs bar of the Prince of Wales Theatre. This is always one of the most ‘clubbable’ events of the theatre calendar – partly because invites are necessarily restricted, mainly to the nominees and those connected to them, and partly because it’s the one occasion where the two parties from either side of the footlights – the judges and the judged – come together on common ground to celebrate rather than criticise what each does.

It’s a slightly weird occasion as a result – there’s some barely contained hostility in some of the acceptance speeches, most notably this year from Richard Bean, who, as he took the prize for Best New Play for Harvest, jibed that his speech would be three hours long and we wouldn’t like the ending – something several critics complained about of his play! And his speech ended with him telling us, “When a group of writers get together in a pub, they slag off critics”. And as we waited for a punch line, he said that was it!

And it’s also an occasion for critics to get things off their chest, too. Nicholas de Jongh – whom Critics’ Circle chairman Charlie Spencer introduced as “rather acerbic but strangely lovable” – launched into a diatribe about the disappearance of the central aisle at Cameron Mackintosh’s refurbished theatres; and then proceeded to strangely compare his honoree, Michael Grandage as best director for The Wild Duck, with “a superior form of lavatory cleaner: he reaches and illuminates the parts of plays that no other director usually reaches”.

Quite what the theatre folk make of all of this is anyone’s guess; I suspect that are confirmed in their belief that the critics are a slightly cranky bunch. And maybe we are. Arthur Smith, deliciously introducing the event, wittily spoke of how the event is free of the usual PR machinations – and then pointed out how it had clearly been eschewed today by coinciding with the announcement of the Oscar nominations, so it’s unlikely that anyone would cover them at all tomorrow!

But Whatsonstage.com, who announced the winners of its own Theatregoers’ Choice Awards simultaneously online, gave both sets of awards full play (and, except for Billy Elliot as Best Musical and Kevin Spacey – overlooked entirely in the Olivier nominations – for Best Shakespearean performance for Richard II in both, increased the news value by producing strikingly different in their results that uniquely pits the critics vote against the public one). Disappointingly, though, the attempts of Whatsonstage.com Radio (of which I am a part) to speak to the Critics’ Circle winners afterwards was entirely thwarted by the over-zealous press officer, who told me that it hadn’t been cleared in advance; but since when did publicity clearance have to be given for a bit of PR that was only promoting them?

“Why can’t you throw ‘em a crumb?
What’s wrong with letting ‘em tap their toes a bit?
I’ll let you know when Stravinsky has a hit —
Give me some melody!”

Thus sings a producer to an aspiring composer and lyricist team when they audition for him in Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along – with the composer acidly attacking his own reputation for lack of hummability with a song that, as it happens, is very hummable.

But I’ve just returned from attending the first night of a new version of Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale that doesn’t throw us any crumbs of comfort. Not only is the music as jarring as ever, but so is the concept that it surrounds – director Andrew Steggall has, by using a company that combines three European actors with three from Iraq, propelled it forward as a haunting parable of the current conflict there.

And Stravinsky may, at last, have a hit.

A sympathy vote for all of you – and people in this business are more likely to be self-employed than most others – who have to file your tax returns by tomorrow. I have been up since 5am today sorting mine out so I can make a last-minute dash to my accountant this morning… but it’s finally done! Prevaricating is my natural default position: I only ever work to deadlines! And I’ve allowed this one very close to the wire. But just how much the tax office spends of our hard-earned tax pounds to remind us to pay them beggars belief: there have been full page ads in all of the national papers, billboard signs all over London (and I assume, the rest of the country) as well as radio ads throughout the day on Classic FM (my default radio station, since it can accompany me as I work without distracting me from it!) for the last few weeks, pricking my guilty conscience that I’d not done it yet every time I saw or heard them.

A fascinating feature in The New York Times today looks at various attempts that have been made in the US to assert a director’s copyright over their staging of a new play and whether their contributions can be legally protected – and in other words, rewarded – if it becomes part of the “text” of the play itself on subsequent productions.

On the one hand, there’s the naked plagiarism of the sort that director Joe Mantello found when he visited a regional production of Love! Valour! Compassion! that he originally staged the New York premiere of: “Scene after scene, moment after moment, the staging was identical,” comments Mantello. “If you ran a video of the two productions side by side, no rational person would say it was ‘inspired by,’ or an homage: 95 percent of the show was an exact replica. I’m not talking about attitude and interpretation. I’m talking about visual images, blocking, choice of music” — none of this was in playwright Terrence McNally’s original script. When Mantello’s lawyers asked for acknowledgement of his work and a nominal fee, they refused, claiming that nothing had been copied, and that in any case, the staging was part of what they had licensed when they had licensed the play. Mantello duly prepared a copy of the script, detailing his directorial contributions in diagrams, descriptions and blocking notations, and applied for a copyright of his annotated script which was accepted. (The regional theatre in turn settled out of court in the director’s favour).

But there are two sides to every story, and as the director’s art is interpretative rather than a primary creative one, playwrights are anxious not to have a director assert too much control over their contribution: as playwright John Weidman, president of the Dramatists Guild of America, commented, “if a directors’ copyright is ever established, it will drastically limit a playwright’s ability to control the work which he creates.”

It would, he says, “clearly operate as liens on a playwright’s play”: as the New York Times puts it, “If each director’s staging of a relatively new play had copyright protection, very soon there would be no staging options left. The play would become so encumbered with licenses, or the risk of lawsuits, that it would be impossible to produce — a net loss to the culture. Even classic works like Romeo and Juliet might gradually be removed from the public domain, thus perverting the aim of copyright law, which is to increase the flow of ideas and artwork by providing an incentive to their creators.”

As Weidman argues, “If Leonard Bernstein had been in a position to copyright his interpretation of Mahler, would another conductor who thought that interpretation was right, and then conducted Mahler in the same way, be stealing from Bernstein?”

But the director is keen to protect himself, too. Mantello says, “The acknowledgement of what the director creates is very important to me. But with that comes a certain amount of responsibility. Not everything I do is a unique contribution…. But to protect myself if I’m working on a new piece, I now make a side agreement with the authors for a small participation in the subsidiary rights.”

Playwright Paul Rudnick wittily retorts, “From now on, I’m only going to have my plays directed by lawyers.”

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In other news today, the Sunday Times today has broken the name of the actress who will be playing the title role of the forthcoming production of Evita, heading to the Adelphi Theatre in June. According to Richard Brooks, arts editor, the role has gone to an Argentine singer, dancer and actress called Elena Roger, reputedly one of that country’s biggest stars. According to Brooks’ report, “Roger’s voice is more rock star than musical diva, although she is a great admirer of the musical Chicago and recently appeared in Les Miserables in Argentina.”

The show and further casting is to be announced at a press conference on Tuesday; intriguingly, I also spent yesterday afternoon in the company of Michael Grandage, who is directing the new production. We were both at the Arcola in Dalston to see the matinee of Frank McGuinness’s play The Factory Girls there (virtually a site-specific piece of theatre, since the play is set in a shirt factory and the Arcola was, until it was discovered five years ago, a garment factory itself). Since we were both alone there, we spent the time before the show and during the interval talking. Evita did come up; but he was the soul of discretion when it came to the casting. “They’re terrified of it getting out,” he said – so he wouldn’t tell me! But it clearly has….

Yesterday I was welcoming price reductions for previews on Broadway, but today I have to bemoan the arrival of a new top price in the West End for a play: when Hay Fever arrives at the Haymarket in April, not only will there be no preview prices, but also it has bounded up from the previous £47.50 top that Death of a Salesman set to a staggering £60 – higher than most musicals, which currently typically top out at £50 or £55 (though not as high as the weekend rate set by Acorn Antiques at the same theatre a year ago of £65).

The producers of Acorn Antiques insisted at the time that the pricing was necessary because the theatre capacity was comparatively low, and the run necessarily short, since the stars couldn’t commit to longer; of course, the simple answer would have been to have had a bigger house, but none were apparently available for the window of opportunity that they had to do the show in around everyone’s availability. No doubt the same thing applies here, and since the play features the West End’s single most bankable and beloved star Judi Dench, people will probably pay anything to see her.

But the manipulation of ticket prices upwards in this way, even for a special occasion, is a deeply troubling trend, because it moves the benchmark upwards for everyone, and soon becomes the ‘norm’. The gap between the commercial theatre and the subsidised becomes ever more yawning – you can get the best seats to the Donmar for £29, the Almeida for £29.50, and the National for £25 during the Travelex season (or £36 outside it), where the ticket prices are less than half, the quality of the product is also more assured than in the West End, the comforts are typically better and (except for the Donmar) you can park more easily, too.

Sure, you might still be drawn to the West End for a “special occasion” like seeing Dench in Coward; but otherwise, audiences might balk at such pricing and go elsewhere. It’s true that commercial producers need to make their money somehow – subsidised theatre is exactly that, and can afford to charge less; that’s what the subsidy is for – and market forces prevail: you get what you the market will stand. But I worry that the market won’t stand it much longer.

The idea of “previews” – performances where critics agree to stay away until they are invited to attend the “first night”, allowing the creative teams to iron out the kinks of their shows and see them on their feet in front of a live audience – has long been an accepted theatrical convention. For an early glimpse of the work-in-progress – and being an instrumental part of the developmental process, since its audience reaction that dictates whether something is actually working or not – tickets used to be heavily reduced in price, acknowledging the fact that audiences were not being given a product whose quality was assured, or at least definitive of what it was intended to be.

But over the last few years this principle has been eroded in both the West End and on Broadway, where shows often preview to no official, or only negligible, discounts (though of course there are lots of hidden ones, in as much as early performances, particularly on Broadway, are discounted instead via advance mail-outs that give booking codes that can be used to secure them). This week, however, I was pleased to notice that Disney are re-introducing the principle of reduced price previews, with a stated 25% off the top price for all previews (ie $76.25 instead of $101.25) of their forthcoming musical version of Tarzan when it comes to Broadway’s Richard Rodgers Theatre. Given that the show is going to preview for over 6 weeks (from March 24, prior to opening on May 10), that’s both artistically sensible – clearly, the previews are being used as the out-of-town tryout for the show, since it isn’t having one – but also could mean that it is sacrificing several million dollars worth of revenue by reducing its potential income by such a large sum.

But then Disney – who have also struck their own deals with the unions on Broadway, and eschewed membership of the League of American Theatres and Producers who negotiate on behalf of the whole membership – are adept at not playing by the usual rules. And not even the usual schedules: I notice that, beyond the summer, they will introduce a Wednesday to Sunday performance schedule for Tarzan, cramming five performances into Friday to Sunday – the time when a family-friendly show is likely to score best.

Two British actors who once played Hamlet – for the Royal Court and National Theatre respectively – are currently starring in two Broadway musicals: Jonathan Pryce has recently taken over from John Lithgow in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and Simon Russell Beale is now King Arthur (originally taken by Tim Curry) in Spamalot. Pryce is well known for musicals already, having starred in the original production of Miss Saigon (in a performance he later reprised on Broadway) and in revivals of Oliver! and My Fair Lady; but Simon Russell Beale’s musical talents are less celebrated. But he actually made his West End debut in 1985 in a long-forgotten short-lived musical revue Look to the Rainbow that celebrated the songs of Yip Harburg and played for a month at the Apollo, after transferring from the King’s Head.

I didn’t have a chance to go back to Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, but I wrapped up my quick trip to New York that I’ve been chronicling here by returning to Spamalot yesterday afternoon, before flying home overnight. It has, of course, just been announced to open here in October, when it will go into the Palace Theatre. The multiple layers of goofy humour that was Python’s trademark gets an extra spin with this show as it gently satirises the form of the musical itself. Of course, The Producers has already got there first, and to be honest, has a far superior musical score; but this sustained two hours of silliness (that makes sure it doesn’t outstay its welcome by coming in so short) is propelled by nearly constant laughter. And Simon Russell Beale seizes the reigns of the lead role with a fantastic sense of fun.

The experience was only marred a little by losing a bottle of diet coke on the way into the Shubert Theatre: in the now-routine, but usually cursory, bag examinations that Broadway security guards run, a particularly belligerent member of the species insisted that no outside beverages were permitted. Presumably diet coke is a massive security risk – to the profits of the scamming theatre management, the Shubert Organisation. It’s this kind of contempt for your patrons – that has already seen them fleeced for $1.25 to contribute to the theatre’s refurbishment, and booking fees that add up to $15 per ticket on an already hefty $111.25 – that leaves a nasty taste in the mouth.

The winter frost has really bitten last week on Broadway – at the box office, that is, not the weather (where things have been unseasonably warm for the time of year; having been here since last Thursday, I am yet to wear a jumper below my leather jacket). I’ve been intermittently commenting on the Broadway grosses published every week here, unlike in the West End where such data is literally a trade secret, and it’s intriguing to see that every single show playing on Broadway, with the sole exception of The Phantom of the Opera that registered a modest 1.5% gain over the previous week, has taken a fall this week, some of them precipitously so. At the top end, even Wicked has dipped below its typical 100% (or over) mark to 99.4%, and Spamalot from 101.4% to 98.7%, but I’m sure they can both live with that. Of more concern is the drop for the Broadway transfer of The Woman in White, which has fallen 12.9% in the last week to register just 60.3% attendance: the lowest attendance figure for any musical now playing with the exception of the autobiographical revue Chita Rivera: The Dancer’s Life (53.9%) that is surely not long for this world now (the show, that is, not Chita; the musical vultures currently circling Broadway for a home to land in that include a spoof musical called The Drowsy Chaperone that played to great acclaim in LA last year are getting hungry).

Meanwhile, talking of The Woman in White, I returned to see it at the Marquis last night, to find out how this most ambitious of Lloyd Webber’s recent shows plays over here, and also to applaud Maria Friedman’s Broadway debut – the sweet victory of which has been tarnished by her ongoing health problems that will see her leave the show for a few weeks while she undergoes further treatment. But to see her here again – the fourth time I have done so – is to find an extra layer of resilience and poignancy; she is fighting for her life both onstage and off. And the spirited resistance she is putting up on both scores means that she brings a new emotional vulnerability to the tough and soaring practicality that she also exhibits.

Around Friedman are gathered the strongest support cast yet: while American performers Angela Christian and Jill Paice reprise their excellent London turns as Anne Catherick and Laura Fairlie respectively, Ron Bohmer’s dastardly Sir Percival Glyde and Adam Brazier’s earnest Walter Hartright bring more shadow and shade to those characters than was seen in London. Ditto, in the role of Count Fosco, Daniel Marcus (standing in for an indisposed Michael Ball last night), was the best I’ve seen there, too: not just a comically corpulent figure of fun, Marcus – who seemed to need no padding – actually brought a human, and therefore more sinister, dimension to him.

I also love Lloyd Webber’s score the more I hear it; it is easily his most interesting since Evita, and its utterly fascinating to see him still stretching his creative envelope. Trevor Nunn’s production probably still goes too far in its own attempts to do so, particularly on the much-heralded design front; though its cyclorama projections have been slowed down since their dizzying London debut, they still don’t work for a Victorian setting which cries out for more traditional sets.

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Back home, the news yesterday of the appointment of Dominic Cooke to take over the artistic directorship of the Royal Court puts the venue into safe but interesting hands. Like Rickson – who was a protégée of Max Stafford-Clark and Stafford-Clark who was a devotee of Bill Gaskill – Cooke has a history here, where he was previously an Associate Director, and a particular record for new writing, too, that he has continued into his present job at the RSC.

An off-Broadway company called the New Group, now celebrating its 10th anniversary, have a particular affinity for the plays of Mike Leigh, and having previously given New York outings for Smelling a Rat, Goose-Pimples and Ecstasy, are now presenting the belated New York premiere for what remains his most famous play, Abigail’s Party. But what’s wonderful about their galvanisingly funny and painfully truthful production that I saw last night, is that it comes up fresh, as if it’s an entirely new play, which of course it is over here. So you’re not watching it with an audience anticipating every line, but with one who are discovering it for themselves. (One of the most blissful nights of my theatregoing life, however, was a one-night only reading by the original cast on the Olivier Theatre stage some years back, when the audience clearly knew every line).

Here, in Scott Elliott’s meticulously choreographed production – alert to every awful nuance of the strained marital relationships being played out at 13 Richmond Road with the the divorcee from Number 9 (whose daughter is having the noisy party of the title, whose booming music is a persistent presence here) and the newly-arrived couple from Number 16 – it’s like Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? has been transposed to English suburbia. And though phoney English accents can sometimes present a challenge to enjoying British plays in New York, this cast come up trumps, with not a weak link between them. Movie actress Jennifer Jason Leigh has been getting the attention as Beverly, but Max Baker, Elizabeth Jasicki, Darren Goldstein and Lisa Emery are equally superb.

Continuing my New York diary, yesterday was another two-show day. In the afternoon – Sunday matinees being a New York institution – I saw a quite wonderfully perceptive and funny new comedy by Douglas Carter Beane called The Little Dog Laughed, which is probably the best original New York play I’ve seen here since here since another off-Broadway play a few years ago, As Bees In Honey Drown, written by the same distinctive playwright. His subject is celebrity in all its guises and disguises: in the earlier play, he observed – with a hilarious detachment — a string of people being taken in by a fake celebrity persona. And now he turns his comic gaze with equally delicious and trenchant good humour on the love triangle that evolves between a closeted gay film actor, the rentboy he orders in, and the rentboy’s girlfriend, and the actor’s agent who brilliantly orchestrates a ‘solution’ to the difficulties that each find themselves in. I long for Beane’s work to be seen in London.

Then in the evening, I caught an early preview of a new Broadway revival of the musical The Pajama Game, disastrously revived at London’s Victoria Palace in 1999 in a production directed by Simon Callow and starring Leslie Ash, but now given a thankfully more traditional treatment at Broadway’s American Airlines Theatre in which it comes up gleaming on its own account, proving once again the old adage about trusting the work – rather than your own directorial interventions.

Being an early preview, this is in no way meant as a review – I even bought my own tickets rather than got press comps, since it was too early to request them – but I was highly impatient to see Harry Connick Jr in his musical theatre debut. He has long been mooted to make this transition, with shows like Pal Joey often suggested for him (he would also make an ideal Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls); but he proves here that he is real leading man. And one that plays a mean jazz piano, as we know he can, during Hernando’s Hideaway that takes the roof off. It also got me wondering if we could lure Jamie Cullum to the musical theatre one day, and if so, what would he play? Suggestions on a postcard, please! (Or at least by clicking on the comment board below).

Connick Jr’s co-star Kelli O’Hara is also someone I’ve been following with delight and pleasure for a few years now; after last year’s The Light in the Piazza, she proves equally adept at light comedy as she did at the darker shadows of that still-running romantic dramatic musical at Lincoln Center.

The original production of Dreamgirls — a fictional account of the rise and fall of a Motown-type singing trio, a thinly disguised version of the story of Diana Ross and the Supremes with names changed to protect the guilty consciences involved — was one of the first Broadway shows I ever saw, on my very first trip over here in 1983; and Michael Bennett’s staging of it still remains indelible, staged with a cinematic fluidity against a back lightwall and shifting light pillars that constantly redefined space. I have come to think that this is one of the greatest of Broadway musicals never to have been performed in London; but after the usual excuses have been trotted out — about the expense of bringing it there, the lack of support for black-themed musicals etc — isn’t it time someone finally tried?

Yesterday morning I bused down to Philadelphia, where a small theatre company devoted to musicals — working from their own handsome purpose-built auditorium, the Prince Musical Theatre — are currently staging a knock-out revival. And they’ve done it with a stripped-back design aesthetic but a full-on attack on what makes this such a great show that demonstrates how it works beyond Bennett’s own original astonishing production. Henry Krieger’s score — the only substantial Broadway success he has had — is a freshly minted tribute to the period that comes up with one stonking tune after another. It feels altogether more authentic and real than Dancing in the Streets, though the success of that show in the West End proves that there could be a ready audience for it.

Talking of shows that audiences — if not critics — have made into hits, I returned to New York last night in time to see Wicked again at the Gershwin Theatre (heading to London’s Apollo Victoria in October). I saw it first during previews back in October 2003, and it was clear even then that this was a solid crowd-pleaser with an unstoppable word-of-mouth, but I had my doubts about the show itself. And when it opened, the New York critics did, too. But the show triumphed in spite of them, and is now probably Broadway’s most solid and consistent sell-out, in Broadway’s largest theatre, the Gershwin.

Staged like a Cirque du Soleil meets Harry Potter re-interpretation of The Wizard of Oz’s back-story, it sets off lots of cultural echoes but seldom seems to be its own animal. Buried within the overblown spectacle of an amazingly lavish production is an intricate and layered deconstruction of elements of the Oz story. But like the Tin Man, it’s difficult to find its heart (though you discover, amongst other things, precisely how that character came to be without one). But the show at least doesn’t have a tin ear: Stephen Schwartz’s contemporary pop score is full of instant appeal.

I am currently in New York, where I arrived on Thursday afternoon and have already seen two of Broadway’s most beloved stars appearing in their own shows. First up, on my first night I caught Chita Rivera: The Dancer’s Life (at the recently re-named Schoenfeld Theatre, formerly the Plymouth), a retrospective of the career of a Broadway “gypsy” who trained in ballet but got sidetracked into Broadway, aged 17, when she joined a touring company of Call Me Madam that starred Elaine Stritch, and never looked back. (“I was terrified of her,” she remarks of Stritch. “Still Am. Tell the truth — aren’t you?”) Rivera, who will turn 72 on Monday, made her Broadway debut in 1953 as a take-over dancer in Can-Can, when she was still billed as Conchita Del Rivero, but it was as Anita in the original West Side Story in 1957 that she indelibly came into her own and would become a major star in the Broadway firmament from then on.

The show that now celebrates all these achievements and more is handsomely produced but rather poorly constructed — it achieves neither the confessional rigour and intimacy of Elaine Stritch’s remarkable At Liberty three years ago, nor does it succeed simply as a showcase for her still vibrant talents, but falls somewhere between the two. Still, I wouldn’t have missed it for the world, and no fan of musical theatre would pass up the opportunity to catch up with her yet again. But there’s the problem for the show commercially: Rivera has really only ever had a career here on Broadway, and are there enough pure Broadway devotees to sustain this love-in? Alas, I fear not; audience figures are dwindling by the week.

Talking of Stritch — she’s also in town at the moment, performing her latest cabaret in the Cafe Carlyle, downstairs from where she lives in the Carlyle Hotel on the Upper East Side. She turns 81 the week after next, and also stopped by last night as an onstage guest to celebrate Barbara Cook’s historic elevation to the rare ranks of non-operatic artists performing their own show in the hallowed portals of the Metropolitan Opera House, at the House’s own invitation. Of course, with Cook’s (still) vibrant soprano, she could have had a career in opera; but luckily for us, just as Rivera could have ended up across the Lincoln Center concourse in New York City Ballet, she got sidetracked, gloriously, into Broadway. Throughout the fifties and into the early sixties — between the short-lived Flahooley in 1951 and She Loves Me in 1963 — she was the ingenue of choice; she subsequently took over in a long-running play, Any Wednesday, but then originated a flop play (Little Murders in 1967 plus two flop musicals (Something More! in 1964 and The Grass Harp in 1971) before she vanished for a few years.

Then she did something even more remarkable than what she had ever done on Broadway: in 1975, she took to the concert stage, making her solo Carnegie Hall debut. A new career was born, in which she became a sublime concert and cabaret interpreter of the American songbook. It was in the early 80s that I first encountered her in this new guise when she to London and appeared at the Donmar Warehouse.

She has been a regular visitor to London stages since, and I have been forever smitten. I’ve literally lost count of the number of times I have seen her on both sides of the Atlantic; when she last appeared in London two summers ago as part of a cabaret season at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, I wrote in The Stage, “As tears rolled down my cheeks during her thrilling rendition of Sondheim’s In Buddy’s Eyes, I thought that this may just be about the most beautiful thing I have ever heard in a theatre.”

Last night was an occasion for more tears and cheers. I have often remarked how the best kind of cabaret shrinks a room, of whatever size, and makes each and every audience member feel as if they’re being personally communicated with; and so it was once again last night, in the not exactly intimate surrounds of the vast Met (3,700 seats). Cook keeps the houselights partly up while she sings; she likes to see who she is performing to. She also performs without an interval; and as she held the stage for nearly two hours of uninterrupted, spell-binding bliss, I began to realise that this one of those legendary nights in the theatre that no one who was there would ever forget. It’s not that the repertoire was new — we’ve heard almost every single one of her songs before, though she has that rare gift for minting it afresh each time — but that here was the summation of a career in song that makes her one of the absolutely greatest singers of our time.

Everything was here: the still bright and shimmering soprano that dances over the notes with such vivacity; the effortless phrasing that caresses the lyrics and makes each word as clear as a bell, with every emotion expressed, too, with such feeling; above all, the transcendent humanity that puts it all together not just as a display of technique but more than that makes each song seem like peering into both its and her very soul. She loses the lyrics occasionally — it’s almost a Cook trademark — but we love her all the more for it: she’s human, after all — fallible — though with the voice of God. (When her MD prompts her on the lyric and gives it to her, she then says, “yes, but what’s the note?”)

Then there’s her phenomenal generosity of spirit. She shared this glorious celebration of her artistry with three guests, from three generations, who each did a solo turn and then a duet with Cook: her near-contemporary, the aforementioned Stritch (dueting up a storm together on The Grass is Always Greener from Woman of the Year); the sublime Audra McDonald (dueting on Irving Berlin’s Blue Skies, in a moment that felt very much like a torch being passed from one great singer to another); and then Josh Groban (doing a beautiful version of Sondheim’s Move On from Sunday in the Park with George together).

In a programme that featured Sondheim heavily — she is now the foremost contemporary interpreter of his work, since she gives it the emotional as well as musical weight it deserves — she could have been singing about her own talent and writing her own review in Not A Day Goes By from Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along:

“But it only gets better and stronger
And deeper and nearer
And simpler and freer
And richer and clearer”

So it's farewell, soon, to The Woman in White in the West End, which has just announced an early closure to depart the Palace on February 25, just 17 months since it opened in September 2004. Of course, that's not an embarrassing run -- but set next to the record-breaking Cats (the longest running musical ever in the West End, 21 years) and The Phantom of the Opera (which recently knocked Cats off the top spot to become the record holder in New York), or even Starlight Express (that clocked up a run of over 17 years at the Apollo Victoria), it's small potatoes. And as Lloyd Webber has become notably ambitious with his recent shows -- the Northern Ireland musical The Beautiful Game (that ran for under a year at the Cambridge in 2000) and now this sweeping, semi-operatic Victorian melodrama -- it's interesting to note that his audience hasn't followed him. But there's still an appetite for the older work, as witness this summer's promised return for Evita. A UK tour is, however, promised for The Woman in White and it continues to run on Broadway where it opened in November, though it is heavily discounting its tickets already and it has just been announced that Maria Friedman will be replaced by Judy Kuhn for 6 weeks from Feb 14, while Maria undergoes further treatment for the breast cancer she was diagnosed just days into previews for the show when it first came there.

The focus may have shifted away from the National to the West End this year in the nominations announced yesterday for the Laurence Olivier Awards, earning a total of just seven nominations (against 20 two years ago), but it was still a striking fact that three out of four of the nominees for Best New Play were for work originated there – Helen Edmundson’s adaptation of Coram Boy, Howard Brenton’s Paul and Simon Stephens’ On the Shore of the Wide World (co-produced with Manchester’s Royal Exchange) – with the category completed by Richard Bean’s Harvest, the only play from the Royal Court that styles itself as the national theatre of new writing to make the list.

Of course, it was a playwright who died over 200 years ago, Schiller, who proved to the writer of the year on Shaftesbury Avenue, a fact triumphantly vindicated with 12 nominations – six apiece – for Don Carlos (transferred from Sheffield Crucible) and the Donmar’s Mary Stuart (that transferred to the Apollo). The Donmar also notched up an eight further nominations for its West End co-production of Guys and Dolls, meaning that it’s the theatre with the largest single number of nominations.

But the production with the largest number of nominations was Billy Elliot – named nine times – including a joint nomination for the three boys who shared the title role between them for Best Actor in a Musical. At least they won’t fight between them for the award; elsewhere, several contests have been engineered between performers in the same production, with Mary Stuart’s Janet McTeer and Harriet Walter going head-to-head for Best Actress, while from Guys and Dolls, Jenna Russell and Jane Krakowski compete for Best Actress in a Musical and their male partners Ewan McGregor and Douglas Hodge rival each other for Best Actor in a Musical.

In fact this year’s nominations are heavily concentrated around a number of core productions: as well as Billy Elliot, Guys and Dolls and the two Schillers, the Almeida’s revival of Hedda Gabler features prominently with six nominations, and the Broadway import of Death of a Salesman has three.

There are a couple of notable exclusions: Kevin Spacey’s first complete season in charge of the Old Vic is completely unrecognised, and the RSC has a sole nod for the costumes in its production of The Dog in the Manger, part of the Spanish Golden Age season that was seen at the Playhouse.

The Evening Standard has finally succumbed to the virus of star ratings that all but the Telegraph amongst the main newspaper reviews now routinely carry. So now we can cut straight to the chase as to whether Nicholas de Jongh likes something or not, and after blogging about his tendency to dislike more than to like only on Sunday, he actually kicked off yesterday with a four star rave for the fringe revival of Jonathan Harvey’s Beautiful Thing at the Sound.

Meanwhile, in other news, it was a joy to discover a smoking ban finally now imposed on the downstairs bar and restaurant at the Royal Court at last night’s press night for O Go My Man, which used to have to be approached through an impenetrable fog of cigarette smoke. Navigation into the bar is still painfully difficult, as everyone congregates at the foot of the narrow staircase that leads into it, and the bookshop is unfortunately positioned in the same place, too.

More and more theatres are going no smoking, from the National – both front-of-house and backstage now (where the removal of the ability to smoke in the Green Room has resulted in a petition being set up at the stage door), to the Savoy that – ever since it reopened following its fire a few years ago – has understandably been a no-smoking zone. Of course, what we’ll soon see, no doubt, are the floods of people who congregate on the pavements outside Broadway theatres during intervals when they rush out to grab a fag (in the English sense, not American).

No one, it seems, can quite so dependably cast himself the cat amongst the arts pigeons than Dominic Droomgoole, new artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe, who always gives what they call “good quote”. In yesterday’s Guardian, he speculated about his own, self-inflicted misfortune in being king of these kind of soundbites in a fascinating piece on the consequences of his press conference at the Globe last week – and the interviews that followed – to announce his first season in charge.

He writes: ‘I’m no great Shakespearean,’ splashed the headline over the London Evening Standard’s interview with me last week. Possibly not the best beginning to a year in which I’m starting work as the director of Shakespeare’s Globe, and publishing a book on, yes, Shakespeare. This unfortunate disclaimer was one of a series of foot-in-mouth incidents that studded a week in which we launched the new season at the Globe. It often seemed it was impossible to say anything without it being skewed off in some unfortunate direction….”

He doesn’t dispute the things he says: in the same Evening Standard interview, the line that prefaced the headline was, “It’s true, I know fuck all about that space”, to which the interview adds, “he says, cheerfully gesturing towards the Globe’s unique auditorium.”

But the refreshing thing about Dominic has always been his fearless honesty. No one quite speaks it like it is as he does; he doesn’t mind enemies, even powerful ones. (On David Hare, he once wrote, “How has such a flat writer come to be afforded such a mountainous reputation?” And of Tom Stoppard’s more difficult plays, he has said, “It’s like dealing with a lunatic who keeps telling you he’s got a map showing where he buried his underpants, but he’s eaten it”).

It’s the pointed brilliance of observations like this that make one feel he is wasted as a director and would actually be even better as a theatre critic. Not for nothing did the Sunday Times, for whom he writes regularly, once court him as such.

Dominic talked astutely in his Guardian essay yesterday of how press conferences actually work: “The conference, in an undiluted form, is a microcosm of the whole media contract. A lump of information, arranged into a narrative, is delivered to a group of people, who filter the information and rearrange the narrative according to their own agenda. The media is a prism, through which a single story gets refracted into a democratically complex collection of stories. Some bear a distinct resemblance to the original, some none. Nowhere is this more starkly apparent than at a press conference.”

He proceeds to unravel how, even as he spoke, he could see the story being spun in different directions. As he holds up the various narrative possibilities that were emerging to the light, he notes that the assembled journalists “started in on what was clearly their favourite theme: the purported battle between us and the RSC. I offered up a brief encomium to the revived RSC, and to their audacious idea of producing the complete works, but I saw eyes glazing over at such feeble diplomatic politeness. Nobody wanted agreement; everybody wanted war. A classic media phrase, ‘Stay in control of the story’, flitted through my brain. But I was immediately struck by the restrictions of that approach. Why stay nervously in control of a single story? Isn’t that rather dull? All the straitjacketed, uptight aloneness of the politician, adamantly arguing a straight line, which does no justice to the strange curves of their own personality or the world, suddenly becomes miserably clear. Why a single story? Why not let the thousand stories of any exploded democracy happen all around us, and enjoy them?”

Dominic’s Globe is clearly going to be a Globe for lots of storytelling, on as well as off the stage. I look forward eagerly to the fireworks continuing to explode around him.

It was almost exactly a year ago that the BBC received some 45,000 complaints (orchestrated by Christian Voice, Mediawatch-UK and other religious groups) over its screening of a filmed version of the stage hit Jerry Springer – the Opera; and some 25 years since the National Theatre premiered Howard Brenton’s The Romans in Britain, over which Mary Whitehouse famously brought a private prosecution against its director Michael Bogdanov for having “procured” an act of gross indecency, in a case that was subsequently aborted mid-trial (which was the only kind of abortion that she would actually tolerate).

Both controversies look like being simultaneously re-ignited now, as Jerry Springer commences a national tour at Plymouth Theatre Royal from January 27, and Romans receives its first major British revival since its original production at Sheffield’s Crucible Theatre from February 2. As if this isn’t enough, Gilbert and George – iconic artists who are no strangers to controversy themselves – are unveiling their new show at Hoxton’s White Cube Gallery, entitled “Sonofagod Pictures: Was Jesus Heterosexual?” and includes images of Christ on the cross.

The protestors are already galvanising themselves, where in Plymouth they have found allies in the local branch of the BNP, no less. But let us hope that the example of the events at the Birmingham Rep of December 2004, when it premiered an Asian play called Behzti that was withdrawn after protests at the theatre developed into full-scale riots, are not repeated.

I was harangued on Friday night by Nicholas de Jongh, theatre critic of the Evening Standard, who had stumbled upon something I’d written five years ago for an American theatre website, in which I named (my own list of) Britain’s Top 50 theatre people, including whom I thought were then London’s five most influential critics. He wasn’t arguing about being included, but about what I said about him. I couldn’t precisely remember, but when I got home, I did a web search myself, and found that I’d said, he’s “important because of the readership he serves, but is an uncommonly hard taskmaster who rarely seems to enjoy actually going to the theatre.” He’d translated that to me as “you said I never like anything”, which isn’t true either of what I said or of his own reviews; but it’s true that he’s, to put it lightly, hard-to-please.

It may be that my colleagues and myself are too lenient, but it always strikes me that Nick – in his immensely powerful position as one of the spokesmen for theatre who speaks directly and only to Londoners, as opposed to the rest of the national pack who speak to the whole country – is not exactly an enthusiast for most of what he sees. Even his praise often comes heavily qualified. (And there’s often an intriguing mismatch between the banner headline and the review itself, which isn’t his fault – but often the headline writers try to be more positive than he is).

But the Evening Standard, like most papers, is being heavily hit in the readership stakes, and its star – and circulation – is falling fast, so his power is gradually being eroded. In the process, one review that really counts nowadays is the one in the free Metro morning paper, since more people will see that than the Evening Standard. Fortunately, Claire Alfree and her team are far more constructive, too.

But if my own web words came back to haunt me, here’s an intriguing fact about Charles Spencer’s recent Daily Telegraph review of Scrooge that I commented on here before: it has vanished from the paper’s website. If you visit the place it used to be at — http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml;jsessionid=2D4X31HFVOD5FQFIQMGSFF4AVCBQWIV0?view=DETAILS&grid=P8&xml=/arts/2005/11/10/btscrooge10.xml) — a message says, “This story has been temporarily removed”. The show, of course, closed last night; but that doesn’t mean the review needed to be taken down. One wonders if darker forces were at work….

Finally, talking of dark forces in the world of criticism, I see that today introduced us to the latest celebrity-hiring-as-critic in the form of Sunday Telegraph’s appointment of novelist Zadie Smith as its film critic. This has been happening a lot in the theatre reviewing world, with Michael Portillo now theatre critic at the New Statesman, Toby Young on the Spectator and parliamentary correspondent Quentin Letts on the Daily Mail, appointments that have each overlooked the traditional expertise expected of critics in favour of their name value.

I recently asked to interview Martin Shaw for the Sunday Express, in connection with his current London run in A Man for All Seasons. A letter was duly sent to me under the letterhead of his agent, Ken McReddie Associates, that I had to sign and return to confirm, amongst other demands:

• That Shaw has agreed to “answer only pre-arranged questions, a list of which is attached”
• That I undertake that the material gathered from the interview will only be used in a designated publication, and if I wish to use it elsewhere, I would seek Shaw’s approval though his agent Ken McReddie
• That I have agreed that the basis of the article I am writing would be “serious and respectful of the production, the production’s producers,” and of Shaw
• That Shaw would be given “full copy approval” and to receive such approval for “any quotes used”

I’m afraid I could do no such thing, and the interview was aborted, thus depriving the play’s producers the respectful opportunity of a respectable bit of publicity about their play. I can fully understand that Shaw might well have been stung in the past by tabloid intrusion, and indeed (unknown to me at the time I submitted this request), a story was about to break that he had left his latest wife and was now dating another woman whom he brought to the first night party for the play, so was hardly keeping a secret. But I wanted to ask him about his acting life; in the end, deprived of direct access to him, the paper’s newsroom wrote a feature that delved into his romantic past, while I supplied the theatrical background.

But yesterday I read that the producers of a new Broadway version of an old Neil Simon play, Barefoot in the Park, are finding their star similarly reluctant to engage in the publicity process. Her name is Amanda Peet. Her personal publicist at a PR event for the production was standing by, insisting that unless journalists signed up to an agreement restricting the use of any quotes she gave, they would not be allowed to talk to her. “Journalist may not use text produced by Amanda Peet for any purpose other than what it is originally intended without securing the prior permission of Amanda Peet.” And “Journalist agrees not to publish any quotes supplied by Amanda Peet in any manner without obtaining Amanda Peet’s prior written consent”.

For Peet’s sake! Quite whom these demands are serving, except to make them look stupid, is anyone’s guess. In the New York Post, a longtime New York theatre PR was quoted as commenting, “It’s a Hollywood power play”. And clearly Martin Shaw and Amanda Peet fancy themselves in that league.

I have previously lamented here the absence of cabaret in London, and feared when Pizza on the Park – virtually the only game in town – unceremoniously shut its doors (even though acts were booked to appear there) in the summer for “refurbishment”, following a change of ownership.

It has since quietly re-opened – all too quietly in my case, since I never even heard about it – and is now slowly rebuilding bridges with some of the artists who used to grace its small stage in the past. This week, there was the chance to get two for the price of one, when Barb Jungr teamed up with pianist-singer Ian Shaw for a brand-new set for both of them focusing on songs from New York; but though this show deserves to be seen more widely and for longer, Pizza on the Park oddly booked them only for Monday to Thursday, not the more lucrative weekend business. Still, when I finally popped down to visit the room again last night after seeing Mary Poppins again for a late night cabaret nightcap, I discovered that word had got out anyway, and the place was respectably busy, including a visit from contemporary classical composer Mark-Anthony Turnage.

What a pity it is that London doesn’t have more of this kind of cabaret opportunity, like New York famously does, for these late night nightcaps. And it amazes me, too, that the likes of Jungr and Shaw are not household names, but then there’s no justice in the world. And there’s certainly none when it comes to the ghastly “refurbishment” of the room. With cheap IKEA-type uplighters around the room, the air of cultivated cabaret mystery is gone, and you can now see for yourself how decrepit this room is – the roof panels are a mess. So Pizza on the Park is no longer pizza in the dark, but though white tablecloths may give the performers the chance to see their audience, rather than the black ones of old, the performers have the better view: they don’t have to stare at a podium that has cheap fairy lights running riot in a drape behind them.

Has Elton John’s midas touch with musicals deserted him? After the runaway worldwide success of the film-to-stage version of The Lion King (for which he provided the songs for the original film that were then retained for the stage, augmented with new material from African musician Lebo M), a more modest Broadway success with subsequent Disney project in Aida (still unseen in London) and now the London smash Billy Elliot, he was lining up for another Broadway original working for the first time in the theatre with his long-time pop collaborator Bernie Taupin, Lestat, that has booked Broadway’s Palace Theatre for an April opening.

But whether it will get there now has been called into serious question by the reception the show has received at its San Francisco premiere on January 8. The San Francisco Chronicle theatre critic Roger Hurwitt wrote, “Didactic, disjointed, oddly miscast, confusingly designed and floundering in an almost unrelentingly saccharine score by Elton John, Lestat opened Sunday as the latest ill-conceived Broadway hopeful” to play in the city, after Mambo Kings (that never got to New York) and Lennon (that did, briefly, after San Francisco). He went on to comment that the songs “range from mildly interesting to, for the most part, banal and virtually undistinguishable. Taupin’s lyrics are often woodenly prosaic and rarely advance the story or our understanding of the characters…. John seems to spend most of the evening trying to become Andrew Lloyd Webber at his most vapid and pretentious.”

Another local review, the Mercury News said “the vampire musical showed few signs of life” and “lacks teeth”, before concluding, “Unless its creators can find a way to infuse more intensity, Lestat may be dead on arrival on Broadway in the spring.” The Contra CostaTimes, meanwhile, declared, “When dealing with vampires, it’s usually best to keep your neck covered and your garlic handy. Lestat proves the exception to the rule. The greatest danger…. is death by boredom.”

Of course, out-of-town try-outs are precisely the sort of place to hear such comments, and re-tool the show, if necessary, for Broadway. Elton John’s own Aida was completely overhauled after a critical mauling in Atlanta, with its then-creative team – including Lestat’s current director Robert Jess Roth, entirely replaced for Broadway.

But Broadway may be particularly nervous of vampire-themed shows after the fast failures there of Dance of the Vampires (that took Michael Crawford back to Broadway for the first time since The Phantom of the Opera but quickly expired; as Broadway columnist Michael Riedel called it yesterday in his New York Post column, it was “a campy fiasco that cost its investors $12 million and Michael Crawford his Broadway career”) and Dracula (“a $10 million bore that drove the final nail in composer Frank Wildhorn’s Broadway coffin”, according to Riedel).

And whether Elton John is (a) available for the kind of re-writes that might be necessary, and (b) would want to run the risk of a Broadway failure at this stage of his new theatre career that has made him one of the most successful of all contemporary writers of musicals is another question. Watch this space.