The RSC may have been putting its house in order, financially and artistically speaking, in the last couple of years since Michael Boyd took over, but there’s still some way to go on the PR front, it seems. I reported here already how I was denied a press ticket to the only preview of Thomas More (in a ten-day run for the entire production), even though it had already run extensively in Stratford-upon-Avon so was hardly ill-prepared, but unless I saw it then would not have been able to cover it at all – so ended up buying a ticket so that I could.
Today, they managed to schedule a clash of press events with Shakespeare’s Globe – but have taken the diplomatic step of postponing theirs now as a result (While I’m complaining about PR efforts, I am yet to ever receive a press release or invite from Shakespeare’s Globe, either, except when I ask for it myself). It was to have been used to announce the full programme for the Complete Works season at Stratford, which we only got part of at the last press conference. However, it turned out that only selective press were being invited this time around, whereas it was a more general call-out last time: namely, to arts correspondents only.
When I replied that I wear many hats – not just reviewing, but also commentating on news in places like this blog and elsewhere as a broadcaster – I was told: “There are a small number of critics who also file news stories who are not invited - we have to limit numbers somewhere. The information at these briefings will always be in the public domain swiftly following the meeting… Sorry to disappoint.”
Actually, the disappointment is all theirs, not mine: I find it baffling that a journalist who actually wants to report their news is being denied the opportunity. Could it be a little power game? Perhaps we need to be reminded of our places from time to time. But I also have a choice about what I write and talk about on the radio; and the RSC clearly do not need me to sing the praises of their programming, it seems.
But I will sing the praises instead of the beautifully refurbished Novello Theatre (formerly the Strand) that seeing the RSC production of The Comedy of Errors last night afforded me. Cameron Mackintosh, for a long time the man who literally pays the West End pipers and therefore calls the tunes, is now dancing to a different beat: he’s become the West End’s biggest investor in the upkeep and renewal of its bricks-and-mortar. This is an oddly novel approach to owning theatres: to actually spend money on their upkeep beyond the merely cosmetic or the utterly essential to prevent them falling down.
While public money is being sought to renew these private assets – that have been sold off, at grossly inflated prices and profits from year to year and literally pillar to post – Mackintosh is putting his private wealth, earned in the theatre, back to where it came from.
