February 2006 Archives

Australia is obviously the best training ground for a top job in the arts in Britain: after Michael Lynch, who has been Chief Execuctive of the South Bank Centre since 2002, and Loretta Tomasi, who recently took over as Chief Executive of English National Opera, news comes today that Brian McMaster’s successor in charge of the Edinburgh International Festival will be another Ozzie: Jonathan Mills, a 42-year-old contemporary composer and former artistic director of the Melbourne Arts Festival, was appointed yesterday to the post. And, like his fellow Ozzies, he takes on a somewhat poisoned chalice: McMaster’s programme last year took the festival £1m into the red, after running up losses of £850,000 on six new productions.

According to a report in today’s Independent, some high-profile local contenders – including the Barbican’s artistic director Graham Sheffield – “withdrew their interest because of concerns over the funding and the short timetable for takeover.”

But Mills, for his part, is keeping his chin up: “Maybe I’m a foolish optimist,” he is quoted as saying in The Indie, “but I think if one goes to the Scottish Executive and the city council aware of the many competing calls on public funding and present these festivals as critical to the definition of Edinburgh and its credentials as a creative community, one has a real change of exciting these people about the opportunity.”

To which we can only say, good luck!

In sadder news today, I read an obituary in the Daily Telegraph for a journalist I have shared a page with for four years on the Sunday Express: David Fingleton, the paper’s opera critic, has died, aged 64. Prior to his current role, he was music critic for the Daily Express from 1982 to 1998. The obituary tells us, “He went through a period of snoring loudly during opera performances, which generated a certain amount of ill-feeling among some members of the critical fraternity: Fingleton, however, took up the suggestion, put to him by a fellow critic, that sleep was a critical response.”

He worked almost to the last: he dictated his last review, for a production of The Marriage of Figaro, from his hospital bed, that ran on February 12, six days before his death.

So it was theatre’s most glamorous night of the year last night (apart of course, from the Stage’s own annual New Year’s Party): but how is it that an event that is so well supported by the great and good of the theatre, and has the likes of Kathleen Turner, Christian Slater (suffering a bad hair day that saw him wearing a baseball bat, and perhaps a bad breath day, too, since he was strenuously chewing gum throughout) and even Piers Morgan lining up to give out the awards, registers so little on the national radar?

Of course theatre is a big business (and last year broke its own records, selling over 12.1m tickets in the West End) but a supposedly minority interest, so television coverage of the event is now a thing of the past. But surely there was a golden opportunity to exploit the new technologies instead, and simply web cast it instead?

Instead, it has become an exclusively insiders’ event only, in every sense: the public, who used to be able to buy tickets to attend the awards presentation when they were held at a West End theatre (before the theatre people were bussed off to a private after-ceremony party) are completely excluded. The limited press seating, who were being relied upon presumably to pass the word out to the streets (and national papers they write for), was at the farthest end of the room; since I had not even received a press release from the company handling this year’s event, let alone an invite to it, I ended up having to make a personal appeal to the chief executive of the Society of London Theatre, Richard Pulford, who kindly accommodated me at a convivial table of English National Opera personnel.

And colleagues who were in the so-called press room adjoining the ballroom told me that they could neither see nor hear the proceedings properly on the screens installed there; and some were working on the floor since tables hadn’t been supplied.

While it may well be that this is intended to be a private members-only party, the journalists who write about the theatre and the public whose support, after all, ensures its survival need to be accommodated somehow, too, in the thinking.

All journalists have a horror story about interviews they conduct. Usually there’s a tacit acknowledgement on both sides that there’s a job to be done – the interviewee’s to promote their product, the journalist to write it up in an interesting way – and most pass smoothly. But I’ll never forget a phone “interview” I attempted to secure with Nigel Havers two and a half years ago, when he was heading to the West End in See U Next Tuesday; unfortunately, he lived down to the play’s title by being one himself, constantly missing the appointments that were made to take the call, and then when I finally got him on the other end of a phone, running through my ten pre-prepared questions in roughly two minutes flat, with monosyllabic answers. The results were simply unusable, and a waste of time for everyone.

Mitigating circumstances were later presented: his wife was seriously ill at the time, and he was attending to her and her hospital appointments. In which case, however, the interview should never have been agreed to. It would have been clearer for everyone if it was simply denied. An interview, once agreed to, has to be graciously done. A colleague of mine once went to the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane to interview Nathan Lane when he was in The Producers at an agreed time. Lane simply refused to honour the appointment and do the interview.

But I’ve never read an account so extraordinary as Time Out Theatre Editor Jane Edwardes’ interview this week with veteran film director Robert Altman, in town to direct the British stage premiere of Arthur Miller’s penultimate play Resurrection Blues. After Jane went into the interview room, she tells us she was asked briefly to leave it, “while a production meeting takes place.” When she returns, she discovers “that my script of Resurrection Blues and tape recorder have disappeared. The culprit turns out to be the American producer who creepily refuses to return the book, giving the feeble explanation that Altman gets very upset if any reference is made to the first production of the play in Minneapolis.”

When Edwardes duly does reference it – she tells Altman, “Your producer doesn’t want you to see that I’ve got a copy of the play” — he replies first that such a thing doesn’t exist, and then, that he “didn’t know there was a published version.” Jane hadn’t, as she points out, acquired one by subterfuge: “No sneaky undercover skills were required to get a copy of the play – I bought it in a bookshop”. But Altman, she says, “apparently chooses to believe he is directing the world premiere.” As she adds, “Are we in la la land?”

Clearly we’re in LA Land, though. Altman has been absent for too long from the theatre to perhaps recognise how it works anymore. And he’s certainly not up to speed on the value of good PR, either.

The nominees for this Sunday’s Olivier Award for Best New Play comprise three plays premiered in the last year at the National, and one at the Royal Court: while it’s a particular accomplishment that the National has managed to put itself at the centre of new writing, as well as much else, now (and a pity that the Royal Court, which styles itself as a writers’ theatre, above all, should be lagging so far behind), the eternal quest (and question) for new plays remains what opportunities there are to develop them elsewhere.

Certainly, it is a rare new play that opens directly into the West End, and while the next week will throw up one sampling – Christopher Hampton’s Embers, opening at the Duke of York’s next Wednesday – it is, not strictly speaking, entirely original, in as much as it is in fact an adaptation of a novel. (But then so is Helen Edmundson’s Olivier-nominated Coram Boy). But the week also has the Donmar premiere of Mark Ravenhill’s latest, The Cut, on Tuesday; and the fact is that, outside of the National and Court, it is the smaller studio spaces like the Donmar or Almeida (though the latter has lately been concentrating mainly on UK premieres for American plays) that the true energy of new writing lies, where they can balance new plays (when they can find them) with a classic repertoire, as the opportunities occur.

There’s a bigger crisis affecting the new writing venues, since they’re competing for the same pool of existing playwrights or seeking to make discoveries of their own new ones. Hampstead Theatre has largely lost its way since relocating to handsome new premises, though The Rubinstein Kiss – brought to them by a commercial partnership who wanted to try it out there – was better than most recent fare there. Soho Theatre is without an artistic director at all, since Abigail Morris’ abrupt departure a couple of months ago, though they have just announced plans to advertise the post.

Instead, there seems to be an ever-widening pool of “talent competitions” that are trying to plug the gap. While Sonia Friedman’s imminent The Play’s the Thing collaboration with Channel 4 is a one-off, TV-reality show attempt to follow the selection and hopefully production of a new play in the West End, there’s also an ever-growing number of prizes and awards elsewhere: according to the Sunday Times last week, Howard Panter’s Ambassador Theatre Group will “shortly announce an annual prize for a new play, which will be stage, probably, in the Trafalgar”, with Panter quoted as saying, “It will be worth tens of thousands to the winner”.

But big prizes like that, and the Evening Standard Drama Awards’ annual £30,000 prize to the winner of its Most Promising Newcomer category, create division, not collaboration. More fruitfully, new writing company Paines Plough have developed Future Perfect, a scheme to bring together a group of six writers, aged between 18 and 30, to create a supportive forum from which they can work and create opportunities for them to showcase and promote their work in professional theatre spaces. The ambition, they say, “is to establish a genuine conservatory for the hungriest and most luminous writers of a new generation”. Paines Plough are also behind a new, bi-annual £5000 commission, to be named the Rod Hall Memorial Award in honour of the late literary agent and promising the person awarded it ongoing representation by the agency that has continued, under Charlotte Mann, without him, to offer a long-term commitment to the recipient of it.

Maybe it’s mere coincidence, but is Nick Hytner’s National Theatre boy crazy? After The History Boys (by Alan Bennett) and Coram Boy (by Helen Edmundson, after Jamila Gavin’s novel), we now have Market Boy (a new play by David Eldridge) on the way. Can it be long before the National considers a revival of The Boys from Syracuse (or the hip-hop Stratford East version, Da Boyz)? Or of Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys? Or even a season by the Lady Boys of Bangkok? The National long ago did Athol Fugard’s Master Harold and the Boys already, but there’s also John Byrne’s Slab Boys trilogy due for revival, and from New York, we could have the current Broadway hit Jersey Boys or the off-Broadway hit Altar Boyz. Or a never-seen-in-London 1975 off-Broadway gay musical, Boy Meets Boy?

It’s also time the girls fought back. Here are some suggestions: Top Girls (Caryl Churchill), The Factory Girls (Frank McGuinness), The Girl with Red Hair (Sharman Macdonald) or The Goodbye Girl (Neil Simon); or on the musicals front, 70 Girls 70, Dreamgirls, Funny Girl or Me and My Girl.

Or perhaps these preoccupations with gender titles could meet in the middle, with a revival of Rebecca Gilman’s Boy Gets Girl.

When Spamalot opened on Broadway last year, the name may not have meant much to local audiences, but the names did: Tim Curry, Hank Azaria and David Hyde Pierce were amongst the stars who opened the show there. Now that it’s on the way to London, the big question was whether we were going to get Tim Curry or Simon Russell Beale, who took over in December from Curry on Broadway, as King Arthur.

That question has now been answered: we are getting both of them, in fact, in succession: Curry to begin with, then Russell Beale once he has completed a run of two plays at the National Theatre that he is returning for in the autumn. But the other question – who else is starring in London? – was also answered at yesterday’s press launch, and I’m surprised at the (lack of) star power: yes, it’s a show that can probably now sell itself, but we’re getting Tom Goodman-Hill as Sir Lancelot (originally Azaria) and Robert Hands as Sir Robin (originally Pierce), who are not exactly household names. While another Broadway import Wicked is yet to reveal its casting hand for its September opening, the recent announcement of the arrival of Avenue Q in the West End in June is also a cast of unknowns; and the forthcoming Evita at the Adelphi (also in June) may yet make a local star of the Argentinian actress being imported for the title role, but otherwise has no saleable names. Nor does Movin’ Out (arriving next month at the Apollo Victoria) or Footloose (at the Novello in April). And The Sound of Music seems intent on not casting a name, either, when it is revived: the search for a star will be conducted by reality television, in the hope of finding a complete unknown.

So in the scheme of things, Curry does, after all, count as the sole name fixture of the forthcoming musical jamboree in London; but what value, ultimately, is a “name” for a musical, when perhaps the brand of the show itself is strong enough? The Phantom of the Opera, Les Miserables and Cats have all done very nicely, thank you, without any for most of their runs; but each of them, at least, opened with names (respectively, Crawford/Brightman; Colm Wilkinson/Patti LuPone; Elaine Paige/Brian Blessed/Bonnie Langford/Paul Nicholas etc.) It seems that the London star-driven musical, on the other hand, is largely a thing of the past.

George Bernard Shaw once said, “Reviewing has one advantage over suicide: in suicide you take it out on yourself; in reviewing you take it out on other people.” Here are some treasurable examples of critics doing exactly that, from both sides of the Atlantic.

Michael Billington on The Creeper (reviewed in The Guardian on Friday February 10):
An undeniable air of mystery surrounds this 1965 piece of country-house gothic by Pauline Macaulay. Why on earth, one wonders, has anyone chosen to revive it now? And why has Ian Richardson, who should be limbering up for his Lear, selected this mothballed piece for his return to the West End stage after an eight-year gap?… If it is intended as a gothic shocker, it fails to spring enough surprises. A particular low point is reached in the second act when a mackintoshed detective arrives on the scene and, in the immortal words of Ken Campbell about rep thrillers, roams the set looking for clues. The chief consolation lies in Richardson’s performance… but, although Richardson is eminently watchable, hiring him to play Kimberly is like engaging Alfred Brendel to do a five-finger exercise…”

Kate Bassett on The Creeper (reviewed in the Independent on Sunday, February 19):
“It’s scary the way some shows worm their way into the West End, making out they’re going to be decent before proving quite breathtakingly rotten. The Creeper ought to be a forgotten gem, right? Penned in 1965 by Pauline Macaulay, it’s a domestic thriller laced with homosexual and class tensions, potentially comparable to Pinter’s The Servant and here revived by Bill Bryden with a sterling cast…. Murder-mysteries don’t come much creakier than The Creeper. It’s like some dusty revenant from regional rep, and the climactic slaughter is fantastically silly, with the killer prowling round in a Red Indian fancy-dress outfit. The acting, by contrast, is pretty impeccable… But they must just be in this for the money, right?”

Ben Brantley on the Broadway revival of Barefoot in the Park (reviewed in the New York Times on Friday, February 17):
”The mistakes begin with the wallpaper. When the curtain rises on the torturous new revival of Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park, the play’s eager newlywed heroine (portrayed by Amanda Peet) is discovered applying, with laborious comic inefficiency, hypnotically striped paper to the walls of her first apartment. Not to put a damper on a young bride’s early adventures in decorating, but instead of gluing on wallpaper, shouldn’t she be slapping on paint? Then at least the audience would have the diversion of watching it dry.”

Delfont-Mackintosh are now the third biggest theatre owners in London, after Really Useful Theatres and Ambassador Theatre Group; but since RUT have offloaded the smaller playhouses within their group to the newly formed Nimax Theatres and have retained only the larger musical houses, it seems that Delfont-Mackintosh are also on their way to concentrating only on musicals, too, in their theatres. As well as the original two theatres in their portfolio, the Prince Edward (Mary Poppins) and Prince of Wales (Mamma Mia!), that have always been musical houses, it looks like all of their subsequent acquisitions will be housing musicals by the time the summer arrives: the Queen’s, of course, has the ongoing success of Les Miserables (which will become the longest running musical in the history of the West End in October); the Novello has the tour of Footloose arriving in April; Wyndham’s will be taking the transfer of the Menier’s production of Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George in May; and the Albery (to be re-named the Coward) will house the Broadway import of Avenue Q in June.

Of course, theatrical landlords don’t have a duty to protect the straight play in the West End – they merely need to ensure that their houses are profitably rented, and with higher ticket prices possible for musicals, their returns are going to be potentially higher. But musicals also typically (or at least hopefully) run longer than most plays, too, thus tying up that real estate for far longer; and the market starts to look seriously in danger of losing its playhouses, and therefore its plays, as has mostly happened on Broadway.

But while both the Albery and Novello have housed musicals in the past – in the case of the Novello, the long-running Buddy was followed by the Rat Pack - Live from Las Vegas – you have to go back twenty years, to 1986, to find the last musical to play at Wyndham’s; and it was, curiously, another Mackintosh production of a serious flop for him, Café Puccini, that ran just over a month. It would be worrying if Wyndham’s, one of London’s best and most intimate houses for plays, became permanently occupied by musicals.

The preponderance of musicals in the West End does have one further potentially damaging fact on the theatrical economy: it is fast driving up the average ticket prices being charged there. Since musicals – with the exception of the Judi Dench Hay Fever, that is – typically charge more than straight plays, the more musicals in town means that the average is hurtling ever skywards.

There was talk, subsequently aborted, of Cats returning to London last year, just three years after it had closed at the New London Theatre after a record-breaking run of 21 years. But now that Les Miserables is on track to break the Cats record in London, it was announced on Friday that Les Mis will be returning to Broadway from October 21 (prior to a November 9 opening), just three years after it closed there after a 16-year run that put it in third place of the longest-ever Broadway runs, after The Phantom of the Opera and Cats.

Such a fast return isn’t completely unprecedented on Broadway – the original production of Dreamgirls shuttered in August 1985 but was back on the boards less than two years later in June 1987 – but on that occasion there was a sentimental reason: director/choreographer Michael Bennett was dying, and indeed did so just four days after its return.

But Broadway, which has spent the last decade finding its feet as the originator of new musicals once again rather than importer of ones from Britain, has also run out of shows to revive: a revivals frenzy has meant that shows as comparatively recent as 42nd Street, Into the Woods and Big River have all found their way back to Broadway in the last four years, so now its time to think again of shows that are even more recent.

And London seems to be catching the disease. The are rumours that Whistle Down the Wind, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1998 musical that ran for three years at the Aldwych to January 2001, may be returning to the West End just five years later. Can it be long before Norma Desmond from Lloyd Webber’s previous Sunset Boulevard is ready for her close-up… again?

Mamma Mia! has just celebrated its 3rd birthday as a boffo Las Vegas attraction; but other attempts to bring a piece of Broadway to the casino strip haven’t been so successful. Avenue Q was the smart, underdog of a show that transferred from downtown to Broadway three years ago to win the Tony Award for Best Musical from right under the nose of what’s turned out to be a bigger hit, Wicked. And now the two shows are lining up to go head-to-head in London, too, with Wicked of course set for the Apollo Victoria in October, and Avenue Q just announced today as heading to the West End in June, where it will open at the Coward (the re-named Albery) on June 28, following previews from June 1.

But Cameron Mackintosh, the London producer for Avenue Q, must be looking anxiously at what’s just happened to the show in Las Vegas. While a sit-down production there was boldly trumpeted within days of its Tony win – and controversially, the deal struck with the new Wynn Hotel where it was the opening attraction was that it would be an exclusive there, foregoing the expected national tour – it has failed to draw the town there, at least in sufficient numbers, and the hotel’s proprietor Steve Wynn has decided to cut his losses now, close the show (by late May) and install Spamalot(also coincidentally arriving in London this autumn) in the purpose-built theatre instead.

So what happened to Avenue Q in Vegas? First there was the problem of establishing a niche for the show: “The trouble is how do you sell Avenue Q?”, Wynne wondered, in a place where audiences “turn over every week, so word of mouth takes longer to penetrate a market.” Moreover, the show failed to make a big splash in every sense: it was simply too small – though the show, said Wynn, “was very popular with the local population”, he added, “But spectacle is still a big factor here.”

Perhaps it was simply too smart for Vegas; but also, possibly, too New York. All of which could equally apply in London. Interestingly, Rent – another quintessentially New York musical – has mostly failed to recreate its success outside of Broadway. I’m a huge fan of Avenue Q, though, and hope that it can buck what might become a trend.

Yesterday was another of those days that never let up for a minute, though I’m about to let go by departing for San Francisco this morning.

At the National:
It began at 11am with Nick Hytner’s now annual press conference to announce the shape of things to come for the rest of the year: though not quite complete, since he told us he likes to leave space for the immediate and original arrival of something new and unexpected, exciting plans announced include a big new play that reunites the Festen team of writer David Eldridge and Rufus Norris on the Olivier stage for a play, Market Boy, that is being presented as part of the Travelex £10 season which will also include Simon Russell Beale (returning from his current Broadway stint in Spamalot) in the title role of Brecht’s The Life of Galileo, opening in early July, before Russell Beale is joined by Alex Jennings for Hytner’s new production of Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist.

The Travelex season has been the outstanding innovation of Hytner’s regime, and he told me afterwards it was based on a hunch of trying to reclaim the audience who had given up on going to the theatre and he wanted to lure them back. Lowering the ticket prices to make the theatre available to all is also, he feels, one of the reasons the subsidy is there in the first place; and so when I followed it up by comparing the National’s pricing to that of its commercial cousins, he refused to be drawn into criticising them, since market forces prevail there and even the £60 top price for Hay Fever might be justifiable for the treat of seeing Judi Dench. They’ve got to make their money somehow seemed to be his view, and whereas the National has the luxury of programming across a long-term view, the West End merely jumps from show to show that have to be individually capitalised.

Amongst other things, the National will also be importing Caroline, or Change from Broadway, with its original American creative team recreating their work here at the Lyttelton; and is actively pursuing its own music theatre programme via the studio, where amongst other things Blur’s Damon Albarn is developing a new show (set in Ladbroke Grove), which Hytner himself may direct and has introduced Albarn to playwright Roy Williams to collaborate on. The History Boys – heading to Broadway in April, and whose film version that Hytner has directed will be out in October – will not, he stated categorically, return to the South Bank again, though there’s still a commercial life for it on the road that the National will send it out on another tour of.

Movin’ In to London:
Next it was to Ronnie Scott’s for the London launch of Twyla Tharp’s Movin’ Out that arrives at the Apollo Victoria next month. London production director Colin Ingram, previously of the Old Vic, spoke of the international casting process that saw them hold auditions in London, New York, Paris, Berlin, Rome… and Leeds! The result is a company that features dancers from the US, Australia, Norway, Brazil, Japan, France and here, and after its limited 17-week season here, will go on to a tour of Europe.

Stalling to Woking:
I then headed to Waterloo to go to Woking to catch a matinee of the tour of Anything Goes that features former newsreader Angela Rippon (who this year is the 40th anniversary since she made her broadcasting debut) now making her musical theatre debut, but was twice jinxed: having had a £20 note swallowed by the ticket machine, I spent 15 minutes finding someone to retrieve it, and then, with only 3 minutes to catch the 1.50pm train, rushed to the other end of the station and boarded, only to discover that I was on the wrong 1.50pm Woking train! Apparently there are two that leave at exactly the same time: one that’s the Woking train (and takes nearly 50 minutes to get there), and another that takes just 24 minutes. So I ended up 20 minutes late for the matinee, something I never do, and when I took my seat in the stalls, was amazed to discover it was the only empty seat in the house!

Back to the National:
Finally it was back to the National, for the return of Measure for Measure in Simon McBurney’s contemporary production that was originally seen as part of the Travelex season in the Olivier in 2004, but is now back in the Lyttelton. In a British theatre culture where productions have their runs and are traditionally discarded afterwards, its fascinating to see a production like this that has been touring worldwide since it was originally made, and grow and deepen as it engages with the world it is a part of.

From irritating critics who give things away and irritating PRs who don’t, now it’s the turn of irritating audience members, and the house seemed full of them at last night’s West End opening of Honour, from the hacking cougher who really sounded too ill to actually be out on the town, to the perennial owners of blipping and ringing mobile phones. But professional colleagues should know better, and gossip-about-town Neil Sean – who pops up everywhere, from Sky News to the daily Metro paper, to peddle unreliable gossip and ill-informed opinions, took the biscuit, or at least the sweet wrapper, by noisily deciding that he needed nourishment at exactly the point when the husband in the play tells his wife he is leaving her, upon which the entire play then hinges.

Would that his words, spoken or written, were quite as nourishing as the sweets he so inappropriately dived into. Over the last couple of months, he has told Sky viewers, amongst other things, that Julia Roberts was heading to appear on the London stage, fresh from her sell-out Broadway run of Three Days of Rain – before booking had even opened for the run there, let alone begun performances. Sarah Lancashire, we were told, was starring in Guys and Dolls in the part made famous in the film by Jean Simmonds – whereas in fact she was playing Miss Adelaide, created on film by Vivian Blaine. Sean accused a raft of panto stars – like Ian McKellen and Simon Callow – as only doing panto for lack of being able to get other work. Jake Gyllenhaal was said to be desperate to appear on the London stage – entirely forgetting that he had already done so, several years ago, in This Is Our Youth. And so it goes on. And on.

But Mr Sean’s own biography perhaps says it all: “Neil Sean is without doubt the most read showbiz columnist in Europe…” who has “earned the name Mr Showbiz ‘License to Spill’….”

It goes on, “He may have the likes of J Lo and co on the phone, but its real celebrities that fascinate him, the likes of reality TV stars and desperate pop stars who will do anything for their 15 minutes of fame”. It’s a phenomenon that Mr Sean is clearly intimately acquainted with.

Continuing yesterday’s theme here of reviews that are unwelcome (for giving things away), here’s notice of critics who are not being encouraged to actually review a show at all: when Ralph Fiennes opened in The Faith Healer at Dublin’s Gate Theatre last week, I sent two e-mails to the theatre’s press representative (and the theatre’s deputy director, according to the theatre’s website) Marie Rooney, and left a phone message with someone in her office, none of which were replied to. So I gave up and simply didn’t go: it will be easier, in any case, to catch it on Broadway in a few weeks time, since I know the press agent looking for the show there well, and he actually returns e-mails.

And I see from my colleague Kate Bassett’s review that appeared in the Independent on Sunday that I was not alone in the lack of encouragement to cover it: “I thought I must have been imagining things”, she wrote, “but Ralph Fiennes really is – as had been rumoured – starring in a revival of Brian Friel’s (arguably) greatest play in Dublin, directed by Jonathan Kent and transferring thence to Broadway”. When Kate enquired, she reports she was told, “That is happening, but we’ve not sent out a press release”, just a few days before opening night.

And another colleague who went tells me that, though she collected her tickets from a press desk on the night, no one welcomed her and she subsequently received a message, via Marie Rooney’s assistant, that they were sorry not have met her when she was there.

Critics and PRs exist in a sometimes uneasy truce – in order to do both of our jobs, we need each other – but it needn’t be as unhelpful as this. In America, where they do things very differently, the New York PR for the show that I told this to was understandably astonished at the failure of anyone to even get back to me.

Mind you, this is a theatre whose personnel clearly play by their own rules: at the first night of Uncle Vanya, Sam Mendes’ final production as artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse in September 2002 – in a version coincidentally also by Brian Friel – proceedings were constantly interrupted for spectators seated in the circle by the constant pips of arriving text message alerts. The offender was then seen to reply; which of course only meant another pip arriving a minute or so later when a further reply came to him. Confronted afterwards by an angry colleague of mine, he answered: “Chekhov is robust enough to withstand the intrusion”. The offender was subsequently identified as Michael Colgan, artistic director of, yes, you’ve guessed it, the Gate Theatre, Dublin.

Milton Shulman, in his long tenure as theatre critic of the Evening Standard, did what taxi drivers who are under-tipped when dropping off passengers to attend The Mousetrap at the St Martin’s Theatre are said to do: he said whodunit. Now his successor Nicholas de Jongh has been taken to task for his review of the new production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by commentator Marcel Berlins in The Guardian, for letting slip “a crucial fact that would have fundamentally affected the way the play was seen and understood by someone seeing it for the first time”

Of course, Berlins admits that he’s not obliged to read reviews, and telling us that he reads at least four of a play or film he might be interested in, he plays devil’s advocate and says, “If I knowingly increase my chances of being told something I don’t want to know, it is my fault”; but then replies to himself, “But how else can I decide on what I want to read or see? Certainly not by counting the number of stars awarded. Besides, an intelligent, informed review has the capacity to enhance the watching experience, increase understanding and clarify any obscurities.”

He then ponders a “subtler argument”: that “the enjoyment and appreciation of great or even good cinema and theatre should not depend on ignorance of the plot….” But while he agrees that we can re-visit plays like Three Sisters or films like The Third Man even though we know their outcomes, he adds, “But there is something different and magical about the first time” (Hmmm, he could be talking about sex.) “I am forever grateful that I read Anna Karenina without knowing her fate, and saw Citizen Kane with no idea of who or what Rosebud represented.”

And while he acknowledges the importance of mentioning key facts in a review, he concludes by suggesting a simple rule: “A critic with a general audience has to satisfy two markets: the sophisticates – those who have seen Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? several times – and the newcomers. If there is a dilemma, and the critic has to decide at what level to pitch the review, he or she must favour the newcomer. A review seldom spoils enjoyment by giving away too little, but it can ruin a paying customer’s experience by revealing too much.”

But what if there were no critics at all? The Broadway musical Kismet was famously spared criticism when it first opened during a New York newspaper strike in December 1953. By the time the papers returned and the reviews finally appeared, the show had established its mass appeal on its own. And no plot had been given away, either.

The late self-appointed “moral” campaigner Mary Whitehouse’s obsession with The Romans in Britain – based on a short scene in the original National Theatre production in 1980 that she hadn’t actually seen for herself, when an invading Roman soldier raped a druid that saw the play wittily dubbed “Romans in Britons” at the time – has made Howard Brenton’s play both historic and notorious in ways that have given it more importance and significance than the play actually deserves.

But as director Michael Bogdanov, who directed the original production was famously hauled into the docks to face a private prosecution for “procuring an act of gross indecency” – and Whitehouse infamously withdrew her case in the middle of it being heard, thus (cleverly?) failing to get a ruling either way, leaving the option open of future prosecutions being launched again – it has made other theatres understandably wary of producing it.

Actor-turned-director Sam West – in his debut production as artistic director of the Sheffield Crucible – is therefore making a bold statement of intent not to be cowed, just as Nick Hytner launched his National Theatre regime with Jerry Springer – the Opera. (And West neatly sidesteps any threat of prosecution by staging the “offending” scene in full view but in an onstage pool of water, so although we know what’s going on, we don’t actually see the mechanics for ourselves. The Whitehouse prosecution was based on the fact that the actor playing the Roman held his penis in what was called “an apparently erect position”, and proceeded to seemingly insert it into the one playing the druid. Some actors have all the luck, it seems. But it turned out merely to be clever staging, with judicious use of a thumb).

But seeing it again last night for the first time since the National – in a production for which protests have yet to materialise, with not a single complaint arriving at the theatre so far – was to be reminded of the muddle of Brenton’s play, but also of its scope and epic ambition. It deserves to be seen again, clear of the more serious muddle of the controversy that surrounded it.

And talking of plays that deserve to be seen again: one of the eternal conundrums of the British theatre is how to capture and package a Bush Theatre play to give it a longer life. Despite the Bush’s legendary physical discomfort (now slightly improved on previous years, with an actual back rest rather than the legs of the person sitting behind you to lean on, but still butt-numbing benche seating), it has a rare intimacy and close-up two sided magic that seems impossible to recreate elsewhere, so that Bush hits typically either don’t transfer elsewhere or fail when they do so.

But now actress-turned-playwright Amelia Bullmore’s debut play Mammals – that I deemed to be one of my top five shows of the last year – has hit the road, and it’s every bit as emotionally rich, beautifully layered and witty as it was in Shepherd’s Bush. Even in a sparsely attended matinee yesterday at the Lyceum in Sheffield – with many of the cast of The Romans in Britain in support – it resonated with real insight, pain and humanity. It deserves now to make the next leap to the West End, but without a “star” name to sell it – albeit very fine actors such as Niamh Cusack, Daniel Ryan and Anna Chancellor in attendance – can it do so?

When Jerry Springer – the Opera premiered at the National Theatre three years ago as the boldest of opening statements from Nick Hytner’s then-new regime, the show made headlines for all the right reasons. Not only was a major new composing and directing talent (Richard Thomas and Stewart Lee respectively), both of them nurtured on the comedy circuit and their show developed on the fringe, being admitted to the theatrical establishment, but the National, too, was a place for younger audiences too – a huge proportion of Jerry’s audience there hadn’t been to the National before. And then there was the breakthrough it represented for British musical theatre itself (it went on to win a slew of major awards).

But when the BBC broadcast a TV version in December 2004, a minority pressure group called Christian Voice suddenly noticed it was on and hijacked it for their own publicity. They succeeded in putting the frighteners on some regional venues, who – after the Birmingham experience of Behzti, closed down by Sikh protestors – withdrew from plans to house a tour and put it in serious jeopardy. However, the tour has now gone ahead – even with a little bit of Arts Council funding endorsement; but while Christian Voice are now rallying their protesting forces again and their supporters were singing hymns outside the Birmingham Hippodrome when I saw it last night, the public who want to make up their own minds are happily far outnumbering them.

And the show – even in a necessarily scaled-back staging that has reduced the cast by a third, so the onstage studio audience is now a rather frugal ten – makes as big an impact as it has ever done. Beyond the audacity of the concept and its dazzling execution, what continues to astonish and bewitch me is the beauty and intelligence of the score; in terms of sheer number of original melodies, there hasn’t been a British musical like it since Evita.

The RSC have now announced the full schedule for their year-long Complete Works celebrations, but while the plays may all be there, I am struck by how incomplete the cast lists are: we may have such RSC alumni as Judi Dench, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Harriet Walter and Janet Suzman returning to the fold, but where are such sometime RSC stars as Fiennes (Ralph or Joseph), Antony Sher, Kenneth Branagh, Alan Howard, Michael Gambon, David Suchet, Derek Jacobi, Sinead Cusack, Jeremy Irons, David Bradley, Fiona Shaw, Juliet Stevenson or Simon Russell Beale? And Peter Hall may be making a return to the company he founded, as is Trevor Nunn who ran it for a long time, but where are former artistic directors Terry Hands or Adrian Noble? Or for that matter, Sam Mendes or Deborah Warner?

Of course, no festival can be complete in every way; and I’m sure approaches were made to some of them, but are we really to be excited by Geoffrey Streatfield as Henry V, Chuk Iwuji as Henry VI, Jonathan Slinger as Richard III, or Tamsin Greig and Joseph Millson as Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado? Yes, maybe: they are rising actors through the ranks of the RSC ensemble (such as it is nowadays). But it’s nevertheless disappointing that so few of the top-line “star” actors whose careers were initially nurtured at the RSC haven’t used this celebratory occasion to make a welcome return to the company with.

Theatre can be such a pain in the butt. In every sense. But designing the perfect theatre seat shouldn’t be an impossibility: those seats in the National’s Olivier and Lyttelton have definitely stood the test of both time and bottom use – 30 years and counting – and so have the Barbican Theatre’s cushy seats that even – miracle of miracles – have sufficient legroom to allow people to pass you without having to get up. The Royal Court’s refurb also created the perfect “business class” theatre seat: firm, supportive and spacious, but cosy too – you can get closer and more intimate with your companion if you choose with retractable arm rests – and even with a thoughtful pouch in the seat in front of you to place your programme. Someone thought of everything here!

So why have other more recent theatre installations failed the butt test? The new Hampstead Theatre’s seats look good; but they provide scant legroom, and get uncomfortable fast. Even worse, both the (otherwise stunningly refurbished) London Coliseum and now the Novello have excruciatingly uncomfortable brand-new seats, and it turns out, the same people are interestingly responsible for both.

In order to maximise legroom, they’ve done away with the curved seats of old and designed seats that are completely straight-backed. Which is fine if you’re from the school of Jean Brodie and sit bolt upright, but slouch at your peril: the seat may have no curves, but your spine soon will. Worse, at the Novello it seems that the seats have a slight forward, downwards pitch, so as you slouch, you start to slide off them. But at least there’s not far to go – last night, watching the transfer of the RSC’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream there, I became quietly obsessed with working out why I was in such discomfort, and measured that the distance from the floor to the bottom of the seat cushion was just twenty centimetres, so you’re very close to the floor as you sit there.

When I mentioned all of this to Delfont-Mackintosh Theatres operations director Billy Differ, however, he was genuinely surprised: no one had yet mentioned any of this to him. I’m sure we’re all so stunned and awed by the tremendous refurbishment that has been visually achieved here to dare notice that we’re not comfortable. Of course, my colleague Nicholas de Jongh has already staged a very public attack – at last week’s Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards – on the absence of central aisles in the stalls. But this is far more serious, since we’re probably stuck with these seats for some decades to come. (Full marks, however, to the most welcoming front-of-house staff of any theatre in the West End: they actually smile as you arrive, and wish you goodnight as you leave. And full marks, too, for bar prices that are not rip-offs, either).

From cursed seats to cursed theatres: the New York Post sent in a feng shui consultant and a psychic to find out why a particular Broadway house, the Cort on W48th Street, has had such a run of bad luck lately. Of course, being on the ‘wrong’ side of the block – east of Broadway, between 7th and 6th, not the usual ones west of Broadway, between 7th and 8th – means that its among the last theatres to be booked, along with the others on the east side, like the Lyceum and Belasco, there; so inevitably it attracts the tenants who are most desperate for a home – any home – for their show, and those are often the weaker ones to begin with.

But the feng shui lady found more pressing problems: the entire block is “low energy”, she found, and the energy of the theatre itself “confused”; she wasn’t exactly happy by the ladies’ room, either (“all exposed plumbing with wooden doors like an outhouse, no mirror, and a sink across from a cracked window”). And the psychic is going to make it difficult for them to find bar staff for the first floor bar: he reported the presence of a woman – “perhaps an actress, with medium-brown to light-colored hair … long deceased, who may have suffered something unpleasant —most likely a sexual assault” – in the alcove near the bar. “I feel this woman didn’t report it when it happened, and there was a great deal of shame. I don’t think she’s moved in, but I felt her spirit would return to that site, near the bar.”

All of which leads him to conclude that all the conflicted energy around the place makes it difficult for a show that’s on there to work, and even if it does, it will be hard work: “If this show lasts, it will drain the actors,” he says of the theatre’s current tenant (a revival of Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park): “It will be an uphill battle.”

Perhaps its time to send in the feng shui consultant and psychic into the Shaftesbury, too……

The Pearson Playwrights’ Scheme may be little known, but it definitely knows how to pick a winner, in every sense: amongst the writers whose work it has helped nurture in the most meaningful way possible – i.e. by the awarding of five bursaries (worth £6,500 each) that enables them to actually write, and then a competitive prize for the best play of the year to have emerged from the previous year’s stable of writers who have thus been able to write them – are such now-established writers as David Eldridge, Samuel Adamson, Richard Bean, Simon Stephens, Tanika Gupta, Stephen Poliakoff, Nell Leyshon, Carol Ann Duffy, Catherine Johnson, Charlotte Jones, Lee Hall, Martin McDonagh, Joe Penhall, Gregory Burke and – this year’s winner – Laura Wade.

At an intimate lunch held yesterday in the boardroom of Pearson’s London HQ – the old Shell building, overlooking the Thames that one has often gazed at from the other side of the river from the National Theatre’s terraces – Laura was joined by Neil McPherson of the Finborough Theatre that had first put her up for consideration for a Pearson bursary two years ago, and her literary agent, Charlotte Mann, to receive the Best Play award (and a £2000 cheque) for Breathing Corpses, produced by the Royal Court last year. (Wade also took the Critics’ Circle prize for Most Promising Playwright for both that play and Colder than Here, seen at Soho Theatre, where her latest play also coincidentally opens next week).

But the symbolic value of the prize is even more important than the financial one (though the financial one no doubt also helps), for it is awarded by a very high profile panel that is chaired by John Mortimer and includes amongst its members Dame Beryl Bainbridge, journalist and film producer Sue Summers, John Tydeman of the Peggy Ramsay Foundation and award administrator Jack Andrews (all of whom were also in attendance yesterday), plus producer Thelma Holt, critic Michael Billington and playwright Catherine Johnson. The lunch party of twelve was also completed by two people from Pearson’s, including David Bell, and two critics (Charlie Spencer and me).

As someone who goes to judge new plays on a regular basis, it was fascinating to hear how the stage before we get to see them can operate, with nurture playing as much a part as nature in making a good new playwright.

Another venue both welcoming by nature as well as nurture has been the Menier Chocolate Factory, which in exactly two short years has taken itself to the top of the creative tree of fringe producing spaces, and last night took the night off to celebrate across the river with a birthday party at Joe Allen’s. And it proved, as always, that beyond the indefinable magic of the place it’s also the tangible magic of the people who work there that make it so special. The Menier is a phenomenal success, both onstage and off, and last night – from actors to press agents to waiters and yes, even this critic – you could see why we are constantly attracted to going there.

The iron grip that literary estates sometimes exercise over the