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.
