Theatre Museum Under Review(s)….

The words “theatre” and “museum” side-by-side have also struck me as odd bedfellows: a live art that lives first and foremost in the moment of its production doesn’t lend itself easily to being commemorated in artefacts that are put behind display cabinets. But of course, that’s not the only way a museum could or should operate: the Science Museum, for instance, has proved that it’s possible to make something live and interactive of our ever-changing understanding of the world we live in; but there’s no substitute for catching theatre “on the hop” than by actually going to one. See a Robert Lepage show, for example, and you will see distilled the kind of theatrical innovation that leaps not off the page but off the stage as it should. (But if you are really intent on visiting a museum, there’s a perfectly creaky one available on West Street: the St Martin’s Theatre has The Mousetrap now in its 54th year).

In the midst of the competition of seeing the real thing being put on display in other buildings in the area, why should anyone want to go to the Theatre Museum that first opened in 1987 as a West End branch of the Victoria and Albert Museum, dedicated to celebrating the performing arts?

That conundrum has never been properly answered in nearly twenty years. I have a good friend who is now in his 70s, goes to the theatre four or five times a week, and has been to the Theatre Museum precisely twice. If he doesn’t find a compelling reason to visit regularly, who else would? One might visit the National Gallery several times a year, but there you’re encountering the art first-hand; would you visit the National Gallery if it merely displayed versions of the art – on biscuit tins, say, or chocolate boxes or place mats – instead, especially if there were places nearby that offered the real thing?

Successive directors of the museum have tried to stress the “liveness” of the place by emphasizing the changing exhibitions; but they don’t change often enough. And the current big display of the state of the West End may have a few set models of West End theatres – you can get a sneak preview of what the Sondheim Theatre, planned for above the Queen’s, may look like – but otherwise is mainly words blown up on the walls.

To access the permanent displays, however, entails a depressing descent into the depths of the museum, down a long, never-ending ramp that makes you feel like you are entering some kind of nuclear fall-out shelter. And if your ultimate destination is the studio theatre (as it was for me on Sunday evening), you have proof positive of the Theatre Museum’s ultimate and most symbolic failure of all: the fact that a building that calls itself a theatre museum has such a negligible and unhelpful theatre. Like a carpeted hotel banquet room, pillars are unhelpfully stationed right in the centre of the room to sabotage any attempts to give it a theatrical feeling (or a versatile one: to put a play on here means putting it on in a narrow area inbetween those pillars).

No wonder that the Heritage Lottery Fund has twice now turned down the Theatre Museum’s applications for refurbishment funds: the funds required to transform their current building would not repay the investment made, they say, given the limitations of the building.

The V&A are therefore now conducting their own review of the best way forward, which could include the closure of the museum. Why not re-site the best parts of the collection inside a living theatre, like the National? Of course, the National has its own, rotating exhibitions programme (almost always more interesting and relevant than those at the Theatre Museum), but at least the building is open for over 12 hours a day. Perhaps one floor – the Olivier exhibition area, for instance – could become a permanent showcase for the Theatre Museum’s best offerings, and tied in to the National’s repertoire where possible?