May 2006 Archives

It’s very nearly June, and I can’t remember one quite like it: the month promises big revivals of Evita (starting previews on Friday, before opening on June 21) and the Royal Albert Hall’s arena stage version of Show Boat (June 10-25); Avenue Q arriving from Broadway (previewing from tomorrow, before opening on June 28); the re-opening of the Roundhouse next Monday; new plays by David Eldridge (Market Boy, opening next Tuesday at the National’s Olivier) and Tom Stoppard (Rock ‘n’ Roll, previewing from Saturday, before opening on June 14); plus revivals of Mortimer (Derek Jacobi in A Voyage Round My Father, opening June 13), Shepard (Juliette Lewis in Fool for Love, opening June 15) and Chekhov (Juliet Stevenson in The Seagull, opening June 27), plus the return of Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell (opening June 19) and Philip King’s wartime farce See How they Run (opening June 29). Then there’s the unknown: a play by a previously unproduced playwright opening at the New Ambassadors under the watchful eye of the TV cameras for the Channel 4 reality series, The Play’s the Thing (opening June 22). The Roundhouse re-opens next Monday, too, after a £29.8m refit. And that’s without the usual run of fringe openings everywhere.

I’ve certainly got my work cut out for me, since no sooner did I get back from the US late last night than this time next week I’m off to Australia for my (third consecutive) annual trip to the Adelaide Cabaret Festival. And before I go, I’ve got Bromley and Brighton tomorrow, and Blackpool on Friday! It’s going to be hard to keep up. Watch this space…!

Cirque du Soleil are embracing the jukebox musical age. After breaking the rules of contemporary, non-animal circus by creating a unique brand of futuristic showmanship that owes a lot to the megamusical of light, spectacle and movement to showcase traditional circus acts, it has become a phenomenon that — continuing the globalisation thread I’ve been preoccupied with these last few days — has found the once innovative company starting to become stuck in recycling its own generic formula. Now, however, they’re going into battle for something fresh by taking on one of the most generic of all Broadway’s latest genres, the benighted jukebox musical, and giving it a new spin, in every sense. Starting to preview in Las Vegas this week (prior to opening on June 30) is Love, set to the back catalogue of The Beatles.

It’s their fifth resident show in Vegas, and once again, the main “spend” looks like its on the physical environment that will be housing it. According to a news report in Variety this week, some $125million is being spent on giving the Mirage Hotel’s former Siegfried and Roy Theatre a total makover, including the installation of some 6,306 speakers — a third of them in the back of the hall — to allow sound to swirl around the auditorium and from the ceiling. “Only in Vegas can you get the investment and the theater design”, Cirque founder Guy Laliberte is quoted as saying.

Certainly that is the case with their other resident shows. I was flown out by Cirque in February 2005 to see the world premiere of Ka at the MGM Grand, where over $200m was spent to bring it to life; but a substantial part of that was the theatre cost, not met from the production budget but by the casino itself, falling over themselves to get the show under its roof in the first place so that it becomes a ‘destination’ attraction. So a different, long-term view is taken; whereas a West End or Broadway budget is based primarily around the box office take that can be achieved during its run there (with some accounting for extras like merchandise opportunities and subsequent touring and licensing rights), in Vegas the shows are marketing tools, to draw customers who will then spend much more, it is hoped, on the tables and slots. (And free tickets to the heavy rollers are nice loyalty rewards that the casino can liberally dispense, too).

And even if, after seeing four Cirque shows in a row during my week there last year led me to being Cirque-d out, I have to say that seeing ‘O’ (for the third time there) remains one of the most indelible theatregoing experiences of my lifetime.

Now Cirque are changing tack, and I, for one, am curious about what they’ll achieve. Beatles jukeboxes have floored previous creators, from Broadway (with Lennon last year) to the West End (with the utterly risible All You Need is Love). Watch this space to see what happens…..

Following on from the corporate takeover of Broadway and West End producing models that I just wrote about, it’s inevitable that there’s now a generic feel to the worldwide theatrical high street, too. I’m currently in Chicago, North America’s second city in terms of things theatrical outside of New York, and it’s striking to find that the commercial theatre here is full of shows that have come from Broadway – or, in the case of Spamalot that had its try-out here before going to Broadway, is now back in a touring version. So is a tour of the Broadway one-woman play about Golda Meir, Golda’s Balcony.

There are also “sit-down” or resident productions (as they call productions that set up home in particular cities) of Wicked, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and the long-running off-Broadway phenomenon Blue Man Group; with another, pre-Broadway production, of the latest from the Les Mis and Miss Saigon team of Boublil and Schonberg (but without Cameron Mackintosh above the title as producer for the first time), The Pirate Queen, also lining up to begin performance in October.

Of course, the big commercial attractions, whether in the West End, on Broadway or here in Chicago, do not provide the whole picture of each of those cities’ theatrical health; and Time Out’s Chicago version runs to no less than six pages of theatre listings (a total of over 90 individual entries), including such internationally renowned producing houses as the Goodman and Steppenwolf upping the ante.

So things are not entirely homogenised just yet in Chicago, but even so, the ones that you actually hear about – at least in terms of dollar spend on advertising around town – are indeed those big commercial shows. It hardly sets the pulse racing…. or provides a theatrical pulse to the city.

Yesterday I blogged about the respective successes and failures of American film entertainment giants Disney and Warner stretching their portfolios to Broadway; but now it seems that all of corporate America wants in on the action, too. While Enron’s chief executives have just been found guilty of fraud, conspiracy and insider trading in a scandal that has rocked corporate America, I’ve just seen a theatrical crime that suggests that some of the moneyed men of America may have as little taste and artistic judgement as others of their rank lack honesty and are now convicted criminals.

The lead producers for Hot Feet, billed as a “new dance musical” that re-works the back catalogue of Earth, Wind and Fire into a new story, is Transamerica, a company that (according to their programme biography) “offers innovative financial products and services with a common purpose: to help individuals, families and businesses build, protect and preserve their hard-earned assets.” But clearly whoever it is there that thought backing this musical was a good idea wasn’t exactly serving the common purpose to protect the company’s own ‘hard-earned assets’. They will surely be going down the pan any day soon.

Mind you, it doesn’t exactly look as if too much money has been spent on it. But in the way of Broadway, I am sure looks are deceptive, and this has cost a bomb. The show, struggling to attract attendances at the moment of around 40%, is also bombing badly. Perhaps it’s all just a tax write-off.

But the write-off of the show proves the dangers of producers going into Broadway with more money than sense. The sad thing is that Broadway needs its powerful financial backers, and Transamerica, if advised properly, could have spent their money far more wisely. I hope that this experience doesn’t sting them so much that they don’t want to go near the theatre again. But they are not alone in corporate investors wasting their money here: also on the title page are Polymer Global Holdings (“an innovator in the rubber industry” who are “the world leader in rubber-backed frabric products used for advertising and promotional applications”) and Goldley Morris Group LLC (“a limited liability corporation” whose “focus and mission” is “to develop corporate investments, capital investments, real estate acquisitions and other diversified investment transactions throughout the southeastern region of the United States”). Diversification into the arts is a welcome development; but it needs to be done with skill and judgement.

Arriving in New York last night, I discover its Fleet Week, the annual celebration of the sea services that brings thousands of sailors, marines and coast guardsmen from the US Navy, US Coast Guard and international navy ships to town, that makes it feel like there’s a revival of On the Town playing in every Times Square theatre. New York, New York – as Chip, Gabbey and Ozzie know – is a hulluva town, and they’ve got just 24 hours to explore it.

I’ve not got much more myself this time, but I arrive to the news that just as Fleet Week has come to town, Lestat is leaving it. After a run of just 39 performances, it will close at Broadway’s Palace Theatre on Sunday, May 29: Elton John’s first big Broadway flop. As I blogged here before, the show was in deep trouble during its out-of-town try-out in San Francisco last December, but the producers – Warner Brothers, trying to follow the Disney lead of turning their film portfolio into stage musicals and making their first incursion into theatre – carried on anyway.

It’s been a brutal learning curve, but Warner’s Theatre division vice-president Gregg Maday (whom I previously heard referred to in the midst of the troubled previews as “appropriately named”), sounds undaunted: “We have learned a great deal during this process and remain committed to producing exciting projects for the Broadway stage, adapted from our deep, rich library “

A fascinating feature in yesterday’s Guardian by Mark Lawson spoke of how brand names – whether of titles, producers or star names – have rendered reviews redundant in films, books and even theatre. He refers to Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code – a publishing and now cinematic phenomenon – and says it “raises the question of whether printed and broadcast opinion matters at all. Has our culture created a sort of genetically modified turkey – the critic-proof product?”

Lestat, genetically modified or not, was a turkey through and through; not even brand-recognition – the Elton John/Anne Rice axis – could save it; but as Lawson points out, “there is increasing evidence that the Dan Brown curse is extending beyond cinema to the notebook-holding folk at the end of the row. We Will Rock You, the Ben Elton musical based around the songs of Queen, is still running five years after it was rudely rebuked by reviewers. Julia Robert’s current Broadway performance in Three Days of Rain met thumbs jabbed down, but the opinions were pointless; the show had sold out months before opening. Madonna’s West End debut in David Williamson’s Up for Grabs was a similar experience, with touts selling tickets for a show reviewers insisted no one should see.The reason that such shows become criticproof is economic: at best, 40-60,000 tickets might be available for a short theatre run by a major star and an audience of that size is available regardless of one person’s judgment of its dramatic worth. As for We Will Rock You, musicals have always done better at generating greenbacks than newsprint. And, of course, the show’s music was also already well-known. Indeed, all of the works that have proved commercially immune to derisive reviewers - The Da Vinci Code movie, Julia Roberts and Madonna on stage, the Queen musical in the West End - have one factor in common: an element - title, actor, songs - that was already exceptionally well-known.”

That may have been enough to save Queen, but not Elton; right now, all eyes are on how Tarzan – a stage version of Disney’s animated cartoon – will fare, after some hostile notices and only a solitary Tony nomination. The Disney, Tarzan and Phil Collins axis give it triple marketing might in terms of recognition factors. I previously blogged about seeing its first preview, but catching up with it again last night now that it has officially opened, I found a far more confident, coherent (and much shorter) show, that delivers on each of those factors to its audience. It may not be a great stage musical; but it’s a highly effective one, and – as you’d expect from designer Bob Crowley (who also directs for the first time on Broadway) – a stunning visual sense that, within minutes of starting, offers a startling underwater drowning and a perspective of being washed up on the beach from above that is amazingly effective. In design terms, at least, it should have been recognized by the Tony Awards. It doesn’t do anyone any favours to be so snobbish about crowd-pleasing musicals that Disney – now Broadway’s pre-eminent musical provider, with three shows currently playing there – are so adept at providing.

It’s not just because I adore chocolate that I love the Menier Chocolate Factory. In little over two years, the venue near London Bridge has achieved something that dozens of other fringe theatres only dream of: an Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Newcomer (the first time one has been presented to a venue, not a person), and last night its second West End transfer, for its production of Sunday in the Park with George.

The venue is now on the first night list for most national critics; instead of the slow trickle of reviewers, if they come at all, that you get on the fringe, the nationals attend en masse. The excellent pre-show meal that the Menier offers is no doubt an enticement, but food isn’t the only reason our appetites are encouraged – it’s already become a trusted brand.

And the success of the Chocolate Factory is breaking other rules, too. Instead of short fringe runs, co-producer David Babani swears by a policy of making shows play their natural life – Sunday in the Park ran there for four months in all.

But success comes at a cost, literally so for audiences – whereas you could see Sunday in the Park and be fed at the Chocolate Factory for £25, the West End top price for the ticket alone is £47.50. But it’s fantastic that the production is getting a further life, and though there was a ravishing, close-up intimacy in the Menier, distance in the West End has actually given it both more perspective and greater focus.

With thanks to The Observer’s Susannah Clapp for the headline, last week saw not one but two consecutive openings for plays written by the offspring of poet Craig Raine – 21-year-old son Moses with Shrieks of Laughter at Soho Theatre was followed the next night by 30-year-old daughter Nina’s Rabbit at the Old Red Lion. But while one imagines that both are well connected enough through dad, the thank you’s in the published script for Rabbit is a veritable who’s who that seems more like boasting than gratitude – which is a pity, given how good the play actually is.

The list of those thanked stretches from Nicholas Hytner and Tom Stoppard to Michael Frayn, Claire Tomalin, Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, David Hare and Parick Marber, and even Gillian Anderson, Kathy Burke and Anne Robinson.

It also never rains but it pours opening nights, too. I’ve commented before on the fact that somehow press nights are booked to clash with each other, despite the fact that SOLT maintains a diary specifically to help producers avoid this; but though it’s polite not to stamp on someone else’s already booked press night, there’s no rule that says you can’t. Tonight’s transfer of Sunday in the Park with George from the fringe Menier to Wyndham’s has done the ungentlemanly thing of stepping on another small producing house to open on the same night as Hampstead’s scheduled opening of Clever Dick.

But Cliona Roberts, the clever press rep for Hampstead’s show, simply did the unofficial thing and invited first night press to come a night early if they wished. Though Mondays are not a favoured night for press nights, since the received wisdom is that actors need a night to get back into the show after a Sunday break before they are put before the press, needs sometimes must; and our journalistic needs to be in two places at once tonight meant that, for the Guardian and Sunday Times, plus the Daily and Sunday versions of the Telegraph, Mail and Express, we were all in attendance at Hampstead last night. That means that there’s only The Times, Independent and Standard left amongst the main papers for tonight. It also means that Hampstead have inadvertently trialled the American system of inviting critics to a final preview, amongst real audiences, rather than to watch the show with an entirely invited house.

Sonia Friedman has tried to do the same thing in the West End, but it never caught on, because newspapers simply treated the invited critics’ performance as the opening and ran their reviews overnight anyway for the next day’s papers, rather than waiting to run them after the ‘official’ opening. But because we were at Hampstead by special dispensation last night, the embargo will be honoured with reviews running as if we were there tonight. That’s the model that needs to be introduced: inviting critics in early, but asking them to hold their reviews till after the opening. Those who still like the adrenalin rush of bolting for the exit and filing their copy immediately, while tripping over assorted soap and Big Brother stars, can still attend the opening if they wish; but those who want a more civilised theatregoing experience can go early.

Press nights usually give you a skewed view of a show’s wider appeal, since they’re invariably packed to the rafters with friends, family and assorted guests. But go on a regular performance, and a different picture often emerges. I’ve seen the last two plays at the Royal Court’s Theatre Upstairs on Saturday matinees where the audience numbers didn’t reach 25; the first time it was to see Rainbow Kiss on Easter weekend, when the excuse could have been Easter; but then Christopher Shinn’s excellent new play Dying City last Saturday had no such excuse, and was empty again. So was Motortown when I saw it, just a few days after it opened to mostly excellent reviews, on a Friday night. Clearly something’s up; has the Court lost its audience? You can’t blame high ticket prices – I’ve blogged before how, if booking online through the Court’s excellent website, you can get a mainhouse ticket for just £15. And the Theatre Upstairs only has around 100 tickets to sell. Yet even good reviews, that once might have been expected to sell out such a small auditorium, are no guarantee anymore.

Ditto reputation. Cheek by Jowl have, over the last twenty five years, built a sufficient following, you’d have thought, to mean that a short Barbican run, in a completely reconfigured, far smaller main house that puts the audience as well a the actors on the stage, should sell out. But on Saturday evening there were rows of empty seats for The Changeling that inaugurates Cheek by Jowl’s new relationship with the Barbican as their London home; admittedly towards the back and the sides, but vacant nonetheless.

Three experiences like this do not a trend make. But it’s a worrying sign that things aren’t quite as healthy on the serious theatre front as we’d like to hope.

Walking down St Martin’s Lane last night on the way to the London Coliseum opening of The Makropulos Case, I passed the Albery – soon to be the Coward – and Cameron Mackintosh was on the pavement, talking about the front-of-house signage to his staff. That’s one of the things that him: his hands-on attention to the tiniest detail, whether of a show or a theatre. Another, of course, is his palpable enthusiasm for everything he touches, and when I stop to say hello, he whisks me into the theatre to show me the refurbishment work that is being done on it. The theatre has only been dark since Saturday night’s last performance of Blackbird, with Cameron’s production of Avenue Q kicking off previews from June 2, so time is of the essence; but already, just five days since it was available, the entire theatre is in the midst of being re-carpeted and re-seated from the stalls to the balcony and all the bars refurbished.

Leading me to the balcony, he remembers that it was up here that he first saw Lionel Bart’s Oliver! – a show he subsequently ASM’d on a tour of, then toured himself as a producer early in his career. The small bar down the right hand staircase as you descend to the stalls is being named in Lionel Bart’s honour, and already there’s an archive display of programme covers from his shows. The rear stalls bar is being named for Noel Coward, as is the entire theatre.

But the proper and serious refurbishment that he is doing to each of the theatres within the expanding portfolio of West End houses he now controls is not just wonderful in its own right of making them such enticing and beautiful venues, but it also sets the standards that the rest of the West End should be shamed into following. Of course, they’ll protest that he has the money and they don’t; but why not? As landlord of the Palace, Andrew Lloyd Webber took 18 years of good rent from Mackintosh’s production of Les Miserables; yet when that production finally moved to the Queen’s, it merely acquired a gloss of grim, grey paint before re-opening for business.

A couple of years ago, Cameron told me in an interview that the investment in the refurbishment of the Prince Edward, the first of his theatres to receive a make-over in the mid-90s, has “come back time and time again. These kinds of investments have paid back. But what I also know is that whatever happens, I will leave for my foundation and indeed the enjoyment of future theatregoers buildings that are in a much better state than when I go them.”

So it’s not just good business, but also a fantastic legacy. And one that outruns any show.

.New York takes the annual Tony Awards not, as we do with the Oliviers, with a pinch of salt, but with all the (self-absorbed) importance of a major competitive event. The entire Broadway season is timetabled towards it – hence the onward rush of shows that open in April and early May to get in under the wire of eligibility for being nominated – and then comes the announcement of the nominees, which happened on Tuesday morning, before the awards themselves are presented on June 11. So there’s another month of Tony fever to go, and this is where the Tony’s really kick into gear: the way they’re used as a marketing opportunity, and one full of political and personal lobbying. Of course, the fact that the awards are decided by a very large constituency of “Tony voters” – over 700 of them, from theatre owners and producers to practitioners and even theatre journalists – means that there’s a lot of lobbying to be done.

And though there can only ever be one winner in each category, there will be plenty of losers. But spare a thought for those who’re not even in the running to lose, having failed to secure a nomination, which stretches from such high-profile Broadway visitors as Julia Roberts (snubbed for her sell-out stage debut in Three Days of Rain), to Britain’s Maria Friedman, passed over for Best Actress in a Musical for the now-shuttered The Woman in White, though she made headlines there when she got a breast cancer diagnosis just days into previews for the show there, had surgery and returned to the show in time for the first night. Both were in contention for strong leading actress categories, to be sure, but in each case it’s a surprise, nonetheless: in the leading actress in a play category, all five of those that are nominated are for performances in plays that have already shuttered; and in the leading actress in a musical category, one of those nominated is Chita Rivera in her also shuttered career retrospective show, The Dancer’s Life, in which she merely played herself.

Another surprising omission: Antony Sher for surely one of the performances of the year in the Broadway transfer of Primo. Then there are entire productions that have been overlooked, or mostly so: Festen failed to secure a single nomination for its Broadway transfer (and is scheduled to close this weekend), and Disney’s Tarzan and Warner’s Lestat proved that corporate producing might doesn’t translate into Tony recognition.

Britain is in the grip of a mini-Sondheim feast at the moment. Sunday in the Park with George is now in previews for its transfer from the fringe Menier to the West End’s Wyndham’s; and last night a new production of Pacific Overtures opened at Leicester Haymarket, completing a trio of recent Sondheim regional revivals that started off with the Sheffield Crucible’s Assassins and continued with Derby Playhouse’s Into the Woods. And on Sunday, the original cast of Side by Side by Sondheim, the British-originated revue from 1976 that first put the composer’s name into popular currency, are reuniting at the Novello for a one-night benefit performance, too.

The man himself is here, too, and making himself public with talks at both the National Gallery on Friday evening (about Sunday in the Park with George) and for members of the Stephen Sondheim Society on Sunday afternoon. He’s also been giving major press interviews recently, with both last week’s Time Out and today’s Independent carrying big profiles.

It’s creating a welcome buzz around him, and just as he is making himself physically more accessible than usual, the work is being revealed, too, as far more accessible than some of the shows were once perceived to be. Sunday in the Park with George and Pacific Overtures are, together with Passion, probably the most rarefied and ‘difficult’ of his shows, yet both of these productions prove that beneath their cerebral surfaces, the songs pulse with genuine emotion and feeling.

It was thrilling to sit in the Leicester Haymarket at last night’s opening of Pacific Overtures, and see director Paul Kerryson’s ongoing and unflappable commitment to this difficult work come to life again. Kerryson, more than any regional theatre director in the country, has banged the Sondheim drum over the years, producing Merrily We Roll Along, an earlier production of Pacific Overtures, Follies, Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods, Sunday in the Park with George and A Little Night Music there in the space of less than a decade, between 1992 and 2001. But it was also a bittersweet occasion, for this is one of the last in-house productions that the theatre is producing in its current home before it moves out to a new one next summer at the Leicester Performing Arts Centre.

But if the current surge of interest in all things Sondheim is undoubtedly welcome, a new show would be even more welcome – if greedy to ask for! He told The Independent’s Louise Jury that he’s giving Bounce, his last original show that played in Chicago and Washington DC but failed to get to New York, one last look: “I’m doing a final rewrite now, hope to get it on next year, and if not, then not. I’ve spent too much time on it.” But when Time Out’s Jane Edwardes asked him if he still has an appetite for writing, he replied, “No. Since you ask. Age. It’s age. It’s a diminution of energy and the worry that there are no new ideas. It’s also an increasing lack of confidence. I’m not the only one. I’ve checked with other people. People expect more of you and you’re aware of it and you shouldn’t be.”

The cogs of society are, of course, oiled by rumour and gossip, from Westminster to the West End, but politicians – “so greasy and oily/they’re served with a doily”, according to Sweeney Todd’s meat pie recipe – have an excuse: it’s a world that thrives on paranoia and destabilising your opponents by means foul as well as fair.

But to whose benefit, exactly, is it to release theatrical production dates or facts early that turn out to be wrong? I’ve written here before about the reliability, or otherwise, of internet sources of information, and it turns out the dates that I was referring to about The Sound of Music – that the publisher of assured me, in writing, that they had “written – official – confirmation” of, are, in fact, wrong. Whereas they were published as opening on December 5 following previews from November 24, it now turns out that opening night is November 14, following previews from November 3.

Repeated enquiries with the press agent on this occasion had revealed that he didn’t know the earlier dates himself. And for a very good reason, he insisted, as they had not been decided yet. But someone, somewhere decided to turn it into a scoop; and it turns out, a pretty worthless one. Now a correction has been published, claiming the dates have been brought forward; but since they were never announced in the first place, that’s tantamount to accusing the producers of changing their minds even though they’d never made their minds up in the first place.

Sometimes, though, you mustn’t believe yourself, either: just because something is always a particular way, you mustn’t assume that is always the case. Last night I went to Bromley’s Churchill Theatre to see the tour of Grumpy Old Women – an amazing phenomenon, since the men in the audience were outnumbered roughly 10 to 1 – and had built my timetable around the usual Bromley schedule of 7.45pm curtain-ups. As the train pulled in at 7.28pm, I even thought we had ten minutes to stop at the local chippie en route to the theatre. Luckily, when we did, they had the Churchill brochure on the counter – which I picked up, on instinct, to check whether I was indeed right, and it turned out that for the one-nighters, their curtain up is in fact 7.30pm! We fled out of the chippie, and got to the theatre at 7.34pm. In fact, the curtain went up late around 7.40pm, so we weren’t late after all. But it was a close-run thing. And very nearly turned me into a very grumpy old man indeed!

I was in Victoria twice over the weekend: first, on Friday, to join the celebrations for Billy Elliot’s first birthday (at a performance that saw a remarkable reunion for the three boys who originally shared the title role between them on different performances, now sharing the role between them in the same one!), and then again on Saturday to see Movin’ Out again across the street, before it departs early next week, partly because I love it but also because I wanted to see the alternate cast of principal dancers and lead singer that this show, like Billy, similarly employs. (Child employment laws are Billy’s reason, of course; sheer physical demands are the reason for a second cast for Movin’ Out).

The double casting (or in Billy’s case, the quintet of boys sharing the title role that the show now has) doesn’t help the bottom line, I’m sure; but why should one be such a smash hit and the other such an early flop? Since they’re playing side-by-side, you can’t blame location – yes, Victoria is out of the West End, but audiences can and will find their way there if they want to. True, the Apollo Victoria is a big, soulless barn of a place, and doesn’t enhance the detail and exhilaration of Twyla Tharp’s amazing choreography, but put on an ‘event’ here – Starlight Express ran for over a decade and a half – and even its lack of charm is no deterrent. (The charmlessness of the venue is nicely enhanced by the selling of popcorn in the foyer).

Then again there’s the material: Billy Elliot is a genuinely populist, “local” musical, whereas Movin’ Out is very American in spirit and plot, not to mention its hybrid cross-genre structure that tries to disguise promote what is really a contemporary dance show as a musical. But while one has new songs by Elton John and the other old songs by Billy Joel – exact counter-parts as contemporary pop singer-songwriter-piano player icons – there should have been pop cross-over appeal for both.

But ultimately Movin’ Out was a marketing failure, not an artistic one: it never managed to persuade enough people to come. Given that most contemporary dance companies will play a week or two, at most, at Sadler’s Wells or the Peacock, its seven week run in Victoria is a success in those terms; but perhaps an extended summer season at Sadler’s Wells would have been a happier option, as Matthew Bourne’s Edward Scissorhands had over the Christmas season. The venue would have helped audiences know what it was about, but also given it the stamp of cultural approval, too. Sometimes, when a show thinks outside the ‘box’, it needs to climb into one that helps to define what it is.

There’s no accounting for taste, they say: in reviewing as much as in the exercise of artistic policy, taste is always ultimately subjective. Someone may prefer Ray Cooney to Pinter, Lloyd Webber to Sondheim, or Hammerstein over Hart. But the exercise of that taste should, at least, be informed. Theatre is also a broad church, and it is the job of an artistic director, as it is of a critic, to serve as broad a constituency of his potential audience as it is possible to do, while still staying true to himself.

So the news that reaches me, via the Westmorland Gazette in the Lake District, of the artistic director and chief executive of the Brewery Arts Centre suppressing an amateur company’s desire to stage Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel there is very alarming. “We look at the artistic quality and social value and make a judgement accordingly,” the Brewery’s Sam Mason told the paper. “It’s my judgement – that’s what I’m paid to do.” And according to him, “Carousel is too fluffy and has poor musical content.”

Fluffy? A tale of marital abuse and violent death that results from a botched robbery attempt? As for music: a score that contains some of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s most searing and heartfelt numbers, from ‘What’s the Use of Wond’rin” and “If I loved You” to “You’ll Never Walk Alone” and Billy Bigelow’s incredible Soliloquy are amongst the high points of musical theatre writing, ever.

But not according to Mr Mason. When he wrote to the Kendal Amateur Operatic Society’s to inform them of why he deemed the choice of show unacceptable, he got himself into a convoluted discussion about the merits of particular musicals and their suitability for production at the theatre. Amongst the first category he sought to exclude were shows that “nearly every other school/amateur company is producing around the country”, and gave as examples of this “canon of somewhat clichéd productions such as Hello Dolly, South Pacific, Annie, Oklahoma!, The Boyfriend etc etc” Then there’s a second category of regularly produced shows, but which (according to him) “have a somewhat higher artistic, musical or social values such as Fiddler on the Roof, Blood Brothers, Cabaret and maybe even Guys and Dolls (in terms of musical quality)”. A third category comprises musicals that are “less frequently performed which are also interesting for our audience”, like Barnum, Scrooge and Blitz.

According to his letter, “Carousel, The Sound of Music and 42nd Street fit into the first category mentioned above and would offer nothing new or interesting to our audience.” He has, he admits, allowed Kendal College to produce Guys and Dolls at the theatre later this year, but only because “they have assured me that they will do so with a contemporary and challenging interpretation”.

Mr Mason, as chief executive of the Arts Council funded Brewery Arts Centre, clearly sees his role as being guardian to the gates of the type of show that audiences there can be exposed to, as well as to give interesting lectures in his opinions on the particular merits of different musicals. But the question really is whether it’s his personal fiefdom to play with or whether the wishes of the local community, who have themselves chosen to put Carousel on, and that the theatre should serve count for nothing. Instead of changing their choice of show, the group concerned have had to change their venue.

As the chairman of Kendal Amateur Operatic Society (the unfortunately acronym’d KAOS) replied to the theatre, “If Carousel was good enough for the National Theatre in London in 1993, it should be good enough for the Brewery now.” And it’s not as if the audience for it has exactly been saturated by exposure to the show over the years: the last production in Kendal was in 1984.

But the exercise of Mr Mason’s taste to what KAOS can and can’t put on in his venue also has commercial implications for the society: suggesting that the society searches for “more challenging musicals, or musicals which have at least been written in the last 20-30 years and haven’t been seen that frequently”, he even admits the possible consequences: “I would be willing to discuss helping support such an initiative by negotiating your hire fees if you feel the type of show I’ve outlined would not attract such a large audience.”

Artistic directors may have utlimate jurisdiction over their own venues, but it seems sheer folly when they seek to extend that jurisdiction, based on misinformation, onto the choice and tastes of others.

It may be another symptom of global warming, but whereas you once knew it was summer in the theatre (if not in the temperature) when the Open Air Theatre, Regent’s Park opened for business in late May, the timetable has imperceptibly shifted to the beginning of May.

Of course the opening of the Chichester Festival Theatre’s annual summer season (which kicked off this week under a new artistic director and a new play, Entertaining Angels, starring Penny Keith in a perfect match of venue and star that’s a strong marker for locals that its business-as-it-used-to-be there after three years of experimentation by a different artistic regime that emptied the theatre) and the Brighton Festival (this year celebrating its 40th anniversary) have always been early-warning signs of approaching summer. But the big change is the early kick-off for the Shakespeare’s Globe season, which not only begins early – previews began this year on May 5 – but also optimistically ends late, carrying the ‘summer’ through to October 8.

It was press night for their opening production, Coriolanus, last night, and the Globe couldn’t have hoped for a more spectacularly balmy London night. So balmy, in fact, that we got the first sight of another annual London occurrence: the baring of Evening Standard critic Nicholas de Jongh’s “too, too solid pound of flesh” body.

He regularly likes to unbutton to the waist when the summer arrives – I’m sure those who work in offices would like to do the same – and sometimes has been even known to throw off his shirt entirely. There was a remarkable sight at the Playhouse Theatre in the West End three summers ago when the velvet-seated splendour of that theatre was subjected to a naked encounter with his sweaty flesh as he took his shirt off and put it under the seat.

I’m sure that any other theatregoer would be politely asked to keep their clothing on or leave the theatre. Somehow, though, Mr de Jongh claims immunity. Ditto, the disturbances he routinely makes in the theatre – whether chastising fellow theatregoers, or even fellow critics (one of my colleagues was once shouted at for putting a bag beside him that interfered with de Jongh’s legroom; my friend politely told him to go home and look up the ‘c’ word – Courtesy). But though he regularly whispers and passes notes to his companions during performances, if you sit near him and dare to turn a page of your notebook, you get a sharp, irritated look.

About five years ago I wrote a piece on London critics that Nick mysteriously only stumbled upon online a few months ago for the first time. The next time he saw me, he called me to task for what I had written. My partner asked if there was a full moon. When Nick asked why, my partner replied, “Well, you should stop digging in graveyards and digging up old corpses.” But clearly he is tired of being referred to as hard-to-please and acerbic; but those are not, of course, necessarily bad qualities in a critic. But going bare-chested in the stalls is hardly the way to go to work.

SOUND OF MUSIC UPDATE…. Further to my blog entry on Monday drawing attention to news that appears on online sources before it is confirmed by official channels, the source of the story of the “confirmed dates” for The Sound of Music has written to insist that they “do have written – official – confirmation of The Sound of Music dates. The press release may not have been written or approved yet – but then, if I waited for press releases all the time, we wouldn’t break the number of stories that we do .”

But when I checked in with the press agent concerned representing the show again today, he told me that they are still juggling with three different sets of dates for the opening, and although the date reported may indeed be accurate in the end, neither Patrick Murphy of Really Useful nor David Ian of Live Nation that he has spoken to have agreed which of the possibilities – early November, mid November or December – is likely to be the final one. The decision is dependent on the final closure date for Sinatra, currently playing at the London Palladium, that has not yet been settled. Group bookings are, however, already being accepted for the show – from a date, presumably, when they are sure that the production will already be on. But the premature release of the information of the dates suggests that someone’s left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. Could it be that there are too many producers involved here?

It was a peculiar experience sitting on the (newly reintroduced) centre aisle of the Comedy Theatre last night – Nicholas de Jongh will be pleased — for the opening night of Donkey’s Years, set at an Oxbridge college reunion twenty five years after graduation, and notice that of the 14 critics ranged across the seven front rows, over half of us (Charlie Spencer, Benedict Nightingale, Michael Billington, Sheridan Morley Alastair Macaulay, Paul Taylor, Kate Kellaway and myself), to my certain knowledge, could all have attended one of these events ourselves, being all Oxbridge graduates (It could be more: I don’t know where the other six went). One of this number still even lives in Oxford, where he has also taught at the University.

But if critics are drawn from a narrow educational range, here’s something amazing that I discovered a couple of years ago: three of us even came from the same Cambridge college in the same decade! Robert Butler (who used to be critic of the Independent on Sunday), his successor Kate Bassett and myself all attended Corpus Christi, Cambridge in the 1980s. In a small profession to begin with, it’s an extraordinary coincidence that we have all ended up writing about the theatre having all gone to the same college, which also happens to be one of the smallest in the University, with an undergraduate population of not much more than 200 in total across the three years in residence. Perhaps there’s even a play in there somewhere.

Of the play we were watching, however, I did in fact go to a college reunion over ten years ago, ten years on from graduating. It was nothing like the one that occurs in the play – thank goodness – yet also recognised it entirely; Frayn is deliciously on the money about the collective embarrassment factor of such occasions.

Kevin Spacey’s third annual meet-the-press conference to announce future plans at the Old Vic took place this morning, and began in his now customary manner of walking the room and shaking the hand of each journalist there. While the first one two years ago was overshadowed by his “walking the dog” incident that had occurred just days before in which he was relieved of his mobile phone and saw the place under siege from the tabloid press and photographers, today’s far more civilised press conference, held on the theatre’s stage, was overshadowed by a dog of a production, Resurrection Blues, that recently closed early here and has left the theatre dark with no further productions announced for the five months up to September.

Some sections of the British press, from the Guardian to the Evening Standard, have since written very critically about him. The Standard’s theatre critic Nicholas de Jongh queried aloud whether Spacey should remain in office, and which the paper’s ES magazine followed up with a four page story last Friday whose point was hugely undermined by serial inaccuracies in the reporting of it that amongst other absurd claims referred to the “fact” that most West End theatres have between 300 and 600 seats in comparison to the much larger Old Vic, whereas in fact it’s only the smallest couple of theatres that fall within that range.

But today Spacey was once again in fighting form, not just putting a positive spin on things but also being positive about being positive: “I am here for the long haul, and while it may be true that a positive attitude doesn’t solve all your problems, it will probably just annoy enough people to make it look good,” he said. And he insists that the criticism won’t knock him off course, either: “I would say this to you in all honesty: it will never matter what anyone ever says. I will never, ever stop believing that this is a good idea, that my being here has more positives than negatives. The truth is this, if you believe in something nothing you can dissuade you from doing it. I knew I’d be under scrutiny — that comes with the job. That just seems to be the way it happens, and we accept that. But we’re answerable to our audiences, to the 425,000 people who came into this building in the first 18 months. That figure is a good one to note, but we don’t hang our hat on it – we simply note it and say that is the first step in what we feel is an encouraging route to starting to build a loyal and returning audience to the Old Vic”.

But though he won’t listen to critics, he’s taking encouraging signs, at least, towards listening to some others: he also announced that he’s appointed three Associates, Edward Hall, Matthew Warchus and Anthony Page, to the theatre (with more to follow), who, in addition to directing on its stage, will also “provide creative counsel to the theatre company and contribute to its artistic development.”

At the National, Nick Hytner has surrounded himself with a core of such associates, from actors and writers to directors, who contribute to the artistic processes that takes place inside the building. No theatre need be a democracy – certainly not one that is entirely privately funded like the Old Vic is, and who can therefore entrust the theatre’s fortunes, or lack thereof, to whoever they wish – but it’s certainly helpful to draw on outside experience and expertise. That’s what has been lacking at the Old Vic until now, where neither Spacey nor his producer David Liddiment have a track record in running theatres, but they are at last learning that theatre is a collaborative art.

I have commented before here about how theatre critics are sometimes left chasing their tails over clashing first nights and the sheer quantity of new productions that are available to review every week. Though the ‘broadsheet’ national dailies mostly still retain two staff theatre critics, the Sundays — of which I am one — are one-man (or rather, mostly one-woman) bands. And quite apart from the pressures of time to do it all alone, there’s also the immense pressure of space in which to cover what we actually get to see anyway. Several of my Sunday colleagues simply adopt a practical strategy: they will only ever see three shows in a week, or four at an absolute push, and that’s that. The rest must fall by the wayside.

But if we’re having to be necessarily selective, it was interesting to see that for film critics it’s potentially even worse. According to a feature in The Observer yesterday, Jason Solomons writes that “during the past two months films have come not as weekly releases but as a deluge. I have counted 109 in my diary since the beginning of March. A fortnight ago, no fewer than 12 films were released.”

In a paragraph that I entirely identified with, he writes, “I’ve hardly got time to see them all and it’s my job, so Lord knows how you, the occasional moviegoer or even the most avid cinephile, can keep up.” And he gets to the nub of the problem that results, which again has resonances for those of us covering a saturated theatre beat: “Weeks during which 12 films are released seem to me to be to no one’s advantage. Critics, stuck for space, either ignore a few of the lower profile releases (this goes for the quality press as well as the tabloids) or they barely have room to write the title, mention a couple of actors and say something pithy, damning or otherwise. Editors, like cinema owners, want something flashy with which to lead their pages, so the quieter, perhaps better-quality films without big star photos to illustrate them, tend to get little room.”

But at least films have a potentially limitless shelf life, regardless of their initial reception or lack of it, thanks to DVD, and may one day find their audience. There’s no such luxury for the ignored theatre production: it’s here today, gone tomorrow. And it’s distressing sometimes to have to merely offer a few encouraging words to a show at the Lyric Hammersmith, Gate, Menier, Bush or Royal Court Upstairs, in the midst of longer reviews for the latest star vehicles in the West End. But I do, at least, try to get to as many of them as I can, whether or not I can actually do them justice in print. At least, as Jason suggests, I can pithily mention them.

As with the Edinburgh Fringe, it’s impossible to see everything on the London circuit, let alone trying to get to the regions as well from time to time, as I also do. Good work surely gets lost; but somehow, as with Edinburgh, a consensus does seem to emerge that brings the best things to attention.

Where do you draw the line nowadays between gossip and news, fact and fantasy? In the age of Heat, Pop Bitch and Sky News, celebrity ‘news’ becomes fact simply because it’s published or reported, however unreliably, on one of those outlets. But in the microcosmic world of the theatre, where every box office and casting office nowadays seems hotlined to the website discussion boards, a new kind of “fact-ion” is coming into circulation, where the news emerges first, not by formal announcement, but by internet gossip.

Even the press offices appear bewildered: today I saw a reputable theatre website reporting the “official” dates of The Sound of Music coming to the West End’s London Palladium, but when I checked with the show’s PR personally, he was amazed. He’d asked the producers concerned earlier today himself, and was told there was still none confirmed. Somehow, the internet knows more than the press office or even, it seems, the producer’s office!

The same thing happened last week when I saw another story confirming the full London cast for Evita on another site. Again, I checked with the show’s PR, who simply sent me the press release I already had, giving me the names of the three principals. When I replied that the website concerned seemed to have more, he replied that that was all he had….

The gradual release of names that have been signed for the London opening of Wicked in September has been the same thing. Speculation has been rife in the chatrooms; and when I’ve sought confirmation, it seems that the names mentioned have indeed been seen for the show. But nothing had been signed, and indeed, several of the names strongly mooted haven’t ended up in the roles they were being mooted for.

I guess we’ve always been warned not to believe everything we read in the papers; but even more discretion needs to apply out there in the online world, which of course is anything but discreet.

As a professional theatregoer – one who has made going to the theatre not only my passion but also my job – nothing irritates me more often than my fellow audience members. Of course the theatre doesn’t exist without them – this is not, after all, something I can do alone like painting or is something designed for my sole pleasure! – so I need to get over my narcissistic tendencies, as my psychotherapist friend Dr Barbra Devere would say. And maybe I have become over-sensitive and too finely tuned to distraction over the years.

I’ve certainly got my antennae on alert for where the problems might come from. My heart often sinks, for instance, at the sight of school parties – even as I realise that it was going to the theatre as part of a school party myself, aged around 14, that turned me on to the theatre in the first place. Perhaps there’s a budding me amongst them (yes, Dr Barbra, I can see the narcissism again). Or very young children with their parents: the parents usually being the problem here (it’s when parents feel it is necessary to keep up a running commentary with their children and keep a constant dialogue going that problems arise; it’s the parents, not the kids, who do the talking). Or, God forbid, babes in arms – how can they possibly be expected not to cry? (Yet in Providence, Rhode Island, legislators are actually even now considering a bill to enable mothers who are breastfeeding their infants, under 1 years old, to bring them to the theatre and other live performances for free. Myself, I’m the US politician who told the Providence Journal this week, “They should be paying double for the disturbance they’re creating”).

Then there are the sweet wrapper brigade, and once again, shame falls on the theatres that actually sell the crinkly sort. Heavens, Live Nation’s theatres even sell popcorn. (Imagine sitting in front of someone munching popcorn through a show; it’s bad enough when it happens at the cinema). And of course, there’s the perennial problem of mobile phones that are not only left on to ring (and yes, I’ve previously blogged that I did this myself not too long ago; heck, I can even irritate myself!), but are actually sometimes answered. Or people who keep up texting through a show (I’ve previously blogged about how I once saw the artistic director of Dublin’s Gate Theatre doing this throughout a Donmar Warehouse Chekhov first night). The list goes on.

I can see that theatres want to be inclusive and tick as many access boxes as possible, but my 250-mile round trip to Derby yesterday to see a very good new production of Into the Woods was very nearly ruined by the theatre’s own rather over-zealous attempts to do so. Under the EDS Hot Tickets scheme – a programme of audience development that seeks to bring people who may have never been to the live theatre before – a group of severely mentally disabled people were admitted in wheelchairs, and their chorus of involuntary yelps and moans kept punctuating the action. But Sondheim’s songs require a concentration, on both the part of the performer and audience, that are fatally disturbed by such intrusions. When the frequency and volume of the moans increased to such a pitch that it was impossible to ignore them anymore, I finally left the auditorium to find a house manager to deal with it, who was apparently in her office. In the interval, it was explained to me that the theatre’s community liaison department had discussed the possible disruptions with the party’s leader in advance, but they couldn’t be known as the party hadn’t been to the theatre before.

But the theatre could and should have taken more responsibility for the rest of their paying audience: why wasn’t the situation being monitored inside the auditorium by the house manager? It shouldn’t have taken my intervention to finally get it sorted out.

The regions have always been a fertile training ground for actors, directors and stage managers, but most especially for theatre producers who – from Cameron Mackintosh and Bill Kenwright to Paul Elliot and Duncan Weldon – have learnt their business by putting the show on the road. But more than that, touring is a serious business that not only keeps the cogs of the British theatre wheel turning, taking theatre to places that don’t make their own but have receiving houses that want more than tribute bands and comics, but also offers young(er) producers a business model that makes them actually welcome rather than seeks to rip them off.

Rather than paying £20,000 a week just for a canopy in the West End – plus the extortionate other range of costs that the so-called prestige of appearing there incurs – the reverse roles of supply and demand apply on the road, where the theatres are happy of the product and like to keep their doors open, so they often offer guarantees that are sufficient to make sure that the producer can at least cover his payroll. The product also tours without being subjected to the same critical scrutiny that it might get in the West End – though there are local critics, their impact is not as potentially severe as a London mob baying for blood.

On the road, different commercial and critical imperatives apply: product needs to be sold on the strength of branding and name value, since there’s not enough time to establish reputation or word-of-mouth alone across a single playing week. No wonder the titles of touring plays and musicals, as well as the faces of their casts, often have a familiar feel: they give audiences something to relate to.

All of these thoughts occurred to me last night while watching a new touring stage version of Strangers on a Train, adapted from the Patricia Highsmith novel that is best known as a 1951 Hitchcock film, and features a cast that includes Alex Ferns (EastEnders), Will Throp (Casualty, Strictly Come Dancing), Colin Baker (one-time Dr Who), Leah Bracknell (Emmerdale) and Anita Harris. Declaration of interest: I’ve known producer Kenny Wax for years – since he was a runner at West End ad agency Dewynters in the late 80s — but it’s been fascinating watching him build his business steadily and craftily. Yes, there have been missteps along the way, as over-ambition has inevitably taken its toll – an ill-fated original West End musical Maddie and a premature revival of Neil LaBute’s The Shape of Things, among them – but he’s now found a serious niche, and established a real business, in the touring market, putting high quality shows on the road with a big recognition factor.

Hence, he’s toured star casts in Arsenic and Old Lace and a stage version of Rosamunde Pilcher’s The Shell Seekers; these are so successful he’s about to take them out for a second and third tour, respectively. He’s also got tours going out of children’s properties, The Gruffalo and Stuart Little. He clearly doesn’t need the West End; but maybe the West End, in fact, needs him.