At Monday’s Evening Standard Theatre Awards, the paper’s editor Veronica Wadley gave a newly instituted ‘editor’s award’ to Frost/Nixon after the award judges fail to recognise it in any of the categories for which it was nominated, pointing out that there was “an excessive amount of musicals in the West End” and noting, “Never before has the West End faced such a challenge.” In a news feature in the paper last week, arts reporter Tom Teodorczuk wrote a feature, The Big West End Showdown, that analysed the crisis in which, as he put it, “Blockbuster musicals are in danger of driving straight plays out of the West End”. He goes on to demonstrate the gulf between plays and musicals: its not just a question of numerical strength but also the financial dominance of the musical. While the top ten musicals, he says, are carrying advances of at least £64.1m and are playing on average to 90% capacity, the most successful of the plays – Stoppard’s Rock ‘n’ Roll – is playing to 80%, and tickets for the few plays that are on are freely available. He quotes one theatrical insider saying, “Plays are living from day-to-day and the success of musicals is not running off on them - if anything it is the opposite.”
Matthew Byam-Shaw, producer of Frost/Nixon, says, “There has been a pile-up of musicals that has led to a car crash for the straight play. You have got to be really brave to put on a play at the moment. It’s most likely got to have a Hollywood star in it or a British theatrical dame and I don’t know whether either of them can survive in this climate. I think Frost/Nixon will be an enormous success but if it closes early I’ll give up.”
According to producer Clare Lawrence, the Hollywood star syndrome isn’t enough. “Five years ago people were excited to see a Hollywood star on stage but now the bar has been raised. We’re all finding it hard to compete.” And Sonia Friedman, producer of Rock ‘n’ Roll and Donkeys’ Years, adds, “It’s being called a golden age for the West End but it’s actually a golden age for musicals. Audiences are spoilt for choice, which is absolutely fantastic, but it’s made us pause for thought. We have to find different ways to be noticed.”
All of which is intriguingly born out by the two plays I have just seen this week in the West End. Since I was in New York last week, I missed the return of Amy’s View, and caught up with it on Tuesday at the Garrick. David Hare’s searing drama fascinatingly plays devil’s advocate with the idea of the irrelevance of theatre to the modern age, with one of its characters suggesting that its time has passed – “for my generation, going to the theatre doesn’t seem relevant”, he says, and which – as you sit in the crumbling, tatty surrounds of the Garrick Theatre with its peeling plasterwork, ancient carpets, creaking seats and oddly musty smells – you can sadly start to identify with. But then the play itself proves its own magnificent validation of the power of the theatre itself in a blazingly emotional confrontation between the mother and daughter in the second act, played at full tilt by Felicity Kendal and Jenna Russell, that connects you to it as you would nowhere else. And when Kendal refers to the passing of an underground train underneath, as if on cue one did indeed rumble beneath: a moment of theatrical and real life blissfully colliding. There’s something quietly and devastatingly moving, too, about an actress like Kendal – who has devoted much of her life and career to the theatre – acknowledging earlier on, “Let’s play to the people who like it – and if there aren’t many, so be it.”
On Tuesday, there were quite a few of us who liked it – but maybe not enough to turn a profit anymore. The upper circle was shut, and the stalls maybe two-thirds full. But as long as plays and productions as good as this are on in the West End, all is not yet quite lost. But then last night saw the opening of the import of a feeble flop from Broadway, Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks, and you begin to wonder again. Despite the enticing casting of veteran actress Claire Bloom and Hollywood hunk Billy Zane, this show sends the prospects for the straight play hurtling straight back to oblivion. What were the Haymarket – who’ve produced the play themselves via TRH Productions – thinking?
You make an interesting point about the challenges that plays face in the West End. However, I have to say - I don't think the current crop of theatre critics in the national press are helping. They seem to be negative about most productions.
I find myself in agreement with the opinion expressed on Terri's West End Blog, here:
http://westend.wordpress.com/2006/12/01/is-six-dance-lessons-in-six-weeks-enough/
I haven't seen Six Dance Lessons In Six Weeks. It may not be the best production in the history of theatre. But, if we want more straight plays in the West End, and fewer lowest common denominator musicals, it might be nice if the press considered actually supporting the people that want to put on straight plays... rather than being negative (almost) all the time...
Recently saw Six Dance Lessons here in Sydney, and I thought the show was great. It was performed by two of Australias' 'most loved peformers' Nancye Hayes and Todd McKenney. The script was on the light side but I thought it also very clever. I particularly liked the way he set up situations - like the 'illness' of the teacher - where the audience makes its decision about what is wrong with him in the same way as does the elderly woman character, only to have the assuption exposed for what it is, cliched biggotry. Certainly not a play of great intellectual challenge but a it has a very warm heart and seemed very satisfying for the audience I saw it with - average age 55? and mainly female.