Is the West End play glass half full… or half empty?

It depends, once again, on whom you read. I’ve already blogged here about the new West End play seeming to be hurtling towards oblivion, after last week’s opening of the feeble Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks. But the opening on Monday of another new play, John Kolvenbach’s Love Song (albeit imported from Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Theatre, where it was premiered in a different production earlier in the year), has given many of my colleagues the chance to ruminate on the state of play regarding plays there.

And it really depends on whether you like this play or not. For the Daily Telegraph’s Charlie Spencer, it’s another encouraging sign that there’s life in the old dog yet: His review begins more like an editorial, in which he analyses the current situation – “in fact, serious drama has been thin on the ground in the commercial theatre for years now, with most plays beginning in the subsidised sector and transferring only if producers think they can make a tidy profit out of them” – but then says, “while it’s true that musicals have dominated the West End in 2006, drama has actually fared surprisingly well,” and he names Rock ‘n’ Roll, Donkeys’ Years, Frost/Nixon and the imminent return of The History Boys (“where it will doubtless prove a smasheroo all over again”) in support of this. By the time he finally comes to Love Song, he uses it for more evidence of his thesis: “This encouraging trend continues with John Kolvenbach’s outstanding Love Song, cannily cast by the producer Sonia Friedman, and unmistakably announcing itself as one of the best new plays of the year”. But he adds ominously, “If this smashing, compassionate new play fails to take the town, then there really will be cause for concern in the West End.” So we better believe it – and support it or the West End really does die.”

But the Evening Standard’s Nicholas de Jongh sounds a far more cautious critical note: “Producer Sonia Friedman valiantly battles to save straight plays from being edged out of a West End where theatre-owners crave musicals. I doubt, though, whether her latest import, in the sentimental-romantic shape of John Kolvenbach’s comic whimsy from America, will ring many bells”

And for Matt Wolf, “The need for good new plays on a dramatically parched West End is only amplified by the arrival of Love Song, in which an attractive cast and some very deft direction do what they can to shore up John Kolvenbach’s smug and sentimental script.”

In other words, the West End play glass is half-full or empty depending on whom you read. It’s the job of a critic, of course, to argue a position from wherever they stand on it, but it’s difficult to draw conclusions based on such a small sampling of new plays that have managed to break through the iron wall of musicals currently reigning. But if we tend to contradict each other on that – and since when were critics merely tipsters, anyway, offering a thumbs-up or down for commercial prospects? – it was also fascinating to notice just how often Elwood P. Dowd got mentioned in despatches. Both The Guardian’s Michael Billington and the Times’ Benedict Nightingale mentioned the rabbit-inventing hero of Mary Chase’s classic play Harvey in their opening sentences, and in turn go on to give away a key part of the plot here as a result. Benedict makes no apology: “Am I giving away one of the play’s surprises by revealing that Molly is a phantasm? Not really.” And Michael concludes: “This is simply Harvey for hipsters with a burglar replacing a bunny.”

But are critics the pallbearers to the death of the new plays – or are we actually responsible for this state of affairs? A correspondent to my previous blog on this subject wrote to say, “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.” He then referred me to another blog (http://westend.wordpress.com/2006/12/01/is-six-dance-lessons-in-six-weeks-enough/), where the author writes: “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…” The trouble is that we have to call it as we see it, or the reviews become meaningless. And if the author of the blog in question hadn’t actually seen Six Dance Lessons, he is not entirely qualified to call that negativity into question.