A theatrical OCD….

No, that’s not a typo — I’m not referring to OCR’s (original cast recordings), but to OCD – Obsessive Compulsive Disorder – which a friend the other day wondered whether I was suffering from. Let me explain: he said this as I was on my way to see Evita for the second Friday running, having also gone the previous Friday – and I will be going to see it yet again this coming Friday, too. That’s in addition to the opening night I reviewed – and an earlier return visit I paid to the show, too.

But seeing it again – and again and again – over this compressed period has been about pure pleasure: I go to the theatre most nights of the week (and weekend, too, if possible), and it’s not always for things I want to see, but rather the things I need to. The joy of going to something like Evita is that it’s for a production I love, and want to share with friends. (And I should add that I put my money where my enthusiasm is, because I actually pay for each of these visits, albeit on the half price offers that are floating around at the moment. I’ve previously blogged here about how producer Bill Kenwright has called me a f*ing junkie – a “review” I intend to have engraved on my tombstone, so I obviously agree!)

I loved Evita at the first night at first sight, but seeing it each successive time has allowed my enthusiasm for it to grow still deeper and richer, just as the production has, too. I’m thrilled both by the operatic grandeur of Michael Grandage’s incredibly rich and opulent staging, and by the seductive choreography of Rob Ashford which (though it steals both a little — and sometimes a lot — from his ‘Havana’ and ‘Luck Be a Lady’ steps from Guys and Dolls) weaves a tapestry of tango-inflected movement around the show as nothing since the original Grand Hotel (as opposed to the Grandage one at the Donmar) did. But most of all, I’m thrilled by the firebrand performance of Elena Roger in the title role. She’s no great beauty and her articulation is sometimes as indistinct as her voice is sometimes shrill; but there’s such presence and vibrancy that she offers one of the most exciting musical theatre leading performances I have ever seen. I can’t wait to see it again this Friday.

Yet the production will have run for less than a year when it closes the next day. And it now looks likely that the Broadway transfer of the National’s Coram Boy will also shutter this coming weekend. It’s another example, like last year’s transfer of Festen, of a critically lauded London success failing to live up to its reputation on Broadway. (But whereas Festen on Broadway was nowhere near as good as it had been in London, I actually thought Coram Boy was even better there than here). It does, however, once again highlight crucial differences between the two capitals of the English-speaking theatrical world; just as the Pulitzer and Tony Award winning plays I Am My Own Wife and Wit failed to take the town over here, either. (And let’s not forget, however hard we try, Fuddy Meers – a comedy about an amnesiac — that came briefly to the Arts).

In the midst of shows like this over which I enthused, others – like We Will Rock You, that last Monday celebrated its 5th birthday in the West End – have rocked on despite the negative opinions of myself or most of my colleagues. Is there a bigger rebuke to the power of the critics than this? Are we so out-of-touch with popular taste? Nick Hytner, of course, already thinks some of my more senior older male colleagues may be so, and in yesterday’s Observer, its (female) critic Susannah Clapp seems to think that some of us don’t get out — or at least ABOUT — enough: that our job is partly about providing “some recognition of overall trends in the theatre” — such as the development of movement theatre that A Matter of Life and Death exemplies, “which until now has been mostly seen on the Fringe, where it has regularly disproved the idea that theatre audiences are always over 40. I’ve had some of my best experiences in the theatre watching it. Over at the Telegraph, Charles Spencer has had some of his worst.” This leads Susannah to write that Hytner’s “outburst has been useful: it has focused attention on the difference among critics not just about a particular show, but about a whole range of work.”

Susannah does indeed regularly go off-beam in the shows she gives coverage to, preferring to review a site-specific piece in a forest to a safe West End show. But those shows aren’t as easy for her readers to see (and are not only geographically more inaccessible but also have often ended their runs by the time her review appears). And it’s a crucial part of the job to serve our readers: I’m fully aware that a regional tour of, say, Boogie Nights or One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest with Shane Ritchie will reach more of my readers (and be of more interest to them) than a play at Soho or the the Bush. But I try to give at least a mention to a little show in a 100-seater studio like Trafalgar Studios, where Terre Haute is currently playing and is one of the best plays in London at the moment, even as the bulk of my column yesterday covered the birthday celebrations of We Will Rock You and the West End return of Fame.

I had a better time at the Bush (where I saw Elling) and the Trafalgar Studios, but the pressures of lack of space and my readership dictated that I paid more attention to the other shows than these. But even as I loved Elling and Terre Haute, I realise they offer no competition to the commercial behemoths I had to cover.

Still, the big shows can fend for themselves, regardless of their critical reception. The original production of The Sound of Music was critically reviled. And during its out-of-town try-out, Oklahoma! – the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical widely credited with revolutionising the Broadway musical – famously had its commercial chances assessed, not by a critic but by a rival producer Mike Todd, as “No girls, no gags, no chance.”

Calling the critical shots, as it’s our job to do, we do run the danger not just of “getting it wrong” like Mr Todd did, but also of influencing each other. I finally caught up with The Thing About Men at the King’s Head yesterday, and I have to say I went with a heavy heart after reading the opinions of some of my colleagues. But it was a seriously pleasant surprise: a quirky, clever musical about infidelity and male friendship and the unusual bisection of the two as a cuckolded husband (who was philandering himself) bonds with his wife’s new lover. In one of the classiest productions seen at the King’s Head for some time, a first-rate West End cast of Hal Fowler and Nicola Dawn as the married couple, Tim Rogers as the wife’s new lover, and Paul Baker and Tiffany Graves hilariously covering an assortment of other characters, give it a smart and sassy treatment.