Horses for courses…. vs seeking a broader appeal….

As he said to me when I interviewed him back in 2003, “I’m quite happy to programme in such a way that sections of the wider audience may be dismayed by particular shows; but I don’t want to programme for only one section of the greater national public.” Nor only to play to one: the thinking behind the Travelex season, he told me then, was that while the theatre has long offered ticket reductions to the under 25s and the over 60s, “now it’s time to look after that vast group in the middle, who don’t come that often because they can’t afford to”.

Both of these philosophies have paid off in spades. But the fact is that the National can afford to look at both segmenting and expanding its audiences in this way, too. It performs plays in repertoire, not on continuous runs, and for relatively limited runs (The History Boys excepted!); it has also achieved valuable commercial sponsorship from Travelex – who are committed to it for a sixth year next year already – to help pay for it. Commercial producers have none of these luxuries.

The Holy Grail of the commercial theatre – and its future – lies in appealing to younger audiences. A feature in the New York Times last week looked at the demographic of the new “tween” audience that turned shows like Wicked into hits, but notes how, “while teenagers and tweens may be helpful in creating a hit, they are far from enough to ensure one. For that, you still need grown-ups — lots of paying grown-ups — to want to come to a show.”

As Broadway producer Bob Boyett points out, repeat business amongst the tween group “is a big deal and it does help you. But you have to go for a broad audience.” While the National can look to fulfil its desire to be national across its entire repertoire, commercial producers need to keep the ‘broad’ in Broadway (and sometimes the broads, too: another demographic beyond the tween audience has long been ab out trying to appeal to tired businessmen).

This is born out by the experience of Wicked. David Stone, one of its producers, leads the New York Times to comment, “A show cannot become a major hit solely or even mostly by appealing to a niche audience, teen or otherwise. Surveys taken of Wicked audiences showed that while the number of attendees under 18 was about double the average, they still made up less than one-fifth of the audiences over all (a full quarter of the audiences were over 50).”

Perhaps, instead, the tween audience merely help to get the ball rolling: they “can kick-start a show, pushing it toward a broad audience.” As the New York Times goes on to point out, “A successful show on Broadway has to attract people who are, first, in or visiting New York and, second, willing to spend a good deal of money. That’s already a pretty small crowd. Slicing it any further is risky.”

The producers of a stage musical version of Little Women two years ago learnt the hard way: designed to appeal to mothers and daughters, it quickly ran out of audience. Its producer Randall Wreghitt acknowledged, “I think we tend to want to say a certain demographic is the reason for a show being popular, but it can’t be. It has to be a real cross section.”

And that’s the challenge for the West End, too. Maintaining a broad spectrum of appeal in a world where specific niche interests are being so carefully mined and nurtured is difficult: once we had three (and then eventually five) terrestrial channels; now we have literally hundreds of satellite choices, too. Perhaps the terrestrial channels of the West End needs to catch up with the digital age, or they’ll be left behind forever.