Only the other day I was railing against theatre programmes and wishing they were free, as well as wondering about the other mark-ups, like restoration charges, that are being widely levied now. Visiting Richmond Theatre yesterday, as I often do for Wednesday matinees, I discovered that the programme for Romantic Comedy may have contained colour production pictures and quite a bit of extra editorial on the play, too (a four-page interview with playwright Bernard Slade, two more of quotes on love triangles, and four more on famous marital mismatches), but star Tom Conti had elected not to have the customary bio at all.
Instead, he filled his page with a piece he’d written himself on some of the physical dangers of being onstage that he’s sometimes encountered. Its an interesting departure, but it also reeks of arrogance: it seems to be saying, you all know who I am because that’s what has brought you here, so let me “share” something personal with you instead.
You have to go to the show’s promotional leaflet to get the bio, where we discover, “With Dame Judi Dench, he was recently voted most popular actor in the West End in the last 25 years.” The source of that vote isn’t named, however, and googling it only turns up the same phrase on the websites of theatres where the play is touring to. Conti’s own website (www.tomconti.co.uk) doesn’t name the source, either, merely saying it was voted in 2002 by “theatregoers”. And intriguingly, his five-screen bio at the website of his agents, www.finchandpartners.com, only contains his film and TV credits, not his theatre credits at all, so the means by which he earned his West End popularity vote isn’t even alluded to, however extensive that biography may be.
Though the play requires him to strip to his underwear for an onstage massage makes him clearly uncomfortable (he tries to do it backwards and lie on the massage table without exposing another view of the man boobs we’ve already seen earlier), it otherwise suits his languid, hang-dog charm spot-on. (And at least he hasn’t had to learn new lines: he previously did this play, when he was presumably a bit leaner, at the Apollo Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue in 1983.)
Still, even if Tom was uncomfortable, at least I wasn’t: I usually try to sit in the stalls at Richmond Theatre, but on this occasion nothing was available down there (Conti definitely still has box office pull in these parts), so I was in the dress circle, which I discovered has been entirely reseated. Now, even if the plays are often still creaky, the seats aren’t; and more than that, they’ve also re-raked them slightly, by installing the new seating on new plinths throughout the circle to elevate them a bit. The stalls are apparently next. But meanwhile, its every paying customer in the theatre who is actually financing the improvements: since last December, as The Stage reported at the time and I pointed out here, Richmond has been one of the ATG houses to levy an additional “restoration” charge of £1 per ticket. At least the money is actually being spent, but it’s time everyone got the benefits….
