Would you do anything for Oliver!? Well, I performed the ultimate sacrifice myself – I stayed in on a Saturday night to watch the edition of I’d Do Anything that introduced the finalists; but then I was in Brighton over the wind-swept bank holiday weekend, and it was warmer inside than out.
While the earlier two rounds of casting by reality BBC TV shows had produced Connie Fisher (professionally trained but had hitherto been professionally unemployed) and Lee Mead (who had already had understudy roles in the West End under his belt), it is now starting to look like this is merely a professional audition in front of the TV cameras: one finalist, Francesca Jackson, has even had a principal role in the West End, appearing as Joanne in the recent production of Rent Remixed, girlfriend to Maureen – who happened to be played by Denise van Outen, one of the judges of this show. Is this a conflict of interest, or just a natural extension of how showbusiness works anyway?
But then some commentators are starting to notice that there are other even more serious potential commercial conflicts of interest going on.
While Lloyd Webber got a double commercial benefit as producer of the first two shows – since the BBC effectively provided free prime-time advertising for both of them (and he even additionally earned a weekly fee for his appearances as a judge) – this time he’s landlord of the theatre it will run at: as Richard Brooks noted in his Sunday Times column on the weekend, “The BBC seems to have an `I’d Do Anything’ attitude towards helping Andrew Lloyd Webber’s West End musicals… The BBC says there is no conflict of interest with I’d Do Anything because Oliver! is a Cameron Mackintosh production. Yet Lloyd Webber will still benefit financially – the show is planned for the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, which he owns. A production there will earn at least £60,000 a week in rent and other fees.”
As Baz Bamigboye has noted in his Daily Mail column, “Essentially, the BBC is using public money to finance private enterprise - and you can’t buy the kind of blanket coverage a BBC prime-time show such as I’d Do Anything or How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria? provides.” And Baz asks, “Why haven’t we heard anything from the BBC Trust about this curious connection? Andrew Lloyd Webber, who it must be said is an astute guru on these things, and his Really Useful Theatre Group seem to be involved, one way or another, with all these TV talent shows.” Brooks reveals that the Trust are indeed now to investigate: “At last, the BBC’s pallyness towards Lloyd Webber is to be referred to the BBC Trust. Don Foster, the Liberal Democrats’ culture and media spokesman, has formally asked the watchdog to investigate.”
Meanwhile, the Mail on Sunday tracked down the original film Nancy, Shani Wallis, to a “dingy, rented apartment in one of the less salubrious neighbourhoods of Los Angeles”, to investigate something else: how, having been short-changed in her post-Nancy career aspirations, she has been passed over yet again, this time by the producers of I’d Do Anything: “I would have given anything to have been a judge on the show. Who better than the original Nancy to help cast the new girl? But my phone didn’t even ring. It was pretty devastating not even to be considered”, she is reported as saying. If you don’t ask, of course, you don’t get, so she asked – and, according to the Mail on Sunday, “she was offered only a one-minute pre-recorded slot to say exactly six words”. (She would have had to speak very slowly to fill a minute, in that case).
But the most curious revelation of all came again in Baz Bamigboye’s column last Friday: apparently the director of Oliver!, using the same designs and choreography as Sam Mendes’ 1994 production, will not be Mendes or even a staff director who worked on that staging, but none other than Rupert Goold. Surely Goold – currently riding high as the Olivier Award winning director of Macbeth that has begins previews on Broadway this Friday, and also has a new production The Last Days of Judas Iscariot previewing at the Almeida the very next day – has other things to do than recreate an existing production?
According to Bamigboye, “Goold will be allowed to put his stamp on the project, through his work with the cast.” But since he won’t have even chosen two of its principal components – either Nancy (chosen by the great British public) or the trio of boys who will share the title role (chosen by the judges) – and design and choreography are also already set, just how much can he do? Goold also has a full-time theatre company, Headlong, to run. But then he also has a wife and two-year old son to support – even if Kate Fleetwood, as his Lady M, will be earning a substantial fee on Broadway….
But what could the possible consequence of an investigation into the ALW be? Free tickets to the show for all who vote? Nah, that might take money out of his pocket. Or a slap on the wrist to him and a promise of more transparency in this sort of situation in the future? Meaningless but far more likely.
These "reality" shows are nothing more than promotional vehicles for their respective stage productions - but that's been clear from the start. And as you wisely pointed out they don't really result in anything that is a valuable contribution to the theatre culture - revivals of shows that have long since past their sell by date? Please! Why not have a show that casts a "new" West End musical ? Or that develops new talent? Or that takes some sort of risk? Risk from ALW? Not a chance.
As far as I'm concerned, anything that gets musical theatre on the TV is a good thing - I'd rather people were watching this than Pop Idol, as at least there's a chance it will convince some people to look at other shows...
And as for the commercial conflict of interest, why doesn't the BBC negotiate a cut of the theatre takings for shows like this? At least that way, it would benefit from the success of the show?
Not wishing to be pedantic, Miss Wallis, but you are not the original Nancy. I believe that honour belongs to Georgia Brown, both on the West End and Broadway. I am sure there have been lots of Nancies who have taken to the stage since but Georgia was the first.
Rupert Goold will be a busy man indeed. Judas Iscariot at the Almeida, then Pirandello at Chichester, No Man's Land in Dublin and King Lear at the Liverpool Everyman all to fit in beforehand...
Personally I totally disagree with this type of show. If ALW was choosing the winner himself, fair enough. But to allow a public vote to decide someone's future? Ridiculous. Look at Connie Fisher. She couldn't hack the pace.
Couldn't hack the pace? She got ill. She wasn't the first actor to be unwell and certainly won't be the last. Lee Mead, for example, has had a couple of breaks due to illness. Nobody suggested that he can't hack the pace. Is it because Connie's female, and Lee is a bloke?
Personally, I think there's something far more honest about casting via a TV talent show (however flawed that process is) than there is in planting Summer Strallen in a teen soap as a means of promoting The Sound of Music. At least the former process does invite the audience to think of musical theatre performers as requiring skill and talent. Hollyoaks regularly portrayed characters who are trained actors (both Strallen's character Summer Shaw and Stephanie Dean) as vain, shallow, self-obsessed creatures -- until they were needed for a crafty bit of product placement.
TV had always had the two way effect. Any artiste who appears on TV earns better money for live shows.
As long as it makes good TV & no-one is being conned on phone-lines then bring it on.
There has been much debate about the BBC show I'd Do Anything this week and I have to say that I applaud Kevin Spacey's timely comments. The show is nothing but a commercial for a theatre product - and as such doesn't fall within the reach of the BBC charter.
However, it seems to me that all of the various musical theatre shows on the BBC raise a different question, one which requires commentators to look closely at what has become a monopoly on theatres and product in the West End. Lloyd Webber and Mackintosh pretty much hold the keys to the musical theatre kingdom in the west-end and as such must share some of the blame for the stagnant state that new musicals are in at the moment. If one looks to America and sees the current Broadway crop of new shows, one has to ask why is this, shows there are supported by not-for-profit theatres that encourage development and younger writers who can reach out to a younger audience (Rent & Avenue Q both had their initial development at NFP's) where in London can a writer of musicals find that support? With their resources and theatre spaces surely one of these two industry leaders could start a festival, possibly for a month or two in one of their houses for new work? This would reach out to a wider audience, but no - for all their protestations of supporting and "loving" the genre the Lord Lloyd Webber and Sir Cameron Mackintosh are actually enagaged in a crafty piece of producing - their creative powers are sadly not what they were in the 80's - maybe the hunger is gone - and so the best way to stage a revival of shows that they either wrote or have some controlling interest in is to use the format developed by Simon Fuller when he re-invented the TV talent show. What we are watching when we see the BBC shows is a cynical way of filling theatres, owned by Lloyd Webber & Mackintosh, because their ego's long outlived their creative use to the genre. In time the shows will begin to falter in the ratings, and the audience will begin to seek out the new - here the lack of vision that revivals of Oliver, Joseph and the Sound of Music really gives a death blow to the British Musical, because of their lack of support and near monopoly of the genre in the UK there is nothing new - with no experimental musical theatre, no not for profits interested in what is increasingly being seen as a dumbed down art form there will be no product that doesn't conform to what Mackintosh and Lloyd Webber view musical theatre to be...
Maybe the next BBC programme to look at the industry should be a Panorama special "How Do You Solve A Problem Like a Mackintosh/Lloyd Webber Monopoly - Any Revival Will Do"
Shame on them and let us hope the fight back starts soon.