April 2008 Archives

In the musical 42nd Street, director Julian Marsh famously declares: “musical comedy: the most glorious words in the English language”. I often agree - but there are also four more that are also guaranteed to put a spring in your step when you go to the theatre: “90 minutes - no interval”.

On Monday night, the Bush opened a new play Tinderbox that was prefaced by the PR issuing the dreaded words, “two-and-a-half hours”, but at least he added, “we’re doing drinks in the interval”. It’s a long time to spend in a theatre if the play doesn’t deliver, and as Michael Billington wrote in his Guardian review yesterday, “While it is refreshing to find a young writer delivering a two-act play rather than opting for the comfort zone of 90 minutes, I can’t help feeling that she stretches her basic joke a bit too far.”

So it was a pleasure to go to the Royal Court last night and indeed be told that the opening of Martin Crimp’s The City would run for just 90 minutes without an interval.

Part of the point of the fringe is that it is always full of surprises. But it’s downright shocking that, hot on the heels of the makeover of the King’s Head that finally has seats that actually face the stage for the first time in my memory, the Bush has now also been completely overhauled, too.

Gone are the fixed, L-shaped seating on two sides; though a previous refurbishment that brought in benches that actually had backs to them was shocking enough, the new rows of benches are actually padded for comfort - even if, at the moment, one’s feet don’t entirely touch the ground.

That, Josie Rourke told me last night, was a design flaw that she assured me would be corrected for the next production; they’ve been constructed a little too high. But they bring with them the possibility of being entirely flexible in this space. For the current production Tinderbox, that opened last night, they were arranged in seven rows facing a pretty gilded proscenium arch that even had curtains hiding the stage! Yes, the Bush has turned itself into a miniature West End theatre!

It’s probably just an ironic joke, but whether we need another West End-shaped theatre, albeit one that only seats 80 people, is another question.

No, I’ve not gone all Pentecostal on you. But, at least according to the annual Sunday Times Rich List published yesterday, Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber - the 101st richest person in Britain, with an estimated wealth of £750m - is richer than the Queen (264th in the list, £320m). So is Sir Cameron Mackintosh (£184th, £450m). So, there’s more money in theatre - or at least musical theatre - than a combination of inherited wealth and state-funded privilege. Perhaps, as I’ve urged before, His Lordship (as they quaintly refer to him on I’ll Do Anything) can use some of that accumulated wealth towards a proper refurbishment of his theatres.

The list is, of course, largely speculative - without direct access to the personal accounts of every individual listed, it cannot be otherwise - but it makes educated guesses to produce a 110-page glossy magazine for the rest of us mere mortals to gaze and gloat over. Of course, there’s always an irresistible fascination with other people’s money, but I’m fascinated by the overall absence of many other theatre people here.

We know that it runs for over three and a half hours; but the question on everyone’s lips is: “How long do you give it?” They are, of course, asking about the likely prospects for the run of Gone with the Wind. On The Guardian website, I saw a link to a story that was headlined “Gone…. in 60 seconds”, which I thought was a bit too pessimistic (especially for a show that runs for more than 10,800 seconds). It turned out, though, to direct one to a quiz that tests one’s knowledge on the original novel and film in ten easy questions. But the tougher question of how long the musical can survive in the wake of the hostile critical reception it has received isn’t asked.

Of course, no one ever knows.

Uh-oh. After the bad word-of-mouth, the producers of Gone with the Wind woke up yesterday to bad word-of-press, and in a rare display of critical unanimity, the reviews were overwhelmingly negative. Of course, the FT and Sundays are still to come, but I canvassed at least two of these last night for their star ratings, and was told two stars by each. How convenient these are: we don’t have to spend time finding out what we think, but can cut to the chase! Tomorrow, on the other hand, I’m also hosting one of the regular theatrevoice.com discussions, in which a group of critics get together to talk about the major recent openings and our conversation is posted for the world to hear, so there’s an opportunity for a more detailed exchange of views that we don’t - and can’t — have on the night.

We may, of course, raise an eyebrow in shared pain (or a smile in shared pleasure), on a press night, but there’s a rule that we don’t discuss what we’re thinking on the night, and there’s certainly no colluding to reach the same conclusion.

Tomorrow is another day”, they sing towards the end of Gone with the Wind, but by the time we got to it, tomorrow was very nearly today. Despite last night’s first night starting a half an hour earlier than usual, and despite cuts that were put into the show since I first reported on the first preview here that meant it was said to be running three and a half hours instead of over four, we didn’t get out till 10.45pm - or at least those of us who had lasted the course and didn’t flee at the 9pm interval, as I counted at least three non-reviewing colleagues do, as well as Vanessa Feltz, amongst numerous others. Before he left, one of them complained about a different sort of wind emanating from the person sitting next to him: apparently his neighbour had repeatedly farted throughout the first act. But the bad smell, I should have assured him, was coming from the stage, too.

“Why did they do Gone With the Wind? Because, like Everest, it was there: purpose and heart were all that the show lacked, but in their place were glamorous dancers and the belief that if you sing loud, dance hard, act big and build scenery high, even success is possible.” No, that isn’t a quote from any of today’s reviews, but rather the late Sheridan Morley, describing an earlier hapless 1971 Drury Lane musical version of the story in his book Spread a Little Happiness.

The South Bank was the West End of its day during Shakespeare’s era, and it’s on a fast-track to once again being the most dynamic theatrical district outside of the West End once again. Though you can’t go bear-baiting there nowadays - unless, that is, you count the activities at a gay club right next door to the Menier Chocolate Factory called XXL, which specialises in the gay bear subculture - but living in Borough, I am a maximum of 15 minutes’ walk from a variety of venues, from the National, Old Vic, Young Vic and Shakespeare’s Globe (beginning its new season tomorrow, a little prematurely one feels, considering the current cold evenings, but coinciding of course with Shakespeare’s birthday) to the aforementioned Menier, Unicorn, Union and Southwark Playhouse.

I’ve been to the at least four of these in the last week, from Fram at the National last Thursday and ENO’s visit to the Young Vic with Punch and Judy on Saturday, to the Union for the opening of its new production of The Pajama Game on Friday and Edna O’Brien’s Triptych at Southwark Playhouse last night. There were two hits and two wide misses there, not a bad strike record.

I should know about the importance of trying to get a better work-life balance, but like Quentin Letts - who was profiled in the Independent on Sunday recently until the headline “He’s got more columns than the Colosseum” - I work hard, player harder, and don’t sleep enough. Quentin’s working day is cited in the piece as sometimes lasting 19 hours, and it does for me, too: no wonder I am writing this at 5.30am!

Quentin, however, diversifies a lot more than I do - as well as theatre reviews, he also writes parliamentary sketches, a weekly satirical column, and supplies lots of anonymous diary stories, and is now apparently being offered out by a public speaking agency at £3,000 to £5,000 per engagement, who are promoting him as being “known for his sharp wit and logical arguments.”

But as Quentin also says in the piece, “I think we’re probably the last generation that’s going to make a living out of newspapers. I suspect in 10 years’ time it’s going to be much harder to turn a shilling.” That chilling thought - that we’re reaching the end of a particular road - is also what keeps me writing at all hours (and means I am also making a modest step at diversifying, too, with a travel piece on Las Vegas to write tomorrow for an in-flight magazine). But being a theatre critic — as Quentin’s own presence amongst the first night throng also indicates - is nowadays sometimes just part of a portfolio of jobs that a journalist might have, rather than a full-time job in itself.

Being a theatre critic makes you sometimes feel that every night is Groundhog Day: there we are all assembled yet again, gathered perhaps in slightly different configurations and maybe with the odd diary difference, but mostly in the same places on the same nights, chasing the same basic round of shows to cover however we do it.

So, for instance, following the interesting clash that occurred on Tuesday evening when the launch of the transfer of the RSC history cycle with Richard II went head-to-head with the Donmar’s opening of its new production of Peter Gill’s Small Change, this meant that most of the first-string lot were at the Roundhouse, but Michael Billington and Nicholas de Jongh managed to be at both - Michael by going to Richard II a night early on the Monday (which meant that his “overnight” review for that play alone appeared on Wednesday), while de Jongh went to Small Change a night early (and evidently offered his nuts to the West End Whingers to nibble, but that’s another story; though quite how they also managed to also spy Charlie Spencer there is even more puzzling, since he was in Birmingham at Hapgood and didn’t see it at all.).

The “overnight” critics, too, I hear will be absent from Gone with the Wind on Tuesday evening - with a running time now set at three-and-a-half hours (as of Wednesday’s two performances after the “fixes” that followed Tuesday’s cancelled performance), there is still no way they would be able to sensibly file their reviews immediately after the opening night performance next Tuesday, so are being allowed in on Monday to get ahead of the game.

I chickened out of seeing War and Peace, a two-part adaptation of Tolstoy that Shared Experience brought to Hampstead on Monday, but yesterday I more than made up for it with a marathon day of Shakespeare’s histories that are, of course, also about war and peace. Leaving home at 9am to get to Chalk Farm’s Roundhouse for a 10.30am kick-off with Henry IV Part 1, progressing through to *Part II *at 3pm, and concluding with Henry V that finally ended at nearly 11pm, I wasn’t home again till 11.30pm. (And that’s without factoring in that I was there the night before, too, for Richard II). Does this breach the EU regulations on working hours for critics - never mind for the actors giving their considerable all to animate this spectacular drama?

Of course, doing something for work that most do for pleasure I shouldn’t complain; and nor will I, given how well we were all looked after throughout the day by the good offices (and even better officers) of the RSC.

In the world of opera, it’s famously not over till the fat lady sings; and ENO, regularly threatened with artistic as well as financial oblivion over the last few years, isn’t allowing her near the stage at the moment. No, they’re not being size-ist and this isn’t another Deborah Voigt story; rather, the company has lately been revealing some serious artistic weight as it has simultaneously stream-lined its operation. As Norman Lebrecht reported in a feature in the Evening Standard last week that was headlined “ENO gets its groove back”, the company seems to have “finally turned the corner”.

And yesterday it proved it by announcing a slate of 10 new productions for the 2008/9 season that show the company both growing and expanding its repertoire, reach and creative input (with theatre artists Fiona Shaw and Katie Mitchell returning to ENO, and filmmakers Abbas Kiarostami and Penny Woolcock both making their opera stage directing debuts), while also consolidating on the core classics that includes the return of Jonathan Miller to the company for the first time in 12 years to stage a new La Boheme.

But most significant, perhaps, is the fact that co-productions are now regularly the order of the day and play.

The news that tonight’s preview of Gone with the Wind has been cancelled — just a week before the official first night — to apparently provide more time for technical rehearsals onstage suggests there are serious problems to be addressed, and that radical steps need to be taken. That follows the earlier cancellation of the first scheduled preview two Fridays ago; and when performances began the next day, of course, the first preview ran for over four hours (as I know from personal experience). So we know the show needs serious pruning, or audiences won’t be able to get their trains; but can this particular train change tracks now?

It always seemed an ambitious idea to condense the massive novel Gone with the Wind for the musical stage; but never say anything is impossible. Trevor Nunn famously successfully helmed the transfer of Les Miserables into London’s longest-ever running musical (but that was a novel of roughly 500 pages, against Gone with the Wind’s 1000-plus). And Nicholas Nickleby, too, became a hit stage show under his watch - but then that one stretched to a two-part, seven hour performance.

What does, however, seem puzzling is how little time the producers gave themselves to run their project in.

The Iron Curtain may have finally come down in Poland with the overthrow of communism in 1989; but it was the iron (safety curtain) staying determinedly up that very nearly scuppered Saturday’s matinee performance of Upiór w operze in Warsaw, as Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera is called in Polish, but which is instantly recognisable even if you didn’t know the translation thanks to the logo which has the words splintering like glass in the now well-known way beside the trademark (in every sense) mask.

The sell-out success of the show, which only opened here last month, is yet another iconic example of capitalism’s sweeping march over the country, but it’s good to know that even here the Opera Ghost is casting his spell in other ways, too: for a show that centres around theatrical superstition, as that Phantom living in his lair below the Paris Opera House constantly wreaks havoc on proceedings above ground, it was working overtime on Saturday. Though the iron curtain finally went up to allow the show to start half an hour after the advertised time, the sheet covering the chandelier snagged as it was first revealed during the auction and the auctioneer had to release it himself; and then, during “Music of the Night”, Christine’s dress, too, snagged under a chair and Raoul had to rush to her rescue.

Going to the theatre is a bit like visiting someone’s home: it’s always good to receive a warm welcome and be made to feel comfortable. Sometimes, sadly, you feel a little embarrassed for the conditions that the host lives in; I’m always mortified, on behalf of the desperately tired but venerable old Garrick Theatre, at how frayed and shabby the carpeting is, and particularly how the wall on the way into the men’s loo on the way down to the stalls is peeling away from damp.

The first port of call for most, of course, is the box office, and it’s the place where the theatre can make a good first impression. Box offices sometimes have a bad reputation for being staffed by the ranks of the bitter, grand and unhelpful - run, as they frequently are, by that deadly combination of the acid but failed theatre professional, who once fancied themselves as actors.

The word “critic” may (at least if Wikipedia is to be believed, and when do journalists not?) come from the Greek “κριτικός, kritikós” (one who discerns), which itself arises from the Ancient Greek word “κριτής, krités”(a person who offers reasoned judgment or analysis). But though the idea of critics therefore has an ancient legacy, the practice of being “professionals” — paid to pass judgement on what we see — is a relatively modern invention; and it may be going as quickly as it came, at least if a chastening article in the LA Times has it right. Peer review may have been the buzzword kicking around the recent debate on the Arts Council’s shenanigans when they imposed their night of a thousand cuts recently, but peer reviews are the thing nowadays. According to the LA Times feature, the position that many younger cultural consumers adopt to guide their entertainment choices can be summarised as: “I trust my friends more than I trust that guy writing the review.”

The writer of the feature, Patrick Goldstein, goes on to say, “There was a time when critics were our arbiters of culture, the ultimate interpreters of intellectual discourse. When I was growing up, eager to write about the arts, it was just as important to read Pauline Kael, Frank Rich and Lester Bangs as it was to see a Robert Altman film, a David Mamet play or listen to the latest Elvis Costello album. Critics gave art its context, explained its meaning and guided us to new discoveries.” But, he adds, “Those days are going, going, gone. Critics today are viewed as cultural dinosaurs on the verge of extinction.”

A recent piece in the New York Times showed how this isn’t just speculation but fast becoming a fact amongst the realm of film critics.

Fings, as the title of a play with songs by Lionel Bart once had it, ain’t wot they used t’be: the King’s Head now has rows of new bench seating that actually face the stage. This is a step as momentous in the fringe ecology as when the Bush finally installed benches that had back rests, instead of the knees of the person sat behind you. I’ve had many harrowing nights on what used to pass for the seating at the King’s Head, and although I won’t go so far as to say that the new benches are exactly upholstered for comfort -they’re not far off sitting on hard wood - they are a definite improvement over the weird, ad hoc assembly of the rickety wooden seats, fastened far too close to each other, tiny swivel chairs and backless benches that previously passed for seats here.

Even more astonishing is the refurbishment of the downstairs loos, which used to be amongst the most decrepit in London - even the hallways leading to them are newly wall-papered. And they don’t smell, either. (One or two leading London fringe venues could learn a lesson here).

In a preview for Gone with the Wind in yesterday’s Standard, Nick Curtis writes that “In musical theatre, Trevor Nunn once told me, no one ever knows what will work”, and Nick goes on to suggest that this is “a project where every advantage could just as easily prove a drawback,” referring to the film’s legacy. “Nunn has to cram all this baggage, and an awful lot of the Deep South, onto the stage of a concrete 1970s theatre. With tunes. What’s more, the show’s writer and composer Margaret Martin is an expert on maternal and child health with no theatrical track record….”

I’ve already mentioned here that I was at the first preview on Saturday - an unusual position for a critic, who is usually only part of the process at the state of putative “readiness” when the show officially opens - and intriguingly I’ve been busted on bulletin boards elsewhere as being there, too: clearly there are musical theatre eyes and ears everywhere (and it’s a worry that they know exactly who the critics are, though one who referred to the Daily Mail critic being there, too, at least got that wrong: it was Baz Bamigboye, the paper’s showbiz correspondent, who was there, not its critic). But that’s been one of the features of the internet age: nothing’s a secret anymore.

Broadway productions used to go out-of-town to do their work away from the publicity glare (and gossip mill), but now it follows them wherever they are thanks to local fans who post comments on the various Broadway bulletin boards.

There was a cautionary tale for professional bloggers like myself in yesterday’s New York Times about the digital-era sweatshop, in which “a growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment.” The piece points out, “The Internet has changed the nature of work, allowing people to set up virtual offices and work from anywhere at any time. That flexibility has a downside, in that workers are always a click away from the burdens of the office. For obsessive information workers, that can mean never leaving the house.”

Well, if the headline to the feature has it, “In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop”, I actually do leave the house a lot - but whenever I do, I am forever collecting material for here and other places I write.

So my whirlwind week to New York ends today, with me leaving for the airport at 6.15am local time for the day flight home…. and an even faster New York trip also coincidentally ends for Connie Fisher today, who arrived on her first-ever New York trip on Monday, and I met at last night’s first night party at Tavern on the Green for the opening of South Pacific, which she had just been to see. The Rodgers and Hammerstein office had laid out the red carpet treatment for her time here - the day before they had arranged for her to have lunch with the original film Maria, Julie Andrews - all of which she told me was a dream come true.

Last night I also dropped in on Rupert Goold’s production of Macbeth, which is now previewing at Broadway’s Lyceum Theatre after playing at BAM, but none of the creative team had been in attendance until now since they were prepping last night’s opening of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot at the Almeida. But Howard Harrison, the show’s Olivier award winning lighting designer, had finally flown in yesterday afternoon - and despite someone from the American creative team wondering if I was him on the sidewalk outside the theatre, it was a pleasure to see him when he arrived!

And after the show, as I headed west along West 45th Street to try grab a cab uptown to get to Tavern on the Green - always a feat on a rainy evening as the shows are just getting out - I noticed one terrific sight after another in quick succession.

There is actually a new musical stage version of A Tale of Two Cities apparently heading to Broadway next season via try-out in Sarasota, Florida, even if its star is currently in prison (James Barbour, who had sex with a stage door fan who turned out to be 15 at the time, and duly pleaded guilty to “two misdemeanour counts of endangering the welfare of a minor”) and its director Michael Donald Edwards has been fired: according to Michael Riedel, he and his ‘creative assistant’ Mitchell J Mills “showered the cast with notes about their performances on brightly colored Post-its. (These guys are the Roger DeBris and Carmen Ghia of Sarasota.)” You can’t make this stuff up - “only in New York, kids”, as the New York Post columnist Cindy Adams always signs off her column, “only in New York.”

But if the offstage gossip is sometimes even more compelling than the onstage drama, there’s actually a tale of two cities to be written in the history of the musical revivals of the year. I saw two of them both yesterday, and it occurred to me just how differently Broadway and the West End have treated both.

The resurgence of plays on Broadway last autumn — in which no less than a dozen opened between October and December — may have had its mettle seriously tested by the Broadway strike that followed, but actually the plays are here to stay - even if almost all of those plays actually weren’t. Of those 12 plays that opened then (8 of which were hit by the strike; the rest, with two playing under auspices of Roundabout Theatre Company and two more respectively under the auspices of Lincoln Centre Theatre and Manhattan Theatre Club, continued to play since they operated under different contracts with the stagehands’ union), only three are still on the boards, August: Osage County (now at the Imperial, but moving to the Music Box later this month), The Homecoming at the Cort (which ends its run on April 13, to be replaced immediately by the London import, via an earlier run at Roundabout’s American Airlines Theatre, of The 39 Steps) and David Mamet’s November (currently on sale to July 13).

But the amazing thing, at least for now, is that despite the fact that few must have returned their investment, Broadway is still rich in plays, and six more new ones are due to open before the mad May rush for Tony eligibility to take the place of many of the earlier plays.

To see one downbeat musical might be considered a misfortune; but to see two in a row starts to look like carelessness. On Sunday night I saw an Encores! production of Juno, Marc Blitzstein’s 1959 musical adaptation of O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock, which revolves around a mother, in mourning for her murdered son, and her relationship with her surviving daughter; and last night I saw an early preview for a new musical, A Catered Affair, based on the 1956 film, which also revolves around a mother, in mourning for her dead soldier son, and her relationship with her surviving daughter.

See enough shows, of course, and parallels start inadvertently suggesting themselves everywhere: in his New York Times review of Juno, Ben Brantley compared its matriarch figure with that of the one in Gypsy (which opened originally in the same year, and - by weird coincidence - saw the current Broadway revival also open last Thursday, the same night that Juno returned to New York). Writing of the openings of both in 1959, Brantley notes of the commercial fate of its lead characters, “Broadway is a cannibal god, and only one of them was destined to live for more than a few weeks that year. The winner went on to become a household bitch-goddess for countless aficionados of musicals and a byword for maternal ambition; the other slunk off into the shadows of the forgotten.”