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.
But there’s always a danger of reports this early in the game that, by reporting what they’ve seen, they don’t actually report what the creative team intend to be shown yet: not in the sense of giving the game away, but just that the show hasn’t revealed its full hand yet. Yesterday, for instance, I reported on the absence of a child actor, who was heard on tape only; but a source close to the production has told me that this was a practical issue on Saturday, since the child actors who are employed to be in the show have to leave the premises by 11pm under child labour laws, so since the show was over-running they had to resort to a voice-over for the child instead. (So there’s an incentive to cut it back from its current 4 hours plus running time, if nothing else).
By an interesting coincidence, I was part of a panel discussion yesterday on the role that critics can (or some think should) play in nurturing and seeking out new musical talent, organised by MTM:UK (Musical Theatre Matters), a talking shop “for professional theatre creatives/producers wishing to develop and champion new musicals, new opportunities and new writers throughout the UK”. In our heavily text and play-based culture, musicals are often given short shrift and treated as the poor “tune-and-toe” (as Michael Billington routinely refers to them as) relations of plays, which are treated with more serious critical thought; unlike in New York, where musicals are treated every bit as seriously by the press as plays are. That’s partly circumstantial, as we discussed yesterday: since musicals are the main business of Broadway, critics have to treat them seriously because there’s little else to detain them there otherwise. In other words, we have to review what is put in front of us - but can we also play a part in shaping what that is?
One member of the audience suggested that perhaps critics could take some responsibility for seeking out and promoting the new writers - Matt Wolf said that Conor Mitchell is a name he hears all the time, but whose work he has never seen or heard. The trouble is that, in an already overloaded critical schedule of the professional work we attend - and just as importantly, have the critical space to give written attention to - it’s difficult to take time out to attend developmental projects. Mitchell actually had a new show workshopped last week by LAMDA, and I would have gone but was in New York for most of its run - perhaps I should have ditched seeing Gone with the Wind on Saturday and gone to that instead!
But I threw the question back at the questioner: since we were talking to a group with a professed professional interest in emerging new writers, how many of them had been to the Notes in Heels show the night before that introduced three young American composers to British ears? Not a single one. It’s a two-way process: its all very well complaining when critics don’t attend your show, but how much new work do any support that others are producing?
Talking shops are all very well, but what about a doing shop? That’s where producer Andy Barnes and the Perfect Pitch Festival he initiated in 2006 comes in: to offer a living, and lively, platform for the shows that are being written to actually get in front of audiences in showcased extracts — for the first two years these were staged at Highgate’s Upstairs at the Gatehouse and this year they are moving to the heart of the West End in a week-long run at Trafalgar Studios. But more than just a showcase that then potentially stalls for lack of further developmental opportunities, Andy has now managed to get Arts Council funding and created a partnership model in which shows that are showcased through the festival will be nurtured to the next stage of their lives with drama schools and professional theatres, with the contribution of each given a value and share in subsequent royalties that the show earns.
This seems to me to be an admirable new commercial model to spread the risk and encourage the necessary development: few musicals arrive fully-formed on the page and stage, but need to be grown from the roots. As Tonya Pinkins said in that Broadway documentary I referred to yesterday about her own troubled past that she now draws on now in performance, “in order to have great fruits you have to have great roots”, and Perfect Pitch offers a new way to apply that principle to creating new musicals.
I completely agree - noone can be at everything - some of us were at the Globe Theatre watching the actors of the future in the Sam Wannamaker Festival, otherwise we might well have been at NOTES IN HEELS with you. It was good to have you with us at MTM:UK last night and whilst it is a talking shop, it is also a chance for emerging creatives to come up with new ideas. Without MTM:UK meeting the idea of PERFECT PITCH would not have happened.Without MTM:UK hosting discussions with the Arts Council we might not be having such positive noises (and practical funding) for new work. The "talk" has generated the MTM:UK Edinburgh Festival Fringe Musical Theatre awards, offering a review of every single new musical at the Festival each year, and championing of a few shortlisted nominations. The "talk" will hopefully connect some of the exciting young producers together with artistic directors of regional repertory houses to look at explore new writers. My hope is that, with your help, and our doing stuff, in time the names and writing of Conor Mitchell, Susannah Pearse, Grant Olding and many others will be well known to theatres, directors, producers, festival managers, and all those who can help to bring the next generation of work to our stages and our audiences. Thanks to you, Matt, Michael and David last night - your shared knowledge of Musical Theatre and your views on how we might all move forward were great to hear.
Chris