South Bank fringe pleasures and treasures…

In the miss corner were Fram and Southwark’s Triptych, while in the hit corner, Punch and Judy (which earned at least two five-star raves yesterday from The Times and Evening Standard and The Pajama Game could not offer more different experiences of modern music theatre, from 1968 Aldeburgh and 1954 Broadway respectively.

But even the misses weren’t entirely missable. You have to at least applaud the loyalty that the two producers have extended to their creators: the National have kept faith with Tony Harrison, who was behind its hit productions of The Oresteia and The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus (though oddly the NT publicity makes no mention of Square Rounds; I wonder why that might be?); while Southwark Playhouse’s Triptych is co-produced with Karl Sydow, who must have just lost a shirt (and maybe a jacket) on Ring Round the Moon in the West End yet here he is again, once again backing a production directed by Sean Mathias. (It’s good to know that he’s putting his Dirty Dancing profits to some use). It’s a pity, though, that neither are better plays, for all the vigour that both productions try to bring to them.

But the hits are decidedly more striking - and strikingly linked by a common connection to Simon Callow! It is Simon, of course, who directed the last, short-lived West End revival of The Pajama Game at the Victoria Palace in 1999, and Daniel Kramer, who has directed Punch and Judy for ENO, is his partner (in this week’s forthcoming issue of The Stage, I’ve done an interview profile with Kramer). Fiona Mountford is right in her review of The Pajama Game in yesterday’s Standard to state that, “The Union is making an increasingly well-argued case to be the best reviver of musicals around and so it proves once more here”. It’s been wonderful to watch this theatre come up the inside track and establish such a welcome little niche for itself; when musicals are unfashionable, or at least considered too popular and/or too expensive to stage on the fringe, the Union prove that resourcefulness and commitment are all that is required. The show, of course, is set in a pyjama making factory, so when the boss exclaims, “This is a crisis: the tops are 15 minutes behind the bottoms!”, I knew what he meant - but also thought this has to be the most unintentionally funny line in a musical ever.

And after those reviews yesterday, demand for tickets for the Young Vic’s production of Punch and Judy will far exceed supply; in The Times, Richard Morrison praises Andrew Shore in the title role, and concludes, “Go and see him, even if you have to commit a Punch-like atrocity to get a ticket.” I, of course, took issue here yesterday already with the exclusivity of this event, and the fact that so few people would see it; but a friend e-mailed me to argue a different point of view: “I would argue that the audience for Birtwistle’s Punch and Judy is probably about 2500 people in all of England. That to put it in a large house would have the actors playing to empty seats and then it would have critics saying: why is the ENO doing shows that don’t attract audiences? Surely this is a waste of arts council funding. Furthermore, while the Young Vic does have three playing spaces - two of them were in use on Saturday night - one that we were in and the other an early curtain for some show for young people. The fact that the Young Vic is now a viable alternative to the National Theatre as a meeting place should not be held against it - on the contrary the idea that people want to meet at a theatre and not at Starbucks should be seen as a positive. And if you look at the Young Vic as a performing arts centre with four stages - the fourth being the cafe - then 3 of its four stages were in use. Bravo to them!”