I typically “theme” my entries here (and sometimes ramble!) to make specific points. But today I’m going to round up some things I’ve spotted lately - one as recently as last night - that have intrigued me.
• Billy Elliot is currently trumpeting, in an ad and poster campaign, that “Billy’s Gone Global”, and cites four cities in evidence: “London-Sydney-New York-Newcastle”. Only it has never played in Newcastle - though a plan had been once mooted to do it there first, before it came to London, but it was abandoned — and that isn’t even where the show is set, either! As a friend from those parts informs me, “For heaven’s sake, Easington isn’t even in the same county!”
The PR for the show points out to me that Billy is a Newcastle United fan, though - he packs a shirt into his case when he goes off to London. My friend - who is from Sunderland and obsessive Billy Elliot fan - tells me that Tim Healy, a well-known Newcastle fan, also wore one of their hats when he played Dad. But according to my friend, “it must have been a personal choice, as Philip Whitchurch, who took over, didn’t”. My friend hasn’t seen James Gaddas in the role - but says he is a well known Sunderland fan, and once stood for election for the Tories in Middlesbrough (so “it would have been interesting to see his ‘Merry Christmas Maggie Thatcher’). And he also adds, “If one thing divides the North East more than anything it’s football - and I’d put my money on the fact that people from Easington would support Sunderland rather than Newcastle.”
• An attempt to invite critics to a preview of Never Forget on Wednesday night ahead of the official opening last night and request us to honour an embargo on publishing reviews until today has failed, thanks to the fact that the Daily Mail jumped the gun and ran Quentin Letts’ review yesterday. Actually, there was a clash on Wednesday with the National’s opening of The Pitmen Painters, so I asked if I could go two days earlier on Monday; I was indeed allowed to, along with Christopher Hart of the Sunday Times. Quentin was actually there, too - but had bought his ticket. Could it be that he was planning on breaking the embargo all along - because if he wasn’t a guest of the management, he could presumably do what he wanted? (As he did indeed do, too, when the same how played its out-of-town try-out last year, and he saw it in Cardiff before the rest of us were invited to see it in Manchester; and he did earlier with Mary Poppins when it played in Bristol, ahead of its West End transfer). Of course, there’s nothing to stop papers from doing this all the time - but the first night system could break down. Producers should not hasten its demise by inviting critics to review previews and expect the reviews to be held, since it seems only to encourage some to jump the gun.
• I’ve blogged about this a lot in the past, but we are both lucky and cursed to have so much theatre making about that there are often multiple clashes on press nights. The Wednesday clash of Never Forget and The Pitmen Painters was only part of the story; there were also two more that night, with the opening of Philip Ridley’s Piranha Heights at Soho and for A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Shakespeare’s Globe. I made amends on the latter by going to yesterday’s matinee, where I also found The Guardian’s Lyn Gardner (before she went to Soho in the evening); this isn’t, of course, a play you usually want to see by daylight, but since that is the perpetual state of the Globe, even at night when the lights are kept on throughout, it makes no difference. But last night there were again a pair of clashes: Ibsen’s Rosmersholm opened at the Almeida simultaneously with Lifecoach at Trafalgar Studios 2, and next Tuesday, yet another: Fat Pig at Trafalgar Studios mainhouse and The Common Pursuit at the Menier Chocolate Factory. No wonder I’m always chasing my tail: I’m seeing Lifecoach on Monday, and The Common Pursuit early by going in on Sunday afternoon.
• Talking of Rosmersholm, there is surely the year’s most intriguing dedication to the published edition of Mike Poulton’s new version of the play: the translator dedicates it, “For Paul Higgins, who piloted us all from Finmark.” Before I saw the play, I was wondering if this was some kind of Scandinavian version of Primark; but it is indeed a place regularly referenced in the play. In fact, Poulton is thanking the assistant director, which is very generous of him - but is also, surely, a calculated snub to the actual director, Anthony Page.
• Finally, after all the talk, it’s finally happening: the National will be introducing Sunday performances with the return of War Horse from September.
Dear Mark,
I didn't realise we were breaking an embargo. It was a boob rather than an evil plot.
I thought that with the official press night on Wednesday we'd be allowed to run the review in later editions on Thursday. We weren't going to have room for the show on our Friday theatre page because it has been such a big week for openings and I thought The Pitmen Painters was a more important show to attend on Wed Night (a correct call, I reckon).
Apologies to you and other critics about the embargo.
Quentin.
"We weren't going to have room for the show on our Friday theatre page" - this would hold water if the Mail didn't often run reviews on Fridays in the front of the paper as well as on the weekly round-up page. In fact, I think it happened last week, with Patrick Marmion's review of Rosmersholm.