In the last twelve days, going back to the Saturday before last, I have seen sixteen shows - of them, five I had of course seen in other previous stagings, each several times over — King Lear, The Birthday Party, Pygmalion, The Good Soul of Szechuan and Chess; and four I had seen in earlier incarnations of the same productions — That Face (first at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, now newly transferred to the Duke of York’s), Never Forget (first at its Manchester opening last summer, now at the Savoy), Fucking Men (first at its Finborough “reading” earlier this year, now in a full production there) and The Deep Blue Sea (first on its regional tour, now at the Vaudeville).
But its striking — and welcome — that three of those four “repeats” are of new work (albeit recycling old pop tunes in the case of Never Forget); and that the rest of this time period also contains four more entirely new plays and two new musicals (and one cabaret burlesque evening, just for variety!). Nine out of 16 shows being new work is not a bad strike rate, and proves that even the West End hasn’t given up entirely on it.
Last night saw an increasingly rare example of one of them being an entirely new musical - and with a new score, too - receiving its world premiere in the West End.
Marguerite, though, is no blockbuster, and it’s courageous to see a show that doesn’t attempt to be. It’s also a change on the typical musical producing model in other ways, too: it has arrived at the Haymarket as part of the three-show Jonathan Kent season there, and is not meant to run forever. Instead, it has been produced in the context of a season of work that has allowed one director to also revive a filthy Restoration comedy (The Country Wife) as well as give Edward Bond his first-ever West End outing (The Sea). None of this is predictable fare (and the sight of Ruthie Henshall being physically abused in Marguerite — and having her dress torn away to expose a naked breast - certainly isn’t). Kent has also brought his usual team around him, including his invaluable designer Paul Brown, to give it the feel of being part of a body of work than a stand-alone enterprise.
And that’s the good thing about much of other new work I’ve seen in the last fortnight, too: it isn’t being produced in a vacuum, but in a context of artistic growth and development. It has been wonderful, for instance, to follow the lively progress of writer Levi David Addai, whose Oxford Street is now at the Royal Court’s Theatre Upstairs, where I had also seen his last play 93.2FM, just a couple of months after I saw another of his plays inbetween them, House of Agnes, produced by Paines Plough at the Oval House. Ditto another even more prolific writer Ricki Beadle-Blair, returning to Stratford East (where his play Bashment was premiered), with an even more mature reflection on family life, Familyman.
But if promising writers are moving forward, neither brand-new ones nor more established ones are being ignored amongst the shows in my snapshot twelve days as the theatre seeks to build a sustainable ecology of talent. The Royal Court’s discovery of Polly Stenham has led to the transfer of her first full-length play That Face from the Theatre Upstairs to the West End, making her the youngest writer since Christopher Hampton achieved a similar feat with When Did You Last See My Mother? over thirty years ago, which also moved from the Theatre Upstairs to the Comedy. And at the other end of the spectrum, the King’s Head are currently showcasing a new musical by 25-year-old Ian McFarlane, Betwixt! — it won’t be transferring to the West End anytime soon, but its young writer/composer shows some promise.
And then there’s Richard Bean: as Dominic Cavendish suggested in a profile in the Daily Telegraph recently, he is, “point blank, one of the most exciting British playwrights to have emerged over the past decade. His work has been staged at the Royal Court, the Bush and Hampstead theatres. He is currently under commission to the National. Play after play races from his pen - funny, taut, touching, dripping with the sweat of lived experience.” Yet, as Dominic goes on to say, “Does any of it get a sniff of interest from West End producers? Not the slightest. Which means that the industrious Bean, 52, has to keep writing furiously to earn a pittance. His enthralling, award-winning Harvest, spanning four generations of a Yorkshire farming family, earned its author just £7,000.”
I saw his latest play, The English Game, at Guildford’s Yvonne Arnaud Theatre last week prior to a national tour, and yes, Dominic is right: “Squint too long at the fine print of Richard Bean’s writing career and you could find yourself weeping at the sheer injustice of it all… I haven’t met up with Bean to crunch numbers - or count beans - but it’s hard not to think about the economics of writing plays when you’re talking to a man who jacked in a decent career in occupational psychology just before he hit 40 to devote himself to theatre.”
I always say that no one, of course, forces creative people to create (or critics to criticise): we could get real jobs (and both Bean and myself have obviously had them!) But Bean, who in person cannot seem to help looking curmudgeonly, has at least learnt to manage his expectations: “I’ve learnt not to raise my hopes,” he tells Dominic. “One review of Under the Whaleback [his Royal Court play about Hull trawler-men] said: ‘This play will run forever in the West End.’ Being naive, I thought, ‘Excellent!’, but there was nothing, not a phone call. These days, I suppose producers think audiences expect a West End play to mean witty lines delivered by Ralph Fiennes - they don’t want five tattooed Hull trawler-men dying.”
I hope that someone might at last give him the break that Stenham has had - but I wouldn’t count on it. He hasn’t made it easy for himself with this play: whereas That Face has just five actors, this one has a cast of 13. But it deserves to have a longer commercial life.
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