London was in glorious weather this weekend; and I was in (mostly) glorious theatre for much of it. Even the Barbican Centre becomes nearly palatable in the good weather: though the lakeside terrace may be an entirely man-made oasis in the midst of the bleakly (dys)functional urban cityscape it is part of, but at least you get the illusion of nature. And on Friday night, going there to hear the premiere of a new Dominic Muldowney piece being presented as part of a BBC Symphony Orchestra concert, I met the reason for me going to it at all out on the terrace: Philip Quast was mingling informally with his family, before it began.
That’s the great thing about open spaces like this on warm sunny evenings: it democratises the concert going experience. (And the BBC Symphony chorus were also out of the terrace earlier, doing a group photoshot). But if it was a nice discovery to find Philip out on the terrace, it was, of course, even more special to hear him inside, taking on such a demanding new classical piece so commandingly.
Ever since he did his Divas at the Donmar stint in 2002, when I came out of the show thinking he was probably the greatest leading man of musicals currently alive, I have been devoted to his immense talent - though I go back even further with him, since I remember interviewing him before his London break-through role when he starred in the National’s UK Premiere of Sunday in the Park with George in 1990. But his Divas show, which happens also to be the best male cabaret I’ve ever seen (admittedly not, as my companion on Friday night remarked, a large field), showed something else: a musical actor with equal emphasis on both words, possessed of both a fierce, illuminating baritone, but also bringing himself to every choice with warmth, humanity and informality.
All of those qualities were abundantly in evidence on Friday evening as he sang Muldowney’s Tsunami, set to words by James Fenton, and how amazing it is to find him here at the Barbican Hall after his last gig on the other side of the river in La Cage Aux Folles at the Menier Chocolate Factory. That’s another thing about him: he isn’t grand. Only his talent is.
Friday night’s Barbican concert meant delaying seeing that evening’s press night for the transfer of the Royal Court’s That Face to Saturday matinee, and I was pleasantly surprised to find a very busy house to see it. In fact, one full house at the Duke of York’s would equate to more than a week’s capacity in the Royal Court’s Theatre Upstairs: the Duke’s currently seats 640, while the Theatre Upstairs typically seats around 80, so the normal seven-performance schedule there would mean that only 560 people could have seen the play at capacity across a week in Sloane Square.
But if it is commendably being brought to a larger audience now, there is the small question, too, of the added expenditure they have to incur: the top price in Sloane Square is just £15, whereas the West End is £45. And that’s for a play that runs for barely 80 minutes. Though that of course isn’t the price you would necessarily have to pay, it seems a pity that such a steep scale has been imposed at all. When The Harder they Come transfers to the Playhouse next month, I’m pleased to note that its producers have opted for a top price of £32.50 - a far more realistic level for the kind of audience the show might hope to attract.
The Harder they Come, of course, started at Stratford East’s Theatre Royal, and that’s where I went on a hot Saturday evening for the new Rikki Beadle-Blair play, Familyman. I am reviewing that formally elsewhere on this site for The Stage, so I will refrain from critical commentary here, except to note what Philip Hedley, the theatre’s former artistic director, told me always happens there: it’s one of the few theatres in the country where critics always review the audience as well as the show.
The level of engagement is always amazing - this is a theatre where the audience don’t just talk-back to the stage, but sometimes shout-back at it - but it’s also a theatre that truly reflects the multi-cultural community it is part of. You genuinely do get a cross-section of all races; and once again it proves the truth of the fact that if you give a community theatre that is about them, that’s the way to make them come. The West End often claims that there isn’t a “black audience”, but why would there be? When the colour of who - and what - is onstage is almost exclusively white, that shouldn’t be a surprise.
The only disappointment on Saturday night is that the fantastic Caribbean restaurant in the bar wasn’t taking any more orders when we arrived at 6.30pm, a full hour before curtain up; and said that when they resumed again at 6.45pm, they wouldn’t be able to guarantee actually being fed by 7.30pm, so the bar person suggested going to Pizza Express next door. It seems a shame to send your potential audience (and income) elsewhere; but perhaps, as at the Young Vic, the restaurant is becoming a victim of its own success. While the Young Vic’s teaming restaurant is so popular in its own right that mere theatregoers can’t get served there anymore unless they plan in advance, it looks like you have to do the same at Stratford East: you can choose dinner or a show, but not, it seems, both.
Then yesterday it was on to another double bill: a matinee opening of a new musical, Betwixt! at the King’s Head, then Shakespeare’s Globe for King Lear in the evening. Arriving at the King’s Head on a sweltering afternoon, I said to Sam Marlowe from The Times that we must be crazy to be heading into this sweatbox on such a wonderful day; but then one of the producers reminded me that it was entirely my fault! The press performance was originally going to be tomorrow, but since I have a personal clash with the Chess concert at the Royal Albert Hall, I asked to go on Sunday afternoon. When they realised that many of my colleagues would also have a clash, too, with the West End transfer of The Deep Blue Sea, they moved the press performance into alignment with what I had requested!
The King’s Head was indeed nearly unbearable in the heat - but at least the bar was offering cooling servings of Pimm’s and Sangria (a new innovation which I dummy-tested for them); though I’m virtually tea-total (and have never been drunk in my life), I count both of them as virtually fruit juices, so was able to indulge. And then there was the Globe, which at least I knew was naturally air-conditioned; though here the lights that are left on over the galleries do heat it up, too. But it was a magnificent evening for the Globe, dry and still and warm; and on evenings like this the theatre truly comes into its own. Some of my colleagues, like John Peter in the Sunday Times, may still be inured to its charms - he gave another of his typical one-star reviews yesterday - while Michael Coveney wrote last week that he asked another of our colleagues if he was going to the Globe, and was told, “I’d rather eat my own feet”.
But variety is the spice of life, and what’s actually what’s rather wonderful about the Globe is that this is truly a people’s theatre - and audiences happily don’t vote with their feet (though some have to stand on theirs) but with their mostly engaged attention. There will always be distractions like the ones referred to by Kate Bassett in her Independent on Sunday review yesterday - “It’s probably worth noting that, on the night I attended, a couple of punters ruined [David] Calder’s most poignant speeches, blithely scrunching the unbelievably crackly bags of sweets sold by the Globe. They had driven half the audience mad by the end”.
And indeed, those crackly bags made an unfortunate appearance last night across the aisle from me in the middle gallery (note to the theatre: repackage your sweets!). But this is Shakespeare packaged as nowhere else, and a testament to the enduring power of these plays: despite the manifold distractions - including a fainting amongst the groundlings soon after Gloucester’s eye-gouging - the audience sticks with it.
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