Back to the Heathrow (and toothache) nightmare….

Perhaps 20 minutes of that was being bussed into the terminal from the plane (since, of course, there were not enough jetties to deal with all the arriving planes, even with a fifth terminal now added to the airport), but the immigration queue took a lot longer: there were precisely three staff on duty in the EU passport holders channel, and one of those was a trainee under instruction, so even though they merely look at your passport and run it through a computer check but don’t have to stamp it, it took the best part of 40 minutes to get to the front of the queue. When I did so, I asked for the person in charge and someone called Graham Powell was summonsed, who said that first of all there was a lot of confusion over flights that should have been transferred from Terminal 4 (where we had arrived) to Terminal 5 but hadn’t been yet. The implication was that the immigration staff have been moved even if the flights haven’t — so the Terminal 5 disaster continues to impact on passengers who don’t even have to travel via it. But our arrival had also apparently coincided with the shift change of immigration staff, hence the staff shortages, but just how this affected the airport for nearly an hour, as it did for me yesterday, isn’t clear. (Try phoning, as I did, Heathrow’s information line and they refuse to accept responsibility for immigration issues, and as for BAA’s corporate headquarters, they refuse to put you through to anyone at all but merely give you an e-mail address to write to).

Still, there was plenty of time to admire the Mamma Mia! posters everywhere with the promise of paradise they offer; it’s a pity that Heathrow offers no such respite. And right now, of course, there are more theatrical Brits than ever making the transatlantic journey - the only problem is that they will have to come home one day to face this. As I previously noted here, just six British-originated productions have accounted for nearly a third of the nominations for the Tony Awards being presented this coming Sunday, so expect the planes to be full of producers this weekend heading to New York to attend. And as I also previously reported in a Guardian blog, there’s a particular preponderance of British directors working in the American theatre, and not just on shows that transfer from London but actually originate in the US.

On my last weekend in the US, I saw the work of two. At Roundabout Theatre Company, New York’s largest institutional theatre who currently operate out of three theatres (two on Broadway, one Off, and adding a fourth next year), they have produced ten shows in the last season, five of them directed by Brits: as well as the transfers of Sunday in the Park with George and The 39 Steps, respectively the work of Sam Buntrock and Maria Aitken, they have also had Max Stafford-Clark re-staging his National Theatre production of The Overwhelming, and David Grindley and Rufus Norris respectively directing new productions of Pygmalion and Les Liasions Dangereuses. I saw the latter on Sunday afternoon on my way out of New York, and while Norris has done revelatory work in London with shows like Cabaret and Festen, the failed transfer of Festen to Broadway showed that he had difficulty getting American actors to replicate the unique rhythms and depth of feeling that had been brought to it in London; and there’s a similar difficulty with his production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, that has actors (including British conscripts Ben Daniels and Sian Phillips) working in a vacuum of style over content.

Meanwhile, another British director Jeremy Sams has been staging a try-out production of the new Jason Robert Brown musical 13 at Goodspeed Opera House’s smaller Norma Terris Theatre in Chester in rural Connecticut, en route for Broadway, in a run that ended there on Sunday and I saw on Saturday afternoon. Press have been kept away from its run there, so I’m not going to break the embargo now and comment on what is a developmental process; but suffice to say that, as a song in the show itself has it, they’ve got a little more homework to do. That, of course, is precisely what the run there is all about; and it must be wonderful to be able to work in such a delightful theatrical barn, sufficiently far away from Broadway’s prying eyes (and the reach of most online bulletin board participants, too) to do so undisturbed. “You’re our first Brit!”, Jeremy told me; and I’m looking forward to seeing it again when it finally reaches New York, and I am able to review it officially.

But it’s not just on Broadway (or Broadway-bound) that Brits abound. On a different sort of scale entirely, the Brits off-Broadway season at 59E59 Theater is offering a stunning showcase for smaller-scale British companies to make a mark in New York; and on Friday night, I saw the first performance of the Nottingham-based New Perspectives production of Howard Goodall’s The Hired Man that director Daniel Buckroyd has brought there. This was Daniel’s first-ever trip to New York - but not for the show itself, which I also happened to see in its previous off-Broadway incarnation in 1988, when a small theatre on W42nd Street, the Intar, did it (and was reviewed by the New York Times here). Nearly twenty years later, it was thrilling to see this great show making a fresh - but at the same time reassuringly modest - assault on New York, and with a far more authentically English cast, too. I am, of course, a long-term fan of the show - I chose it as one of my five “essential musicals” when I was a guest of Elaine Paige’s Radio 2 show - but I also love this production, which I saw at home in both Worcester and at Greenwich, and seems to fit even better here at 59E59 than it did at either of those addresses.

Guidance in bringing it here was provided by Simon Green (he’s credited in the programme as ‘Consultant Director’), who 21 years ago starred as Young Ben in the London premiere production of Sondheim’s Follies. I saw Simon at the theatre on Friday night, and discovered that he was staying in New York with his friend, the American actor Evan Pappas, who played Young Buddy in that production, and of whom I was a major fan at the time. So much so, in fact, that an American friend Bruce once found a front-of-house name-plate for him from when Evan appeared in A Chorus Line in a Broadway flea market, and bought it for me; I still have it to this day, and on Friday, by coincidence, Bruce was also at The Hired Man! All things are connected….