Crisis? What crisis?

Even now, in mid-July, we’ve had two major consecutive opening nights there this week, and the press night diary next week is so full that Under the Blue Sky has had to opt for a Friday opening. By contrast, Broadway typically goes into hibernation after the early May cut-off point for eligibility for the Tony Awards, and doesn’t kick off again till September (though tonight, to immediately disprove that theory, [title of show] is transferring from Off-Broadway to the Lyceum); no wonder that New York Times critic Ben Brantley can bring himself to London for an entire month, filing daily blogs and an overview, as he did yesterday.

New York Post columnist Michael Riedel has been in town, too, catching up on shows, people and gossip (and working, too: he’s been filming podcasts on London theatre for his paper’s website); and yesterday, I got him working for me, as well, when he joined the daily classes I’m holding this week with a group of American theatregoers who are in London as part of a programme of the University of California, Berkeley, to talk about his career as a theatre journalist who stirs it up more than any other in New York — partly because he’s now the only theatre journalist in town left who has a twice-weekly spot to do so in.

In the age of endless internet bulletin boards and blogs, he is an old-fashioned news hound who ferrets out stories that give the rest of us something to write about; but more than that, behind the enjoyable mischief-making and regular pricking of pomposities, it occurs to me that his column often disguises a seriousness of purpose. He keeps the theatre being talked about in the pages of a major tabloid newspaper, and he makes it both newsworthy and fun. Yes, his business is often the business of celebrity - it sells papers as well as tickets - but as he tells it, he makes it matter.

Michael would, I’m sure, have had a field day on the story that Germaine Greer has been publicly denouncing last night’s opening, The Female of the Species, sight unseen; in fact, her fuming at a biographical incident from her own life forming the basis of the play, but not its substance, is far more dramatic than anything in it. But at least it has put the play in the news.

Theatre - or at least theatre coverage — is being squeezed out on all sides, despite the fact that more people are going to the theatre than ever on both sides of the Atlantic, so we desperately need journalists like Riedel who can still command the kind of space he does, but also the serious attention he gives it. Hearing him talk yesterday was to realise that he’s actually a genuine theatre enthusiast, too, who really loves both showbusiness and the business of show.

There’s not enough of the same kind of agitating conscience going on over here, though I sometimes try to stir it up on this blog. I was pleased to arrive at the Vaudeville Theatre last night to be greeted by Nica Burns who told me that after my blog yesterday about the state of the toilets at the Garrick the night before she had sent a cross e-mail to the theatre manager wondering why they had not been checked. I’m glad to have pointed it out; but Nica then immediately banned me from going to the loo last night! I’m afraid I broke it, as after nearly 2 hours without a toilet break I had to go afterwards; and I am always amused by the fact that the incredibly cramped Vaudeville has quite possibly the oddest gents loo in the West End on the landing between the stalls and circle - there are only urinals.

But I’m also delighted to be able to report that no critic, at least on my side of the house, found themselves on the floor, as Charlie Spencer did at the last opening at this theatre when his seat broke, though it might have been rather more amusing than the play we saw last night.