It’s been a busy week for British theatre offstage as well as on, in ways that will have lasting repercussions for the way the theatrical landscape plays out in the coming years. And its both on the commercial and subsidised fronts, not to mention the often-forgotten sector in between, that can’t and doesn’t make money, but doesn’t get subsidy, either, namely the London fringe.
On the commercial front, the big news, of course, is the consolidation of Ambassador Theatre Group into the largest theatre owning group in the country with their acquisition of Live Nation’s portfolio of 16 theatres, including two in the West End.
Those two West End houses finally give ATG a big purchase, in every sense, on the West End musical economy - the Lyceum and Apollo Victoria are, along with Drury Lane and the Palladium (the latter both still owned by Lloyd Webber), amongst London’s largest musical houses, with 2107 and 2208 seats respectively. But they’ve both got sitting tenants, likely to sit it out a while longer — The Lion King recently celebrated its 10th anniversary at the Lyceum, whle the Apollo Victoria has Wicked, which just today has collected another award, for Best Family Fun in Visit London’s “People’s choice” Awards (beating out the London Eye, London Zoo and the Science Museum; I wonder what sort of marketing campaign led to the votes being cast in Wicked’s favour).
It’s in the regions, where ATG have now added 14 theatres to their existing portfolio of 10 major houses (with an 11th to follow when Aylesbury’s Waterside Theatre opens in 2010, which they recently also won the right to operate), that the impact will be felt even more keenly. They will now set the touring agenda as never before. ATG have already proved to be extremely responsible theatre owners, taking on the job of filling the theatres themselves by initiating large-scale tours of their own as producers of them and not just rent collectors. Now their own shows will have an even bigger potential reach - and will also tie up, no doubt, the best dates for themselves.
And they could also put the squeeze, in every sense, on other producers. One, David Pugh, is already worried. As he recalled to The Times earlier this week, Apollo Leisure Group (from whom the group that later became Live Nation acquired their theatres in the first place) used to dictate terms to touring companies. “They would insist that we visited loss-making venues and that they got 30 per cent of the box office — which is a terrible deal. I don’t think monopolies are ever a good thing and I would be saying the same if Cameron Mackintosh had bought them all.I like Howard [Panter, joint CEO] and I think that ATG run their theatres well, but I am worried. Power corrupts.”
But at least the power is in British hands - ATG was, according to the same Times story, “the only British contender bidding for Live Nation’s theatres” — and it is in theatrical hands, too, not those of, say, a pension fund or a multi-national business that only wants a return on their investment.
From commercial to subsidised news, yesterday came the official launch of National Theatre Wales. “Getting to the launch has been a long journey”, the Guardian reports in a news story today, but I didn’t have to make it myself: the press conference was webcast, so I watched it from the comfort of my laptop. But in fact the Guardian meant the journey to bring it about at all, quoting Dai Smith, chairman of Arts Council Wales, saying, “We have been putting our toes in the water for too long. It was inexcusable, outrageous, that we did not have a national theatre for Wales. It may be 100 years late, but better late than not at all.”
Intriguingly, I found a column written in 2003 by The Independent’s David Lister, in which he wondered aloud whether the National Theatre was the national theatre of Britain or just of England; and suggested, “There is room for more national theatres, and however the NT defines itself, it can surely not be long before they appear. In Wales it has been happening almost by stealth. Terry Hands, the former artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, has been turning his new fiefdom, Clwyd Theatr Cymru, into an acclaimed centre of theatre. I predict that he will procure the title National Theatre of Wales in the next two years. The Wales Millennium Centre being built in Cardiff could, with its splendid auditorium, give him a base in south Wales as well as at Clwyd in the north. In Scotland, where there are major national and international producing venues such as the Glasgow Citizens theatre and the Traverse in Edinburgh, the case for a Scottish national theatre surely cannot be resisted much longer. The actor Brian Cox made an interesting suggestion in The Stage this week. Cox, who hails from Dundee, says the Scottish executive is missing a great opportunity to create a national theatre that would raise the profile of Scottish culture. Cox advocates an SNT not centred on a particular building but a commissioning body using several venues.”
Now, six years later, there is both a National Theatre of Scotland and another for Wales. Brian Cox’s suggestion that the former become a commissioning body has indeed come to pass; but Clwyd Theatr Cymru has not only failed to become the National Theatre of Wales, it is also noticeably absent from the roll-call of NTW’s first-year partners that include Swansea-based touring company Volcano Theatre, Welsh National Opera, Sherman Cymru and Welsh touring circus company NoFit State.
But the Guardian also sounds a note of caution in its welcoming of the new intiative. “There is a lot riding on the plans. The NTW has a budget of just £3m for the first artistic year - that includes the two years spent planning and recruiting - and what it gets from the Welsh assembly in future years may depend on how good their strike rate is in year one.”
That £3m is going a long way, too, with a different show for every month of the year that runs from next March to the following April. But that’s still a lot more money than any of the venues on the London fringe or studio theatre network outside can ever call on. And that’s where the Peter Brook Empty Space Awards, presented on Tuesday, come in.
The only awards ceremony to reward venues rather than specific productions, they have been going for twenty years now, and I should declare an interest: for the last four years, I have been part of the judging panel for them. And its one of my prouder boasts: even if the sums of money we have at our disposal are not huge (£2,000 for the winner, £350 for a nominee of the main award, with another £2,000 to the winner of the separate Dan Crawford Pub Theatre Award), those sums still mean a lot to the venues, some of which are operating without any subsidy at all, and all too often, without too much in the way of national recognition, either, which this helps address. This year we had two particularly worthy wins: for the Edinburgh Fringe initiative Forest Fringe (which charges neither its companies to appear there or audiences to attend shows there), and to Kilburn’s tiny Cock Tavern Theatre.
The enthusiasm and enterprise that fuels such initiatives - and the Empty Space Awards themselves, through its indefatigable founder Blanche Marvin - could also lead to lasting changes on the landscape of British theatre, too. And I’m thrilled to play a part in recognising and applauding them.
