At last night’s opening of Aspects of Love, I asked producer David Babani how the show is selling. “Great, but we still need the reviews,” he said. (He must be relieved this morning, since the reviews I’ve seen so far have seen it receive four stars from The Times, Telegraph and Daily Mail, with a three star from the Daily Express). But while the Menier can nowadays command a full compliment of critics on its first nights - in addition to the overnights above, also in attendance were The Guardian, Standard, FT, The Independent, The Observer, Mail on Sunday, the Sunday Express (me!), and Time Out - that feast means there’s a critical famine elsewhere.
I was quoting Lyn Gardner just yesterday who pointed out, “Back in the late 1980s, when I worked on a London listings magazine, deciding what to review was easy: we reviewed everything that opened and would still be on when the next issue was published. That came to about 10 shows a week.” Nowadays there can be three or four shows a night vying for critical attention in London alone, and some shows inevitably get lost in the shuffle.
When I produced Shrunk at the Cock Tavern in May, I was lucky when many of my colleagues chose to come to the wrong end of the Kilburn High Road on a Friday night to visit a venue many had never ventured to before to see it. I know that they came partly out of loyalty to me, but mainly, I hope, for their interest in the second play of Charlotte Eilenberg, a playwright whose first, The Lucky Ones, had won both the Critics’ Circle and Olivier Awards for most promising playwright. As it happens, there was a clash that night, too, with the opening of another play at the Arcola; and I had an intriguing exchange with the press representative for that production, who instead of accepting that this interest might be warranted, wrote to me to say, “Your success is very much at my expense”.
But it happens all the time. Just last week a new musical Wolfboy opened at the Trafalgar Studios 2 - on the same night that Improbable’s Lifegame returned to the Lyric Hammersmith and LIFT imported Aftermath from New York to the Old Vic Tunnels. We can’t split ourselves in three, even though I sometimes try, so a handful of us went to Lifegame (Henry Hitchings for the Standard, Jeremy Kingston for the Times and Lyn Gardner for The Guardian, as well as myself as I reported here, several more to Aftermath, but hardly anyone at all to Wolfboy.
This has led to the unfortunate situation, at least, for the show’s producers and youthful cast and composer, that they’ve only had one national review to judge themselves against, and it was a total pan. Sam Marlowe, writing in The Times, gave it a no-star review which began by saying, “What a nasty little mess this witless new musical is. Written by Russell Labey and Leon Parris and loosely based on Bard Fraser’s 1989 play, it’s a stomach-turning stew of horror-shlock and po-faced sentimentality, made more revolting by its ill-judged treatment of paedophilia.”
The full review is, of course, now hidden behind the Rupert Murdoch paywall, so doesn’t even come up on a google search, for which relief the producers must be giving much thanks. But if the effect of that review is therefore diluted, it’s also a pity that there’s been no alternative critical voice in the national press to check that opinion against, though reviews both here in The Stage and on Whatsonstage suggest an alternative critical narrative.
That, at least, has always been the strength of the British critical press: that there are so many of us that no one voice prevails, as it has traditionally on Broadway where the New York Times used to hold sway above all. (It has been losing some of this ground over the last few years, as marketing has got cleverer and its own circulation has plummeted). But if only one national voice speaks, there’s a danger that it’s the only one that is going to be heard. Trafalgar Studios offers a major opportunity for smaller companies and emerging talent to showcase their work, but if it is ignored by the major press outlets, it’s the equivalent of the famous question that asks if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?
In fact Trafalgar Studios 2 may partly be a victim of its own recent poor programming: like the King’s Head or Jermyn Street, it has often allowed in so many poor quality rentals that its own brand as a supposedly innovative space has been compromised, and it needs to re-establish critical trust. When there’s too much to see anyway, you tend to avoid venues where you’ve recently had a rubbish time, as witness shows there like Dirty White Boy or Confessions of a Dancewhore.
But Wolfboy, for all Sam Marlowe’s displeasure with it - or in fact partly because of her displeasure for it, which awoke my curiosity - is far from a catastrophe in that league. I wouldn’t go so far, as Stephen Fry did in a tweet after seeing it on Wednesday, to dub it “shatteringly excellent”. But I would say that it is insinuatingly strange and weirdly compelling, and doesn’t deserve to be ignored by the press. But then, with The Times only being seen by its own readers nowadays, it has a far smaller reach than, say, Stephen Fry does with his 1.6m tweet followers. So perhaps that single tweet will speak louder than any review.
Mark
There was an interesting debate recently on Lyn Gardner's blog about a similar problem with regional critical coverage and how critics can only be in one place at a time. That thread grew into a discussion about the emerging trend of tweets and also the growing number of bloggers, not just in London but out here in the wilds as well.
The West End Wingers blog shows that bloggers can cross over into mainstream media with the coverage of their 'Paint Never Dries' slogan but perhaps there is more opportunity for the National press to work with bloggers and tweeters across the country.
In these dark times of arts funding pressure surely the more coverage of productions we get, in whatever format, can only help raise awareness of the value of theatre.
As for Wolfboy - I'm going on Wednesday and my review will be on my blog and tweet for what it's worth!
Is it a feast or famine conundrum? Or are there so many flops that this is the case?They'll (all venues fringe or otherwise) just have to co-ordinate a bit better or have 2 press nights if they deem themselves up against stonger venue.This rarely happens west-end wise due to diligent planning.
I'm sure you're right about the number of people seeing Stephen Fry's tweet as opposed to Sam Marlowe's hidden behind a fire wall review. But how many tweets does Stephen Fry do in a day? 10? 20? 40? His short thoughts on a musical are far more ephemeral than even an evening in the theatre. Once tweeted , its forgotten. (unless the producers use the tweet in a quote ad). Sam's review is at least part of an archive and is "for the record". Stephen's Fry's may sell more tickets in the long run but right now, Sam Marlowe's is the one that has posterity to look forward to.
Increasingly, theatre blogs (unconstrained by press night politics) and 'heads-up' tweets serve an invaluable purpose when it comes to booking the hot shows at regular sellout venues [Donmar, Cottesloe etc]. By the time the national reviews emerge, even one of them, the seats are often long gone. Thank goodness for ShentonStage tweetery or I'd have missed out on MERRILY and COMPANY, both of which will be sold out weeks before Sam Marlowe visits.
Referring to the Mark Shenton's article and Pete Lasher's comment above:
I think "tweets" definitely have more value because they are current. Sam Marlowe's reviews may be archived for posterity but if they can't be read in conjunction with a present production they won't sell tickets if the review is negative.
Interestingly, I found (by googling) Sam Marlowe's review of a 2006 production of "Titus Andronicus" - also invoking her phrase "stomach-turning" where she concludes by saying that she felt it to be "... not quite full-blooded".
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/article670088.ece
In my opinion, that play is truly 'stomach-turning'. But perhaps because it was Shakespeare Sam Marlowe decided to be more congratulatory!?!
Although I haven't seen "Wolfboy" yet - but intend to - by all accounts it sounds very interesting. I have a feeling that pathos will be a pervasive element due to the damaged mental state of the characters. Whatever the shocking revelations of Wolfboy I cannot imagine it being as sordid as Titus Andronicus where the atrocities are based on revenge no matter how good the "production".
I find Twitter an excellent gauge of what people think of "Wolfboy" - it varies - but overall it sounds intriguing and definitely worth seeing.
So, yes, for me Twitter definitely will sway it. I cannot read Sam Marlowe's review and have no intention of signing up to pay for it.
I didn't go to Wolfboy firstly because I didn't get notice about it until I'd already done the scheduling for the month ahead and I wasn't sufficiently persuaded to that rejigging matters for it would repay the time and effort; later, because I subsequently remembered seeing it on last year's Edinburgh Fringe and being underwhelmed.
Lyn slightly simplifies the old listings-magazine policy: when she trained me as her maternity cover, the idea was to review all shows that would still be on throughout the seven-day period covered by the next issue. Since listings mags tend to operate from midweek to midweek, this made for an effective threshold of a three-week run. Exceptions would be made in the case of big-deal shows only on for two weeks. After-the-fact reviewing was a luxury we couldn't afford.
But that's still really the case in the listings-publication sector. Lyn's remarks don't show how times have changed in that respect. To be sure, papers now almost all use fewer writers and devote fewer slots, and shorter ones, than even ten years ago. But in that area there has always been a ladder of priorities:
1) West End musical
2) West End play
3) flagship (NT, RSC) opening
4) "off-West End" producing houses
5) major regional opening
6) fringe.
That's not invariant (there's a bit of leeway sometimes between 2 and 3, or 5 and 6), but it's a pretty reliable default. When you know what your human, budget and space resources are, then you almost immediately know as soon as you look at a list of all openings (such as published regularly in Theatre Record, bloody good value) which ones you'll be covering.
In more intense contexts such as Edinburgh, you frankly see a lot of shows on spec, so that once you get past the hard core that more or less demand coverage by dint of their status, you have to choose which of the shows you've seen to bother writing up. That, for instance, is why I didn't write up Wolfboy last year; by that stage in the proceedings, there would have been no editorial space for and no reader interest in what would almost certainly have been a two-star review.
I think reviews still serve a purpose especially amongst those who still read newspapers - and they mainly tend to be in the ABC1 social grouping, who are the most likely to go to the theatre, especially once they see a positive review. A case in point was that I'd been meaning to get a ticket for All My Sons since the publicity came out, but kept putting it off. The stunning reviews last week put the bejabers into me and as a result I went to the box office in person on Saturday to buy my ticket. The advent of the internet has made it much easier for people who don't live in London to get tickets - I remember going to Ticketmaster's outlet in in Birmingham City Centre in the late 1980's to get tickets for my putative London theatrical experiences in the days before I had a credit card.