The Edinburgh fringe is now, of course, in full swing, and everyone there — or at least the critics — will be rushing around like headless chickens, trying to find some good shows out of the more than 2,500 that are on. Or sticking safely with the Traverse, which — being an artistically-led programme - means someone has already chosen the shows on more than just rental terms. Or following the leads of Lyn Gardner or Joyce McMillan who typically put more critical leg-work into covering the fringe than anyone else.
Come festival time, of course, everyone’s a critic now, a fact amplified by Twitter, but sometimes it seems that there are more reviewing tickets being issued than tickets being sold. And in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king; while you could follow your nose instead, the waft of a hit is hard to separate from the hype of one, and you may need a critical steer. But how to find one to trust from the cacophony of voices around? That’s why Gardner, McMillan and indeed The Stage’s own team of critics are so valuable. They play a vital part in helping to separate the wheat from the chaff, both on the stages and in the reviewing deluge.
I’ll be briefly adding my own next weekend; and I know I’ll be saturated in coverage and feel a little bit defeated before I even step on the train at King’s Cross on Friday morning. By contrast, it has been sheer theatrical bliss to head across to Canada, and spent the last four days at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, seeing seven shows out of an entirely more manageable festival of just 12 shows in all. It’s so much more cultivated and civilised than the free-for-all of Edinburgh.
This may be a bit like Edinburgh must have started out as, until the fringe bolted itself on and started outgrowing the home festival. (Just the other day, I mentioned actor David Weston’s new book “Covering McKellen: An Understudy’s Tale” here, and he remembers going to the Edinburgh Festival with the National Youth Theatre in 1958: “There were 27 shows on the Fringe that year and our director Michael Croft complained to the press that he thought 27 was far too many.”)
The Stratford Shakespeare Festival is one of two great summer theatre festivals in Canada — the other, the Shaw Festival, is at Niagara-on-the-Lake — and there’s something utterly remarkable about it. While Edinburgh, despite its annual three-week influx of the world’s biggest arts festival, carries on with its merry business, the whole town here feels geared and galvanised around its theatre festival that runs from mid-April to the end of October: a five-and-a-half month season in all. Even the local church was advertising that the theme of today’s sermon was going to be “Camelot”, the musical version of which is playing in the festival season.
Spending a few days here - as many visitors do, rather than just dropping in for one show — proves why it has become a destination event, and it’s all built around theatre. This may very well be what I hope heaven will be like. There’s world-class professional theatre; terrific informal restaurants (all of whom ask you if you are going to see a show first, though there really isn’t any need: everyone seems to be!); and a beautiful (if slightly stagnant) river running through it.
I’ve not seen a single duff production (even if I wish they hadn’t revived Camelot, they did it well) - and there’s also, this year, one great one. “If you strip away the myth from the man, you will see where we all soon will be”, sings Judas in the song ‘Heaven on their minds” from Jesus Christ Superstar, and revealing a great musical anew is all about stripping the myths that have collected around it and treating it as a brand-new work. That’s one of the singular triumphs of Des McAnuff’s new production of this show here at Stratford, whose score I know inside out (ever since I got to know it as an album before I’d even seen it), and had never thought was capable of truly working onstage before.
I barely remember the original London production, which I saw from the remote balcony reaches of the Palace Theatre as a teenager and can only recall the pulsing light box floors from it. I saw the more recent bombastic London revival at the Lyceum, and have also seen some concert performances. I’ve always thought that this is a stunning score in search of a musical to contain it.
But given an urgent momentum all of its own, fiercely rendered with total commitment by its Canadian cast of brilliant actor-singers, it now bursts into invigorating theatrical life that is as dramatic as it is musical. In a programme note, director Des McAnuff comments, “Before I stared working on Superstar, I wasn’t familiar with its previous stage incarnations; I knew the show only for the album. The great discovery for me in working on this production has been that Tim Rice is a very good playwright as well as a great lyricist, and that in Jesus Christ Superstar he and Andrew Lloyd Webber created not only a ground-breaking rock musical but also an outstanding work of drama.”
A few weeks ago I ran into Tim Rice at a matinee at the Donmar Warehouse of Luise Miller (and a couple of months ago we also coincided at a West End matinee of Flare Path), which proves his interest in plays; and as we chatted afterwards, he told me about how great this Stratford production of Jesus Christ Superstar was, finally giving the show the critical approval it had usually lacked.
It is already now signed up to go on to play a season at San Diego’s La Jolla Playhouse as a possible prelude to a Broadway run, though Lloyd Webber recently told the New York Times, “I don’t think I should be involved in bringing it into New York, really, on the grounds that anything I get involved with seems to go wrong. I’ve come to this new conclusion. I’ll just smile and turn up at opening nights.”
It’s a production that will give him - and audiences - plenty to smile about. But so does Stratford itself. I’ve had a great time here, and can’t wait to come back.
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