May 2012 Archives

Yesterday I wrote here about my favourite leading women in British musicals, and today it’s the turn of the men.

It’s a surprisingly shorter list; the competition doesn’t feel as fierce. We simply don’t have as many above-the-title leading men to celebrate. It’s why the arrival of someone like Alfie Boe, crossing over from opera to the theatrical stage for the first time in Les Miserables when he played Valjean for the 02 25th anniversary concert and then did a stint in the West End run, makes such an impact.

Elaine Paige used to bill herself as the first lady of British musicals, but she also used to be first in a relatively small field. Julia McKenzie also made a significant mark, but that was partly thanks to a parallel career as a TV actress and in straight plays, while Diane Langton and the late Stephanie Lawrence were other leading players. As the mid-80s arrived, however, and shows from Starlight Express and The Phantom of the Opera to Me and My Girl, Les Miserables and Miss Saigon emerged, there was a lot more competition and opportunity.

And the pool of British leading lady talent expanded exponentially. Sarah Brightman and the wonderful Frances Ruffelle would both recreate their West End performances in Phantom and Les Miserables respectively - an opportunity thrice denied to Paige, who saw her roles in Evita, Cats and Chess all go to American performers Patti LuPone, Betty Buckley and Judy Kuhn respectively.

The world moves fast nowadays but Twitter moves even faster. In the constantly updated timelines of Twitter users, we are both generating content and absorbing it at a pace that’s literally unstoppable. And some users refuse to stop whatever they’re (supposed to be) doing, like watching a performance in order to keep up the constant electronic dialogue.

I suppose its an electronic version of those inveterate whisperers who seem to want to share comments with their companions throughout a show, as they no doubt do at home in front of the television, seeing no difference between the two environments and the fact that the performers are live in front of them and may be distracted by their talking, not to mention those around sitting around them.

Nowadays, thanks to the comment facility to most online reviews, not to mention bulletin boards and Twitter, criticism is no longer a one-way monologue but a platform for multiple conversations to begin around a production. And as critics who dish it out, we occasionally have to take it, too: we’re not immune to criticism, either.

But should artists involved in a show ever answer back themselves? Steven Berkoff famously issued a death threat against Nicholas de Jongh, the former theatre critic of the Evening Standard, which de Jongh’s editor took so seriously he called the police (so I fear for the safety of Fiona Mountford and Dominic Maxwell, who respectively gave Berkoff’s latest, Six Actors In Search of A Director, a one-star review last week in the Evening Standard and The Times).

Seeing a show on Broadway — any show, regardless of apparent merit — there’s a virtually obligatory moment at the end when the audience rises to their feet, almost as one. No, not when the curtain comes down and the lights go up, but when the actors are taking their bows. In the process, it has become a devalued currency: since pretty much every show gets one, there’s no special achievement or recognition denoted by its occurrence.

But earlier this week, Ben Brantley of the New York Times reported with a kind of surprised awe that he’d just seen a show where “something rare and wonderful happened” — namely, “at the end of the show, when the performers took their bows, the audience remained seated.” The show was an Encores concert production of the musical Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Was it a stinker?

A Guardian blog last week asked: “How could technology change theatre criticism for good?” The web, of course, has already allowed a lot more voices to take part in the critical conversation, whether via blogs, bulletin boards or Twitter, but the Guardian blog suggested that this new expanded template has resulted in “recurring, sometimes ugly debates between mainstream critics and the blogging community.”

I found myself in the eye of this particular storm myself earlier this week after my own blog drew attention to the different responses to the production Three Kingdoms between the traditional, dead-tree media and its online-only counterparts.

In the final fortnight of the Broadway season for productions eligible for consideration this year’s Tony Awards, some ten shows opened back-to-back, representing over a quarter of the shows that opened across the entire year. But that’s very much an anomaly, created by the rush to meet the Tony deadline.

By contrast, this and next week are just business-as-usual in London, on the fringe and in the regions, where — according to the Theatre Record index of future shows — in the two week period between May 21 and June 3, there are some 32 new shows in London alone (and that’s excluding one-off’s like the Globe to Globe festival of international Shakespeares), with another 11 shows listed for the regions, excluding festivals.

On Sunday night I began the second series of These Are A Few Of My Favourite Songs at Soho Theatre, in which leading figures from different areas of the theatre talk about their lives and careers in the context of some of their favourite songs, some of which are sung live and others played on CD, with all proceeds benefitting the Theatrical Guild.

My guest on Sunday was Simon Russell Beale (who has just coincidentally become a patron of the Guild), joined by fellow Olivier Award winner Leanne Jones as singer (with an extra guest appearance on vocals by season pianist Ben Stock). And listening to Simon, my admiration for the man and his sincerity, honesty and modesty, multiplied the high regard I already hold for him as an actor. This coming Sunday I’m looking forward to welcoming Jeremy Sams, one of the brightest and most eclectic men I know and a true man of the theatre.

Regular readers of this blog will know what a champion I already am of musicals in general, and of fringe musicals in particular, where shining an intimate, close-up spotlight on shows big or small, and hit or miss in their original incarnations, can uncover gleaming jewels beneath the bluster of bigger stagings.

And just as the West End is getting less and less adventurous in its choices, where old films featuring classic scores and/or recycled pop records seem to be the standard formula nowadays out of which apparently ‘new’ shows are being created, it’s good to be reminded that there are other shows around that have emerged in different, more original ways.

I seem to have unwittingly ignited a welcome fight back by theatregoers and actors alike, tired of having performances disrupted by bad behaviour. Just the other day, a colleague posted on his Facebook account, “Hope never to be seated next to Craig Revel Horwood again. At last night’s Top Hat he offered a near constant commentary on the show from the overture onwards that was clearly audible four seats away - I know because I moved for the second half to try to get away from it…” Another journalist promptly replied, “You should have ‘done a Mark Shenton’.”

And on Wednesday night, Emily Tierney, who plays Glinda in The Wizard of Oz, tweeted, “Almost did a flying Glinda style Patti LuPone at the man in the front row who’s texting constantly! So distracting!” She then added, “Shame @ShentonStage isn’t in to give this joker a few lessons in theatre etiquette!!”

An Observer news feature a few weeks ago was headlined,”Coronation Street - The Musical hits the right note as TV cashes in on top brands,” as it catalogued the series of TV shows that are currently being adapted for the stage.

That, of course, was written before Street of Dreams began its arena stage tour at Manchester’s MEN Arena, but it in fact sounds like the show hit some pretty bum notes. And on Tuesday, its producers — facing a rebellious cast and suppliers who were still waiting payment for their work — hastily postponed its subsequent dates, claiming they were “far from happy with the show artistically and we are not prepared to take it out again in its present form”.


Monday’s Guardian included a full page ad for the new Wildworks outdoor show Babel, being presented as part of World Stages London, containing critical quotes. “Heart-warming and uplifting,” says one. “Eye-opening and inspiring,” says another. Yet another claims, “loved it, incredibly impressive and uplifting.” And who wrote them? Tom, Dick and Harry, that’s who — or rather, Tom, Ambra and Hunt. As the tagline over the ad puts it, “The People Have Spoken!”

Yet we have no idea at all who they are. It’s all reminds me a bit of the debacle a few years ago over a show called Madame Zangara’s Theatre of Dreams where one review quoted in another Guardian ad at the time claimed, “Delicious food, fabulous show, talented cast, all in all, an enchanted evening”; and it is credited to The Outside Organisation. As I wrote at the time, “Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they? They’re none other than the show’s London PR agency!”

Just the other day I was talking about drawing up lists of favourite things, and last week Michael Coveney provided his own list of his favourite UK theatres, in which he wrote, “I wonder if we’d ever all reach agreement on our top ten favourite British theatres. Here are ten of mine: Wyndham’s and the Haymarket in London, Theatre Royal in Brighton, the King’s in Edinburgh, the Glasgow Citizens, Theatre Royal in Bury St Edmunds, Theatre Royal in Stratford East, the Royal Court, the Wakefield Theatre Royal and Opera House, the Roundhouse (sometimes).”



Of course, a theatre isn’t just a building but contains associations and memories that you’ve had there. It’s what makes the National and Royal Court consistently my two favourite theatres in London. I get a warm glow of anticipation every time I approach the National, but it’s not just to do with what I’m hoping to see on the stage; I also enjoy the building itself, inside and out.

Theatre is a constantly evolving art form — from the top (of who makes it and where they make it) to the all-important bottom line of who receives it, i.e us the audience and how we see it (not to mention how we behave as we do so, as witness the controversy I ignited last week over the matter of Bianca Jagger’s appalling manners).

Theatre, of course, doesn’t exist without its audience — as Steve Marmion, artistic director of Soho Theatre, said earlier this year, “Art is pointless without an audience. Unless it’s a two-way process and you make work with your audience in mind, it is just an act of masturbation.” But it also doesn’t exist without people who make it, and places in which to make it, either, which may or may not be theatre buildings.

It’s been an interesting week: I have been making headlines this week as well as writing them for a change. My blog entry here on Monday that recounted my encounter with Bianca Jagger at last Friday’s Barbican opening of Einstein on the Beach was picked up, in turn, by the Daily Mail’s Richard Kay column on Tuesday, the Guardian news pages on Wednesday, plus a banner trailer on the front page to a G2 feature tied into it on theatrical etiquette; two Telegraph stories posted online yesterday, from both the news desk and a comment piece from Tim Walker; and an Evening Standard mention, so far.

The blog itself, meanwhile, has garnered unprecedented comment, including one from Bianca Jagger herself, in which she attempts to re-write history by claiming I’m trying to justify “physical assault & abusive behaviour” on her, and stating that she only “snapped a couple of photographs during curtain call, many others were taking photographs during the performance.”

It’s always difficult picking favourites — but of course we all have them. One of the questions I’m asked most regularly is what my favourite show playing in London is, or to provide a list of the top three, by way of a shorthand recommendation for visitors from abroad. (And right now I’d say: Matilda for a new musical, Sweeney Todd for a brilliant revival, and One Man Two Guvnors for an uproarious comedy, but of course I’m not saying that this will work for everyone!)

Starting the weekend after next, meanwhile, I’m asking a range of leading theatrical personalities to choose A Few Of My Favourite Songs in a reprise of the season I first hosted last year at Jermyn Street Theatre and we are moving to Soho Theatre this year, to benefit the Theatrical Guild. First up is Simon Russell Beale (on May 20), then Jeremy Sams (May 27), Howard Goodall (June 17) and Kerry Ellis (July 8), with some of their song choices sung live by Caroline Sheen (May 20/27), Emma Williams (June 17) and of course Kerry herself, accompanied by the wonderful Ben Stock (except for the final night, when Kerry will be accompanied by Craig Adams).

In the week following the announcement of this year’s Tony nominations, the Broadway box office grosses for last week make interesting reading — and worrying signs for a few shows on the current Broadway slate.

Receipts for Leap of Faith, for instance, which won a surprise nomination for Best Musical, actually saw receipts drop, from $224,539 the previous week to just $171,381 last week, with an average attendance of 72.9% (against the previous week’s 85.3%). But though the attendance percentage might not seem so bad, it can’t be read in isolation of the average ticket price paid: though they were filling (parts of) the place, the average admission was just $21.51 (down from the previous week’s $24.08), the lowest on Broadway.


Reviews come in lots of shades of grey. Thanks to the virtually all-pervasive system of star ratings across the reviewing landscape — though not, as I’ve pointed out before, in The Stage itself! — we’ve become trained, both as readers and reviewers, to reduce the judgements we read or make to a simple code; though as I’ve also said many times before, there’s no universally applied index to explain the calibrations that make up the differences between each register on that code.

There is, however, at least a black-and-white sense at either extreme of it: a one star review tells you to avoid at all costs (at least in the opinion of that critic). And that’s where its often helpful to read the review in the context of other reviews, too.

I’m not often driven to rage in the theatre, but at Friday’s opening of Robert Wilson’s production of Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach at the Barbican Theatre I found my patience sorely tested, and I not only reached breaking point, I actually snapped.

The amazing show — part art installation, part minimalist musical meditation, part dance spectacle — is an endurance test to begin with, not least on the bladder, even though a technical breakdown at a clearly shockingly under-prepared Barbican meant an unscheduled break afforded a pee break in the five hour show that is meant to run continuously without an interval.

Theatre marketeers and practitioners exist in different but obviously overlapping worlds; one is there to serve the other. Without an audience, a show is nothing, so the practitioners need the marketeers to help sell their wares. But marketing is essentially a parasitic industry; it doesn’t exist without a host to live off — and respond to.



Yet it is also full of creative people, who are making hopefully imaginative interpretations of what the art might be in creating the artwork for it. The trouble is that they are usually doing so well ahead of the show itself actually being fully created, and may have a radically different vision to selling tickets for the client they are serving than the practitioners do about the show they are creating.


I’ve had a few days of a different kind of theatre. On Monday morning, I had an 8.30am appointment at one — but no, it wasn’t the Edinburgh Fringe starting early in every sense. Instead, it was an operating theatre, to follow up on a back operation I previously had two Christmases ago.

Since then I’ve had a few nights of armchair theatre — staying in at home. That’s an unfamiliar sensation for me, and it was all I could do to restrain myself from wanting to rush out, especially when Ramin Karimloo, for instance, was appearing at the start of his current national concert tour just up the street from me at the Royal Festival Hall on Tuesday evening.

37 shows opened on Broadway in the last season, and the nominations for the Tony Awards, announced yesterday, are always as much about what and who is left out as those who are in. And of course, at least from this side of the Atlantic, how the British exports and/or talent has fared.

A staggering 30 of the eligible shows received at least one (or in some cases many more) nominations, suggesting that the Tony nominators — a group of roughly 30 industry insiders — decided to spread the bounty. So who was left out entirely?