British Theatre Guide Blog

Ken Davenport is a US-based independent theatre producer.  This week he posed a question on his blog.

“Why the bollocks are Londoners fascinated with play versions of successful movies?  Rain Man, Shawshank, When Harry Met Sally, etc.?  Think the movie companies would ever allow those productions here?”

References to male genitalia aside (call me a fuddy-duddy if you want to) and without condoning the London-centric approach, can I invite you to air your thoughts on the subject?

I would be interested to hear what you think about the proliferation of films now on stage - not just plays, but also films now on the  musical stage  (Legally Blonde, Dirty Dancing, etc).

Are we fascinated or do we just go with the flow (usually from the US) of whatever is on offer?  Is it about audiences, experimentation or Art; is it something to do with how new work is treated or breathing new life into an old product; is who holds the power what matters, or (cynical me) at heart about money and risk?

If you want to hazard a guess about how ‘movie companies’ think on this one as well, by all means do, but if we can keep anatomical parts out of it and keep on topic so much the better!

I look forward to hearing from you. You can respond by email to sandra@britishtheatreguide.info  or - preferably - here on the blog.

Sandra Giorgetti

You can understand why some people believe that London should have its own Fringe Festival.

“London needs its own festival fringe,” Greg Tallent, the director, says. “There’s lot of activity in August, a lot of people visiting London, a lot of arts performers living and working in the city who want to show their work.  There is a lot of audience in London in August — they come in to a cultural capital and that’s the time we should have our fringe. Quite simply it is the best time for London.”

And it clashes - exactly - with the dates of the Edinburgh Fringe, 6th to 30th August.

He added, “It costs a lot of money to do a show in Edinburgh — it’s a big stake for a young performer. It seems to us that for young people who haven’t got the money, doing it where they live and work is going to help them.”

So should Edinburgh be shaking in its shoes?

No way! For a start Edinburgh is small with an obvious central area for the Fringe - High Street - which can be (and is) closed to traffic to allow performances of street acts and extracts from Fringe shows for most of the day - and if you get bored there you can always nip down Bank Street to the steps to  the area around the National Gallery of Scotland where there’s plenty going on.

And at normal walking pace it’s possible to travel between even the furthest-flung major venues in well under 30 minutes.  OK, some of the outlying venues to the north of George Street, like the Botanical Gardens or Theatre Workshop, may take a little longer to reach from, say, The Pleasance, but Edinburgh taxis are a damned sight cheaper than those in London and, except for certain hot spots such as the lights at Tollcross, thanks to the much (unfairly) reviled one-way systems, the traffic does flow more smoothly.  In London try getting on foot from the Gate in Notting Hill to the Almeida in 30 minutes!

And while London-based performers will find it cheaper to be able to live at home than get digs in Edinburgh, visitors who come specifically for the event are going to have to pay considerably more for their accommodation than they would in Edinburgh. 

And the London Fringe Festival organisers are going to have to attract a different audience.  Yes, London is full of tourists in August but they’re there for the West End, not for off-West End theatres.  Some may make their way to the Bush or the Almeida, but not many: they’re there for the mega-musicals or plays with big names, or perhaps a visit to the National.  In Edinburgh, however, visitors are there for the Fringe, or the EIF, or the Book Festival.

And apart from saving money on accommodation, travel and living expenses, what are the benefits for the performers? In Edinburgh there are hundreds of journalists and promoters from all over the world, among them critics from the nationals who see many shows in Edinburgh they would not go to in London. Will the propsoed London event offer the same? In even the medium term, it’s highly unlikely.

The Edinburgh Fringe is not perfect - see the 2006 Thundering Hooves report - but it has so much to offer to up-and-coming performers, companies, writers, directors et al that it seems to me that the London event stands very little chance of success.  Held at a different time - perhaps July - it could become an essential part of the theatre calendar for “fringe” groups but to run it in direct competition with Edinburgh seems almost suicidal.

And then there’s the question of money. As we reported on 25th November, both the EIF and the Edinburgh Fringe are facing cuts of up to 4% from city council funding and venues are reporting difficulty in finding sponsors as existing deals come to an end.  The Fringe and the EIF have proven track records of attracting thousands of people every year: if they have difficulty finding sponsorship, what chance has something new and untried got?

And finally there is the feeling shared by so many outside of London that theatre tends to be far too London-centric. Two comments on the Times article reveals the strength of feeling:

“What a poor show. God FORBID anything would happen outside London. The worst part is its the exact same dates. They should be ashamed of themselves.”

“Our neighbours from Hell are at it again. What is wrong with them???”

The BTG is now eight years old. It was on 17th November 2001 that it first went live on the Web.  At that time it was genuinely a one-man band - there was just me - and in the first full week we had just over 1,000 page views.

Philip Fisher joined us very soon afterwards and so began the growth which has led to the present situation where we have over 40,000 unique visits and 100,000 page views a week and 44 regular contributors, excluding Philip and myself, together with a number of occasional contributors.

 We have reviewers throughout England, in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, in New York and in Europe.  We have specialist dance and opera reviewers and amongst our regular contributors are members of the Critics’ Circle, trained journalists, actors, playwrights and directors. Five are theatre directors, three are actors, two theatre-related academics, eleven trained journalists (most of whom specialise in theatre), one performed playwright (although two of the directors and one actor are also performed playwrights), four general theatre-related writers (one also a translator), and five working in other theatre jobs, including one musical director.

There are, at the time of writing, over 12,800 pages online, almost half of which are reviews from theatres throughout the country, the Edinburgh Fringe, the Edinburgh International Festival, and the Latitude Festival, as well as from New York, Paris, Avignon, Brussels, Bayreuth and Verona, and they cover plays, musicals, physical theatre, circus, opera, ballet and contemporary dance.

However this is site’s second incarnation.  It actually began in 1997 as the Mining Company British Theatre site - odd name, I know, but it was so called because we ”mined” the Web to find the best sites in our spubject area - which later became British Theatre at About.com. When Primedia Inc took over About.com in 2001 they closed all the sites which did not relate to their print publications in the US and so some 300 of us were “let go” in September of that year.

So we could, in some sense, be said to be almost a teenager!

Many years ago (more than 40), as we were watching the weather forecast on television, my girlfriend’s younger brother, who was about 10 at the time, remarked, “!Huh! They always give themselves the best weather.”

Not quite accurate, perhaps, but indicative of attitudes to the Met Office.  I have lately found myself getting very frustrated with that organisation.  In April it announced that this would be one of the hottest summers on record - a barbeque summer, they called it.  More recently I’ve been thinking to myself, “They lied!” and now they have “revised” their forecast.  Now it appears August is going to be “unsettled”.

Great!  Wonderful!  From 27th to 29th August we’ll be performing The Tempest in the open air and I’m starting to worry that the play title may be an omen….

In the seventies I did a lot of open air theatre and have memories of playing Henry VIII in A Man For All Seasons in pouring rain with that Tudor costume getting heavier and heavier as it became more and more saturated until I felt as though I was trying to walk on a Jupiter-sized planet.  Well, we’re not using Tudor costumes for Tempest but I’m still worrying…

When I went to see WILDWORKS’ The Beautiful Journey last Thursday, I went prepared for the worst - warm clothing, waterproofs and two umbrellas in the boot of the car.  They weren’t needed (or, at least the wet weather gear wasn’t) but my innate pessimism about the British weather hasn’t been dented.  I’m still worried.

I remember all too well last year’s August weather in Edinburgh when “The rain it raineth every day” never seemed more appropriate and my train home was cancelled because it couldn’t get into Edinburgh (from Glasgow) because of flooding on the line so they laid on a bus which got me into Newcastle after midnight and I had to get a taxi (£25!) home.

No!  I must be positive!  Mustn’t I?

Back on 17th July, writing about  The Tempest, I said, “Soon it (the play) will be in little pieces at my feet and I’ll have to begin putting it together again.”  Now, eleven days later, the pieces are getting ever smaller!

My notes are beginning to look like a stream-of-consciousness novel: one thought leads to another and off I go at a tangent.  So I start a new note, but that leads to yet another idea, and off I go again.

Started thinking about Ariel, for example, and before I knew where I was, I was looking at Puck, Oberon, Titania in Dream, Hecate and the Witches in Macbeth, the ghosts in Richard III and Macbeth….   I’m tempted to say, with Puck, “Lord, what fools these mortals be”, with myself as the mortal in question!

But it’s a necessary process.  The only way for a director to get his/her ideas into perspective is to examine them all minutely, reject what seems wrong and build on what seems right.  I have to say that discussions about the play and characters with the actors who auditioned have enriched my understanding, and I have no doubt that, once we start rehearsals, there will be further long and deep discussions and then we will reach a consensus.

I am so envious of those companies which can afford long rehearsal periods.  If Arts Council comes up with the money I’ve asked for - and I should hear tomorrow -  we’ll have four: if not, it will be three.  That’s all we can afford - the idea of six or even eight weeks is sheer unattainable bliss! But it’s better than the alternative, which is not doing the show at all.

But this is just putting off trying to organise my ideas into some kind of order….

One of the Tempest cast said to me tonight, “You know, this is proving to be the hot job of the summer.”  To which another director replied, “It’s the only job of the summer!”  And it’s true.  Things have gone very quiet: there is very little work about and the competition for parts has been fierce.

At least, it’s been fierce among the professionals: the youngsters we need as singers, dancers and musicians as the “spirits of the isle” are proving much more difficult.  Perhaps it’s the idea of committing to something for three weeks in school/college holidays or perhaps they’ve all got holiday jobs or are away, but where we expected a flood, we’ve currently only got a trickle.  You would have thought that the chance to work with a professional cast - and believe me, it’s a cast that includes some of the region’s leading actors - and creative team would have been a real incentive, but it seems not to be the case.

I wonder, though, if I should not be surprised.  I remember a year or so back being told by the head of the Performing Arts department of a local college which offered the full BTEC and GNVQ Performing Arts qualifications that he was disillusioned and depressed and wondered why the course was still running. “All they want is to be effing pop idol,” he said.

But that’s by the way.  It is proving very difficult to catch the interest of the youngsters.  We do have some, of course, and they are very keen, but there are places for a lot more and those places are proving very difficult to fill.

Where have all the young folk gone?
Long time passing.
Where have all the young folk gone?
Long time ago.
Where have all the young folk gone?
Gone on holiday everyone?
When will we ever learn?
When will we ever learn?

I’ve just spent a few hours preparing and sending out contracts for the Tempest actors.  It’s an essential chore but chore it certainly is.  I hate admin!  I just don’t have the right kind of mind, so the hours passed so very slowly.

Actually, even that wasn’t as boring as the “auditions” on Saturday.  I use the quote marks because they didn’t happen.  It appears the local paper didn’t run the story and so, naturally, no one turned up.  I got there an hour early to prepare and the choreographer arrived just fifteen minutes later, and then we sat, and sat, and sat….  Eventually, after over an hour of sitting, we gave up.  Somehow we’re going to have to find the time to re-schedule them.

However, now that that the admin’s out of the way, I can get back to the interesting part.  The rest of the day - apart from some essential shopping: I have just realised I don’t have any envelopes big enough for the contract! - will be spent working on characters’ back stories and relationships.  The relationship between Prospero and Ariel really fascinates me - layers of ambiguity there.

I recently came across a pic from a 19th century production in which Ariel was female (which is how I’m playing the character) and dressed in a tutu!  So in the auditions I asked how each actress saw the character and the most common answer was “cheeky and mischievous”.  No, no, no! 

Anyway, to work!

…if you like, but my reaction to the DCMS’ latest brainchild, the UK City of Culture, is one of sheer disbelief that the government thinks it can pull the wool over our eyes yet again.

For those who haven’t read our news story,  the Department for Culture, Media and Sport is inviting bids from local authorities throughout the UK to become the first “City of Culture” in 2013. Culture secretary Ben Bradshaw said that the idea is to celebrate and boost the profile of the arts outside London.

But - and this is a somewhat large “but” - there’s no money in it.  Councils are being invited to go through a three stage bidding process, which will involve a very large amount of staff time and almost certainly the employment of consultants (never a cheap thing to do), and for what? The right to use the City of Culture logo, that’s what!  Oh yes, and the Turner and Stirling Prizes will relocate to the chosen city for that year, as might the BBC Sports Personality of the Year.  And  the BBC and Channel 4 will be showing an interest in what’s happening - which as (supposedly) public service broadcasters they should be doing anyway.

But, says Ben Bradshaw, the cachet of holding the title will attract loads of private and business sponsorship and funding.

The government is so mired in spin that they must have been taking lessons from the Whirling Dervishes.   They’ve taken millions away from the arts throughout the country for the London Olympics and are replacing it with the use of a logo for one city or conurbation for one year.

We know - of course we know, who is so removed from reality that they wouldn’t? - that  public money is going to be very tight for many years to come.  We know, too, that, despite the protestations of politicians of all parties, the arts are going to have suffer their share of the cuts.  We accept it because we know that we are in the worst recession for a very long time and the government, like so many others throughout the world, are trying to get us out of it by huge public sending (which involves huge public borrowing as well as “quantative easing”, aka devaluation).  The public is not as stupid as the government obviously believes us to be, so we can accept that, for the preservation of jobs and the skills of the workforce, spending ourselves out of the recession is worth trying.

Why, then, do they persist in trying to con us?  The City of Culture prize is not like the European Capital of Culture which came with huge amounts of European funding, which went not just to winners Liverpool but to all those cities which put in a bid.  Essentially they are doing nothing but are trying to seem as though they are.

The City of Culture scheme is not the DCMS and, through them, the government supporting the arts, culture and creativity, but an attempt to make us believe that the government is supporting the arts, culture and creativity.  It’s spin - again!

I’m going to miss the Edinburgh Fringe this year: it will be the first time since 1997 that I haven’t been there reviewing.  But there will be 15 BTG reviewers there, so our coverage will be even wider than last year.   I’ll not feel strange, however, because I’ll be too busy: I’m directing a site-specific open-air production of The Tempest at the end of August so I’ll be in rehearsal for all three weeks of the Fringe.  I’ll be blogging occasionally about the production between now and then.

Where are we now?  Well, we have a full cast (auditions were concluded on Tuesday so are contracts going out after the weekend), a Musical Director and a Choreographer, and tomorrow (Saturday 18th July) we’re auditioning young people from 14 to 18  - dancers, singers and musicians - to play the “spirits of the isle”.

I’ve done the major cuts -  I’m trying to get the piece down to two hours (including interval) - and am working on characters and themes.  Shakespeare is really amazing: I thought I really knew the play - how many times have I seen and read it over the years? - but the more I delve into it, the more I see.  I’m currently going through that process of dismantling (deconstructing?) it.  Soon it will be in little pieces at my feet and I’ll have to begin putting it together again, only to start the whole process once again once we get into the rehearsal room.

There is one major problem: I’m not sure when rehearsals will start.  We wait with bated breath to hear if Arts Council will give us the funding to have an extra week’s rehearsal.  With eleven in the cast, even at Equity minimum it’s one hell of a weekly wages bill.

Watch this space!

In the BTG Newsletter on Sunday (14th June), I wrote:

“A Night Less Ordinary” is a new initiative, launched lst December by Arts Council and the DCMS, to offer free theatre tickets to young people under the age of 26. Funding was given to theatres across the country which applied to join the scheme, ranging from £10,00 to £30,00 to £50,000. The scheme will run for two years and 618,000 tickets will be given away.

I was talking recently to the Marketing Manager of a participating theatre who told me that 200 tickets have been applied for since the theatre began the scheme but only 20 of the ticket holders actually turned up. “When we offer cut-price tickets, more or less everyone who buys them turns up,” he told me, “but free tickets clearly aren’t valued and anything from bad weather to ‘I’m feeling a bit tired’ will put them off.”

It would be interesting to know whether this has happened across the country. It’s early days, of course, but I have to confess that I’m not surprised. And on this showing the scheme certainly won’t succeed in its aim of getting the notoriously difficult to attract 18- 26 age range into the theatre.

In fact I have since heard from elsewhere that this is not uncommon. One correspondent - not referring to this particular scheme - wrote, “We used to negotiate batches of free tickets for disadvantaged groups – elderly people or young people in care etc.  After a while, we realised that people did not value free tickets, and often would not turn up to collect them.   We then started to charge £1 for the tickets.    We  found that people not only took up the offer, they were much more likely to  turn up on the night.     The small charge gave people a “stake” in the event – they were having to pay something, so they would not take the ticket unless they were serious.  Even a 50p charge had a positive effect.”

Actually, that’s fairly elementary psychology, I think.  I wonder whether the 20 mentioned above who did turn up would have been likely to go to the theatre anyway and were delighted to be able to go for free.  It seems a strong possibility.

However A Night Less Ordinary is a two-year pilot scheme.  It will be interesting to see the final results - and I would be very interested to hear from other theatres about their experience of it to date.