British Theatre Guide Blog

I listened to a play on Radio 4 today, the first time for - well, more years than I can remember.  It was Cavalry by Dan Rebellato, who just happens to be a BTG reader, which, to be honest, is the only reason I listened.

(As an aside, he’d sent me a notification it was on via Facebook. Up until very recently I’d steered well clear of social network websites but I was talked into joining and have not regretted it.  It’s proving very useful - and I’ve been experiencing some real “blasts from the past”, which has been wonderful. But back to the subject at hand…)

I thoroughly enjoyed it and thought it was a very clever piece of writing, but that’s not why I brought it up here.  It occurs to me that the BTG is ignoring a whole area of dramatic writing and performance.  We cover live theatre, of course, and Philip reviews a lot of DVDs, many of which were originally TV programmes, but we (well, Philip actually: I’m sure his days are longer than those of the rest of us!) have only ever reviewed seven audio dramas and we don’t even have an index for them - which is something I’ll have to put right asap - but even they were on CD, not radio.

Perhaps we should attempt to extend our coverage. We aspire to be as complete a guide as possible, so it would make sense, but there are, inevitably, problems, primarily of time and personnel.

Should we?  I’d appreciate some feedback on this.

….They come not single spies, but in battalions.  And so it proved again this week.  After last week’s email disaster (on Friday 14th March), this week we lost the BTG for a few hours (on Friday 21st).

The server went down so I had no FTP access to update the site and the public, which was, of course, clamouring to read the latest news and reviews, were locked out.  Apologies for that.  But I must say that the techie folks at 1&1 swept into action and had everything running smoothly within a couple of hours of my reporting the fault.

They also say that troubles come in threes, so what’s going to happen next Friday?

Although an Arts Council England spokesman denied it, there is no doubt that Genista McIntosh’s review of ACE’s latest funding round was prompted by the furore which it sparked. Indeed Alan Davey said in February that he would bring in an “external eye” to take a look at what could be learned and Baroness McIntosh is that eye.

He said then, “This is the first time that the arts council, as a single body, has led a single, integrated investment strategy for our regularly funded organisations. As a learning organisation it is important we now review that process in detail, establish what worked well and what improvements can be made next time. An external perspective on this is vital.”

As a member of the House of Lords (she is a Labour life peer) who has worked in senior positions at the RSC, the National and the Royal Opera House, as well as being a former Principal of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, she is well qualified to do the job and has the political clout not to be ignored.  Her previous review pulled no punches in her assessment of the relationship between ACE and the DCMS and she expressed concern about the disbanding of the Arts Panels, although she did accept the reasoning behind it.

This disbanding is a move which has come back to haunt the organisation, as many of us thought it would at the time.  If peer review (which is what some commentators have called McIntosh’s task) is appropriate for ACE, then it is surely appropriate for its clients.  One suspects that, had the arts panels or something similar existed over the past few months, then certainly some of the more stupid initial mistakes (the cutting of the grant to the Bush, for example) would never have been made.

The reaction of ACE to the anger that was unleashed bore all the signs of bureaucrats rushing to cover their arses and the comment of the spokesman, that it had always intended to conduct a review of the funding process, reinforces that interpretation.

Bureaucracy and the arts don’t sit well together.  Bureaucrats like things neat and tidy, with boxes that can be ticked and priorities that can be itemised and met, but the arts simply don’t work that way.  Trying to straitjacket the arts thus leads to the sort of thing that we saw from “Soviet Realism” - although even there the greatest artists managed to make fools of the aparatchiks.

One hopes that Baroness McIntosh will show that the pursuit of excellence demanded by Brian McMaster’s report cannot be successful if it is weighed down by the dead hand of bureaucracy and that Alan Davey will learn from the mistakes of his predecessor and let the Council be arts-  rather than admin-led, and that it is truly a “learning organisation”.

And an interesting week it was, too: full of theatre although I never actually entered one.  Well, that’s not quite true: I was in a theatre’s admin offices, but not an actual auditorium or even rehearsal room.  And yet…

I got a few hours break on Sunday night after uploading the weekly update and sending out the Newsletter, but then it was back to the computer to upload the Olivier results.  And fascinating they were too, not so much for who won what (although there were some surprises) but because of how they reflect the split that runs right down the middle of London Theatre.  As (almost) always, the successful musicals came from the commercial sector and the successful plays from the subsidised.

Plays have a hard time of it in the West End. They’re not a tourist target in the way that musicals are and so presenting them is a real risk.  A well-known star - preferably from Hollywood or, failing that, a major TV series - can make a play a West End success but not always: even the young J. J. Feild and the very experienced Angela Thorne weren’t enough to save Ring Round the Moon which announced early closure this week after less than a month.

This, of course, makes the Theatre Royal Haymarket rep company such a brave - and risky - venture.  I managed to see The Sea a few weeks ago on a flying visit to London and was greatly impressed.  The matinee was packed, so I hope that’s a good sign for the future.

Anyway, apart from the usual BTG daily editing and updating, I’ve had two new plays to read, a quotation to prepare for a Theatre in Education project, some work to do on my next production (including listening to hours of music), discussions about future plans for the company and, of course, planning the coming weeks’ North East reviewing.

I hate doing quotes!  Especially when you don’t really know what the job is going to entail.  You have to pepper them with so many ifs and maybes - how, for example, can you give a firm figure for researching and writing a piece?  It all depends on how much information is needed, how accessible it is, what approach the client wants you to take.  It would be wonderful to have an administrator/executive director so I could just concentrate on the artistic side but, alas, that would cost more than we’ve got.  I wonder how many theatregoers realise just how many companies are living from hand to mouth?

A friend of mine has just given up.  He’s been supporting his company financially by taking far, far less than he’s earned and actually injecting cash from other jobs’ earnings for years, and now he’s had enough.  I don’t blame him, but it’s so sad.  The theatre world is littered with the corpses of small-scale but very good theatre companies.  If the (financial) failure rate in the normal business world were a quarter of what it is in theatre, the government would be in a real panic.

And it’s not just companies: a young actor friend of mine, having just finished a run with a major national theatre company, is now cleaning houses for a living until, hopefully, the next job comes along.

What I haven’t (yet) done is write two articles that have been on the stocks for a few months or manage to get our What’s On pages online again.  Sheila Connor, who reviews for us in Surrey, sent me an email on Friday (now lost in the great email diasaster of Friday midnight!) telling me that I should delegate.  The fact is, I do but work has a habit of expanding to overflow the time available for it.

Back to my week: I’ve also changed my energy provider, thus saving £16 a month!

But I am going to the theatre tonight.  Not to review, just to watch. ‘Twill be a nice change!

Perhaps it was inevitable, but it still comes as a relief that the Law Lords have ruled that there should be no prosecution for blasphemy over the BBC TV screening of Jerry Springer the Opera. Christian Voice, of course, is up in arms and threatening to use other means to fight what they see as unacceptable. 

A prosecution, or even a judicial review,  would have been a victory for intolerance. In spite of the ruling, however, intolerance from fundamentalists of all kinds will continue, for this kind of conviction of their utter rightness and the belief that their ideas should be imposed upon others is endemic in a certain kind of person.  Isn’t it time that the right to freedom of expression should be enshrined in our law?  Being, as we are, subjects with permission is far inferior to being citizens with rights.  I accept the right of the members of Christian Voice and their ilk, of whatever religion, to hold their opinions and try to convert others, but I want them to acknowledge that I have the same right.  Unfortunately they don’t, so that right should have the force of law, not just of custom.

I’ve always wanted to invent a cliche but that seems highly unlikely, so here’s a nice oxymoron instead!

It’s true though.  At Live Theatre in Newcastle on Thursday evening Fiona Evans (whose Scarborough is currently running at the Royal Court) had a reading of her new play Deepcut and I really wanted to be there.  But more than a week beforehand there were no tickets left so I went on the waiting list.  No chance!  I missed it.  I left it too late, of course - the story of my life…

But - and this is the pleasing bit - it does mean that there is such an interest in new theatre writing in Newcastle that they had to start a waiting list for tickets - and I was by no means the first on that list. And that is a very good thing.

It’s partially the fact that it was at Live, of course - the theatre has a loyal and enthusiastic audience - and partially because Fiona is developing quite a reputation as an up-and-coming playwright, but it’s good to know there is an appetite for new work in the region.  I do tend, at times, to get a little depressed when audiences turn up in their thousands for the umptyninth revival of Cats (much as I love the show), for some very ordinary middle-of-the-road play which happens to have a well-known face or two from the telly or for some tenth-rate comedy.

So my faith is restored.  Sorry I couldn’t make it, Fiona.  In future the first of my heart shall be the first of my hand.  No more procrastinating.  Hereto I’ve worked on the principle of never putting off till tomorrow what I can put off till next month: that must change!

Good Lord, I’ve just made a (very much delayed) New Year’s resolution!