Spacey Is Right
Of course he is: if devoting a 13-week show (or, we should say, a series of 13-week shows) to a single musical is not advertising that musical, then what is it? For the BBC to say that it is “not unduly promotional” is, quite frankly, an insult to our intelligence. What is “unduly promotional”? A 15-week show? 25 weeks? Every night for a year?
It wouldn’t be so bad if the shows concerned had different producers and were appearing in theatres owned by different managements, but that just isn’t the case: three shows, two of which were produced by Andrew Lloyd Webber (and one of these which he wrote) and the third appearing in a theatre he owns. If that is not “unduly” promoting ALW, I don’t know what is. A total of 39 weeks!
But the matter of ALW apart, there are a huge number of concerns here.
First, the BBC’s charter forbids it to take advertising and it can honestly say, hand on heart, that the letter of the charter has not been broken for it has not been paid by ALW, RUG or RUT. But the spirit? Smashed to smithereens!
Then there is the fact that this kind of reality show is cheap, lazy television. The BBC used to be the envy of the world for the high quality of its programming and that was at a time when we felt that ITV was considerably inferior. Now much (although, thankfully, not all) of the corporation’s output is far inferior to what ITV was producing then.
Third, the BBC claims it is promoting musical theatre and, to an extent, that is true. However if this is the corporation claiming some kind of cultural high ground, then that ground is very, very shaky indeed. Music theatre does not need that promotion. Look at the West End: it is packed with music theatre, music theatre which puts bums on seats and makes money. Last year was another record year for the West End and it was the musicals which pulled the crowds. Look at regional theatre: bring a well-known musical to almost any regional receiving house and it will do excellent business, putting straight plays in the shade. Musical theatre is very popular: there is no cultural kudos in promoting it.
These shows, the Beeb tells us, promote new talent. Yes, but only in a very limited area. There’s nothing wrong with talent shows - that’s how Eric Morecambe got started, winning an audition with Jack Hylton in a talent contest in 1939 - but these aren’t talent shows: they’re an audition for one part in one show.
But they’re not proper auditions. Can you imagine a teacher applying for a job having to teach a lesson and then either get the job or not on the basis of a vote by the kids? It’s ridiculous! These shows are not auditions: they’re a marketing ploy.
If the BBC wants to reclaim the cultural high ground (Huw Weldon, where are you now?), then there are many better ways of doing it. As Spacey said, whatever happened to Play for Today? What about a theatre-related documentary? It would have been fascinating to see how the National prepared for, say, War Horse. Or what about letting us see how ballet dancers prepare? How many people know just how demanding the regular morning class is? I remember one theatre I worked at inviting the local football team to join a ballet company’s class: they were exhausted and suffering after fifteen minutes!
But it’s not going to happen. As Spacey said, such things are not “sexy” enough. Nor can they fill thirteen weekly slots for so little outlay. We all know that there is theatre and dumbed-down theatre. Both have their place but at least the dumbed-down version doesn’t dominate whereas, I’m afraid, dumbed-down TV overshadows the rest by a huge margin.