British Theatre Guide Blog

Have you been reading Jackie Fletcher’s reports from the Belgian arts festival, the Kunstenfestivaldesarts?  I know: the title is enough to put anyone off!  It’s a mixture of Walloon and Flemish (or Dutch and French, if you prefer), but all it means is “arts festival”.  But that doesn’t seem exotic enough, does it?  Which is why I decided to keep the official title rather than translating it.

But don’t let the title put you off.  Jackie’s reviews (and the comments she makes about the companies and their approach to theatre) are quite fascinating and will probably have the average British theatregoer working him- or herself into a frenzy of denial.  “You can’t call this theatre!” will be the probable cry.

European and British theatre have diverged considerably.  Whilst we have, in the country, remained generally very text-based, European theatre would seem to be - and I have no doubt that Jackie will correct me if I am wrong - much more physical.  Or perhaps it is more of the nature of what is now often called Total Theatre.  And perhaps it also has much in common with what we call performance art.

I am far from expert.  Indeed, I am far from having even a basic knowledge of European theatre.  Perhaps even in this globalised world (now there’s an odd phrase!) our being an island is still an effective barrier to the importation of European ideas and attitudes.  And perhaps, too, our Transatlantic “Special Relationship” is as much cultural as political. 

Perhaps also - now this is an interesting idea - it has something to do with the press whose attitude towards Europe sometimes verges on the xenophobic, although in this case I am referring more to the text-centredness of theatre critics.  I am not referring to the Billingtons, Spencers or de Jonghs but to the reviewers from local and regional publications (web and print) across the UK.

 Recently I reviewed DV8’s production To Be Straight With You at Northern Stage in Newcastle.  The house was full, but the significant thing was that there were only two reviewers there: myself for the BTG and the Entertainments Editor of the Newcastle Journal.  Usually there are at least eight and very often many more at press nights across the region.  When Dad’s Army: The Lost Episodes opens at the Newcastle Theatre Royal next Tuesday you can guarantee at least a dozen will turn up and when Chitty Chitty Bang Bang opened at Sunderland Empire in 2005 there were reviewers there whom I’ve never seen - before or since - at a press night in the region in the ten or so years I’ve been reviewing!

Is this really a bad thing? Why shouldn’t we be content with what we have, some of the finest (text-based) theatre in the world?

But we can learn so much from different types of performance.  And we can incorporate what we learn into our own work.  Look at what mainstream theatre has learned from Frantic Assembly or from Complicite.  Look at the richness of work like Matthew Bourne’s Play Without Words and much of what he has been doing since.

We need to keep an open mind.  We need to see what other traditions can teach us.  We’ve learned from Noh and Butoh: why not European work?  It can only enrich our own work.  Dance does it all the time - it is a much more international medium than drama.

I am firmly embedded in the text-centric tradition, as critic, playwright and director, but one can get stale and nothing shakes you out of your complacency than being confronted with the new, the different, the challenging.  I well remember the Opera North production of Orfeo ed Eurdice which incorporated incredible modern choreography by Emio Greco | PC.  It was booed at the 2004 Edinburgh Festival but I loved it. The fusion of 18th century opera and “challenging” choreography brought the work to life for me in a way which no “straight” production ever could, enabling me to look at it with fresh eyes.  It didn’t destroy Gluck’s work: it enhanced it by giving me an alternative way of looking at the familiar.

Do read Jackie’s reports, and if you think that talking on the phone from an office in Brussels to an actor (who sings a Bollywood song to you) in a call centre in India  is not theatre (now if that doesn’t spark your interest, nothing will!), she might just give you something to think about!

The road to hell, they say, is paved with good intentions.  When I set up the BTG Blog I was, indeed, full of good intentions: it would be updated at least every week, probably every day, and would be full pertinent, timely comment on the state of British theatre.

Ha!  How long is it since my last post?  Weeks, not days.  So now I am driven by guilt - not that I am arrogant enough to think that the theatre world is waiting with bated breath for the pearls of wisdom that may fall from my lips but because I failed to keep my promise to myself - to write something today.

It’s not just guilt, though: there is something I want to say and that is “kudos to the TMA for doing what it can to focus the attention of the theatre world on regional theatre.  All too often regional theatre gets news mentions because of something bad - usually loss of funding putting a theatre or theatre company at risk (the continuing saga of the Derby Playhouse is an example) but, thanks to the TMA, this week we have had our attention brought to the work of the unsung heroes of theatre, those involved in administration, marketing and customer relations in regional theatres.

The TMA Management Awards - like the organisation’s Regional Theatre Awards - recognises the work which goes on day after day throughout the country with very little publicity outside of the local area.  How many people outside of the South West know of the work of the Hall for Cornwall?  How many people outside of Wales (or even outside of Cardiff) know anything about the Wales Millennium Centre, except for the controversy which surrounded its building?  How many people, even in Salisbury know of the 42 years service which Alan Corkhill has given to the Playhouse?

The answer to all of these questions, of course, is “very few indeed”, but, as I have said so often, the regions are the bedrock of British theatre: without the work that goes on there, without the experience that actors, directors, playwrights, tech crew and everyone else involved gains, the West End and the major companies would not be able to achieve the standards they do.

Kudos, too, to the Scottish critics whose Critics’ Awards for Theatre in Scotland bring to wider notice the excellent work that goes on north of the border which, let’s be honest, tends to be forgotten about eslewhere in Britain once the Edinburgh Fringe and the EIF are over.

This is why at the BTG we have weekly reports from the Midlands, the North East and the North West (and would have more from elsewhere if we had the staff) and why we give equal space to reviews of work from even the smallest companies and theatres in the regions.

That’s why, too, we report on and review the London fringe theatres.  A play at, say, Theatre 503 may not have the glamour of something in the Olivier, but the work that it (and the Finborough and the Arcola and the Bush and the Blue Elephant  and… well, I could go on and on!) does is vital for the theatrical health of the UK and enables British plays to dominate Broadway’s biggest awards, the Tonys.  Six nominations, for example, for a production which began life not in the West End or at the National but at Chichester, a regional theatre.

So let’s celebrate British regional theatre!