British Theatre Guide Blog

A guid new year tae ane and a’ and mony may ye see.

When you get to my age (and I shall become what used to be called an old age pensioner - now more kindly referred to as a senior citizen - in April), there is a tendency to look back rather than forward at this time of year and, of course, we’ve been doing that on the BTG with our Reviews of the Year from various parts of the UK, so I am going to try to avoid that trap and look forward.

One thing I am sure of - well, as sure as you can be of anything: perhaps one should add deo volente - is that the BTG will continue to grow. At the moment we have over 9,300 pages online and that number increases by 30 or 40 a week.  We also have around forty reviewers/correspondents, although inevitably some are more active than others. 

I have to admit that certain sections of the site have been neglected of late and so my first New Year resolution is to revive or revitalise those sections which have not been maintained as well as they should have been.

I also resolve to update this blog more often: why have it if you don’t use it?  There’s no way it can be a daily thing - there are, after all, a limited number of hours in the day - but resolution no. 2 is to make an entry once a week.

On a more personal level - although it does affect the BTG - my third resolution is to organise my time better.  I’m pretty certain I am not the only person in the world making that particular resolution!  One of the most difficult aspects of freelance life to come to terms with is dealing with the totally unstructured nature of one’s day.  When you’re working for someone else, you have set hours and a set amount of work to get through in that time, but when you’re freelancing and your own boss, it is so easy to slip into a kind of mañana attitude.  The trouble is, when mañana comes, it gets pretty hectic!

And the fourth resolution?  To try and keep the other three, which , if I succeed, will probably be a first!

Anyway, a very happy and healthy New Year to you all.

So far this year I’ve reviewed productions of Jack and the Beanstalk, Sleeping Beauty and Aladdin, I’ve written and directed a touring production of Aladdin, I’ve written two articles on panto for a BBC magazine (Who Do You Think You Are?)  and for a local paper (Newcastle Journal Culture Magazine), and talked about panto on BBC Radio Manchester.  I’ve also edited ten panto reviews from other BTG reviewers and I have no doubt that there will be more to come.

I am all panto-ed out!

Seriously, I do really enjoy panto - although I can no longer work myself up to joining in the Oh yes you wills etc - but “as a surfeit of the sweetest things / The deepest loathing to the stomach brings” so it can all get too much, although I have to say that I have not - this year - experienced  that “deepest loathing” which only comes when I see panto done really badly.  However I have to admit that I am getting close to the “surfeit”!

I don’t have any more to review myself but I will have to take a look at Aladdin on tour a couple more times, if only to keep the cast up to the mark!  No, that’s not fair: they’re actually doing it very well, to judge by all the comments that are coming back to me.

Actually there is one comment that I would love to use on posters for future tours but, alas, it isn’t possible for a family show.  One (female) member of the audience at one venue commented to our Widow Twankey and Wishee Washee, “You’s two are as funny as f**k”!

No, the interesting thing about catching one of the performances is to see how much of the script I laboured over so carefully actually survives.  That’s the great thing about panto: the script is just the starting point and it (shall we say?) develops throughout the run.  What doesn’t work is lost (PDQ actually) and what does tends to expand.

And I wonder: do they put in those comments about the awful quality of the jokes when I’m not there?

Actually one of the funniest things to happen this year was right at the end of the show when Wishee Washee laments that Aladdin gets the Princess, Widow Twankey gets Abanazar but he gets no one.  The cast, of course, all comfort him by telling him “But you’ve got all the boys and girls in your gang” but on this cocasion one of the mothers in the audience yelled at the top of her voice, “You can have me, pet!”  It was all the rest of the cast could do to keep him on the stage!

And of course that’s what makes it possible for a cast to continue enjoying doing the show, even if it’s the third performance that day and you’ve been running for three weeks.  No, I’m not talking about pulling a member of the audience but the unpredictable nature of the audience response.  They’ll always laugh at places you don’t expect (usually at my jokes, and no one ever expects that) or come up with hilarious comments.

I love panto, but thank goodness it’s only once a year!

If you haven’t read our story about changes in the British Council’s culture department, I’d read it now.  You won’t believe it!

The arts panels, with names like Visual Arts, Theatre and so on, are to be replaced by groups which bear the titles Progressive Facilitation, Market Intelligence Network, Knowledge Transfer Function and Modern Pioneer.

Yer what!?

What the hell does that mean? And I have to confess that when I first read this I did not say “hell”, so I’ll not ask to be forgiven for the strength of my language as it has been toned down more than considerably.

Have the lunatics taken over the asylum? you may ask.  But no, this is the kind of language that bureaucrats invent to make people think they actually have something to offer and boost their own egos.  “If we use impenetrable jargon,” the theory goes, “people will think we are very clever.”  It’s management-speak gone mad, so perhaps after all the lunatics have taken over.

“What do I do at the British Council?  Well, I deal with Knowledge Transfer Function.  It’s very demanding, you know.  What, you think it means us telling people things?  No, not at all.  It’s much more complex than that! Dear me, yes.  Why, there’s a whole committee of us to deal with it.  Mind you, I hope I might be able to move into Progressive Facilitation next.  Now that’s where it’s really at!”

It would be funny if it wasn’t so stupid - and frightening.  There used to be  committes which dealt with each individual art form and those committees were helped by advisory panels of experts in their fields who gave their time and expertise free of charge to enable the Council to show the best of British art of every kind to the rest of the world.  The British Council had a superb reputation both here and abroad for the work that it did in getting the word out to the world that Britain’s artists have a huge amount to offer.  It could speak with authority and was listened to.

Director of arts Venu Dhupa said the council is consulting on how to improve its impact, make better use of its networks and enhance transparency.  They’ve got a bloody brilliant way of going about it - get rid of the experts and hide behind meaningless jargon.

There’s been a lot of bad news recently: theatres closing (Aberdeen’s Lemon Tree last week) and this week withdrawal of grants from the very troubled Derby Playhouse, the National Student Drama Festival and the Northcott in Exeter and a major cut in the grant to Eastern Angles.

In terms of funding, we can probably expect more of the same in the weeks to come as Arts Council England’s regional offices decide their funding priorities for another three years.  Inevitably there will be uproar, protests and petitions.  Jobs will be lost and local people up in arms.  And what will make it harder to bear is the fact that the arts fared much better than expected in the Comprehensive Spending Review.  “If you’ve got more money, why should we be cut?” will be the cry. 

And it is a very understandable cry, but it would be a mistake to lump all the cuts and closures together  If we are honest - and that can sometimes be hard to be if you are involved - there are times when grant cuts are justifiable.  If a company or theatre is not reaching the standards expected and other unfunded groups in a region are, it surely makes sense to move the what is after all a limited amount of money to where it will do most good.  It’s hard on those who are employed in the affected organisations and also on their loyal audiences, but there are winners as well as losers.  It’s not as if the money is vanishing.

But ACE is a bureaucratic organisation and bureaucratic organisations can make mistakes, so their decisions must be carefully scrutinised to make sure they are soundly based.  And the decision making process must be totally transparent.  What are the criteria against which the affected organisations are being judged and how fairly are they being applied?  How well do the officers really know the organisation and its work?  How often have they visited? How often have they attended board meetings?  Is the decision made on the basis of a thorough direct knowledge of the theatre/company or is it founded on paper?  And if there is sufficient concern for an organisation to be in danger of losing its grant aid, have those concerns been raised with it and has it been given time to respond?  If the concerns appear for the first time in the letter detailing the proposed cut, then any organisation so affected is entitled to protest loud and long - and to be heard.

This kind of redistribution of grant aid is inevitable and probably in the long run healthy for theatre, but it must be done properly.  If it isn’t, then the guilty heads at ACE should roll - after all, they are dealing with the livelihoods of other people.  It is appropriate at Christmas time to insist on strict adherence to the dictum that what is sauce for the goose should also be sauce for the gander.

John Tusa’s Arts Taskforce has recommended that Arts Council England’s major Regularly Funded Organisations (ROFs), such as the RSC, the National and the Royal Opera House, should be funded directly by the DCMS, following the lead  given by the Scottish Parliament.

That’s the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and now the Tories in Westminster who want to extend their power over yet another aspect of national life.

Since Jenny Lee set up the Arts Council of Great Britain in the late forties, the arms length funding principle has been central and it must remain so.  For the government to fund directly is a very dangerous road to go along.  We may feel that (should they get into power) David Cameron and the 2007 Conservative Party would not abuse their position by putting political pressure on these organisations, but who can speak for future governments of whatever stamp?

Nick Hytner puts it very well in a statment to The Stage: “I have worked for continental opera companies whose funding comes direct from government. Bluntly, it comes with far more political interference and baggage than ours does. The arts council adds value to the national companies. There’s a productive two-way dialogue between us. Splitting us off would cause more bureaucracy and would waste time.”

The Conservatives have not said that they will accept the report’s recommendations (although the only thing they have definitely said they will not accept is taking sport out of the DCMS) but this is the first time that a major political party has mooted the abandonment of the arms length principle in England and it is a dangerous sign.  Already ACE is subject to government pressure to write its (the government’s) priorities into its funding decisions: once can imagine how much pressure will be put on the national ROFs if they come under direct government control.

This is very worrying.

So details of the Comprehensive Spending Review have now been revealed and the Arts have fared better than expected.  We were warned that the best we could expect was an increase in line with inflation but standstill funding and even a 5% cut were suggested as possibilities.  Indeed, the general feeling was that standstill was the best we could expect and government sources were mentioning a possible 5% cut in order to make standstill funding (which is, of course, essentially a cut in real terms) seem attractive.

But no, we have an increase in line with inflation  over the next three years in the funding to the DCMS and now the culture secretary has announced that the grant in aid which the Arts Council will receive will increase, over the three year period of the CSP’s life, of 1.1% above inflation.  That’s £28m over three years.

But let’s not get too celebratory too soon.  We still have the Cultural Olympiad to pay for, which means that ACE will not have all that money to spend as they wish.  Quite properly, the department has said that free entrance to museums and galleries will be protected, so spending there will increase by at least the rate of inflation, so the amount available for theatre will not be as much as first impressions may suggest.

It is still going to be a very tough period for theatre companies.  We have yet to learn how ACE will allocate its money: will RFOs (Regularly Funded Organisations) get a full inflationary increase?  If they do, then the amount available for the Grants for the Arts scheme, which is essentially project funding, will be reduced.

It’s a tough call.  Is it more important to fund ACE’s big clients or emerging companies which are asking for a lot less money?  I’m a trustee of a RFO, so obviously I want its grant to continue at as high a level as possible, but I’m also the artistic director of a company that depends on Grants for the Arts to be able to deliver our projects.  How can I choose between them?  How can ACE choose between them?  If both deliver the goods, how can one be called more important than the other?

One thing is sure: there are going to be some theatre organisations which are unhappy, but probably fewer than we feared would be the case.

Because (s)he can’t do right for doing wrong.

This week I’ve had complaints about reviews on the BTG from two people.  One complained that the reviewer had done such a detailed study of the play that he (the complainant) now didn’t need to see the play and so was annoyed.  Another (dealing with another play and another reviewer) complained that the critic was too critical and that such critics are killing the development of new writing by making adverse comments.

As a responsible editor - of course! - I went back to the reviews in question and looked at them again.  The first was an enthusiastic review of a very complex piece and it needed the exposition to make the review comprehensible and, as for the second, I contacted the reviewer who simply said that it was a bad piece of writing and a poor performance and that was the general consensus on press night.

Meanwhile I had an email about one of my own reviews, thanking me for being so positive.  All I’d done was say what my reactions to the play and the performances were, which is all I - and every other critic - ever do.  Still, I am human (although there are some whose work I have reviewed who don’t think so) and it is nice to be thanked for doing your job.

But the whole business shows the ambivalent relationship between critics, their subjects and even their readers. Some time ago I had an email from a reader who was annoyed that one of our reviewers had given a very positive review to a play which he (the reader) hated.  This particular character even suggested that there is a deliberate conspiracy in the theatre world to pretend that the playwright in question (who is one of our leading writers, but I shall go no further than that in revealing his identity) is good when he is, the reader suggested, without any talent at all.

All a critic can do is detail his/her own reaction to a play or performance.  In the case of those critics who, for example, write for the major nationals and for websites such as the BTG, their reactions are informed by a long history of theatre-going and/or professional involvement.  These critics probably see more productions in a month than the average reader sees in a year, so inevitably their reactions are going to be affected by that accumulation of experience.

Many - in fact, seventeen - BTG reviewers are actively involved professionally in theatre as actors, directors or writers.  Some have been so for a very long time - in my own case, for more than fifty years.  In some cases our backgrounds are in classical and in others in new and experimental theatre.

Does this sort of background make for better or worse critics?  I would suggest better.  The wider the experience against which to assess a piece, the better the assessment can be.   But it does mean that our reactions are likely to differ from those of audience members who have less experience.  However in the majority of cases the critics tend to agree in their general assessment of a piece, which does say something - but nothing whatsoever to do with any conspiracy to build up or damn a writer/director/actor!

The fact that there has been complaint from existing Edinburgh theatres about the proposal to make the Assembly Rooms a year-round venue for professional productions (see our news story) has excited quite a debate in Scottish (and particularly Edinburgh) theatre circles.  The general consensus seems to be one which has resonances throughout the UK, that what is needed is not another large- or even mid-scale receiving house but small spaces (such as the Garage Theatre which the city council closed down) which can be used by emerging companies to experiment with new writing or new approaches.

Glasgow, we are told, has such places, and of course there are a lot in London too, but Edinburgh is not alone in lacking them.  Indeed there are very few suitable spaces throughout the UK and those which do exist often struggle daily to survive and depend upon the hard work, commitment and often money of dedicated individuals and groups.  Funding - either from under-pressure Arts Council or local authority sources - is hard to come by.

Yet a healthy theatre scene needs a firm foundation of experiment and innovation and much of this comes from small companies which are pushing the boundaries, whose work will not fill even 200-seater venues, who have to take the risk of using often totally unsuitable non-theatre spaces

Clearly funding such spaces is not attractive to big companies - they want maximum advertising exposure for their money - and funding organisations and local authorities have lots of demands on what they have available, so what chance does small-scale theatre have? 

Not a lot, actually, unless the companies do it themselves.  Here’s a suggestion: a group of companies get together and, together, approach a central pub which has a spare room of the right size.  They pool their resources and approach the pub’s management to ask them to make the room available free of charge, pointing out that this will attract new customers into the pub who will spend money on drink, in just the same way as a lot of pubs offer their “function room” free.  They approach the local Arts Council office to fund (or part-fund, if they have some cash or can get small-scale funding from local - possibly even in the same street - businesses) a basic conversion - some blacks and  a simple sound and lighting system - and they then collaborate to programme the space.  Perhaps the companies may need to pay a percentage of their box office take for the mainenance of the equipment/ insurance and so on.

Worth thinking about?  I’d be interested to hear from anyone who’s tried this, who can point out the pitfalls and would be willing to share their experiences.

How quickly things change!

When the prototype BTG began back in April 1997 as British Theatre at The Mining Company (long story: the BTG as it is now actually made its appearance in November 2001), the big thing was links - links, links and more links.  That’s what the company wanted, because that was what people wanted.

Those were the days when we talked about “surfing the Net”, and that’s what people did: went to a site, had a quick look, then hunted out that site’s list of links and followed one that looked interesting.  They “surfed” from site to site.  That’s what The Mining Company demanded of those of us who ran their sites, to list as many sites on our topic as we could find, plus comments so that our surfers would know what to expect when they got there.  By the end of 1997, the British Theatre site consisted of a few pages of general comment on theatre in the UK and page after page of links - over 2,000 of them (liks, that is, not pages!).

I suppose it was the excitement of this new medium, that one could view, in the comfort of your own home, sites based in countries throughout the world.  You want to know about a famous actor?  Ken Branagh was very big then and the MC British Theatre site listed a dozen or more, and people surfed from one to another, only to find that most had much the same information (and much the same photos).

How things have changed!  Not only has the Net grown up, but its users have too, and what they look for nowadays is reliable sources of information, and when they find one, they tend to stick with it.

 Even in 2001 our most viewed pages were what we called - a hangover from the Mining Company, this - our Links Libraries.  Now they are among the least visited pages and Reviews and News pages vie with each other for the top slot. 

 I have to say that I am delighted at the change.  It used to be very depressing (nay, boring!), going from site to site on the same topic only to find the same information expressed in slightly different ways.  At one point early on I got my wrist slapped because I started running news pages: “British theatre surfers,” they told me from the company office in West 42nd Street, New York, “don’t want news: they want links.”

Perhaps, I replied, they are looking for links to theatre news. Aha! bulb lights up!  OK, I could go ahead with the news pages.

I’m not claiming any special brilliance for “discovering” this, because all I was suggesting was what I wanted when I was surfing on my own accord and not for the company.  This was the time when we referred to the Net as the “information superhighway”, the operative word being “information”.

The other major change, at least as far as theatre sites are concerned, is the increase in reliable sources of information about actors, theatre companies and theatres, especially about actors.  In the early days I used to talk about the “slobber drool factor”, the high incidence of sites devoted to actors (and actresses) which were motivated by love (or lust) on the part of the site authors.  Look at actors’ sites now: those which are not put online by the actors themselves as part of their marketing strategy deal in hard information.  Their authors have discovered that waxing lyrical over their subjects’ beauty, attractiveness, sexiness even, does not tempt anyone other than a few poor souls similarly driven by oestrogen or testosterone!

The Web, ladies and gentlemen, has grown up!

It’s started - the usual moral outrage about something at the Edinburgh Fringe, and it doesn’t officially open till the weekend!

There is an e-petition on the 10 Downing Street website, calling upon the Prime Minister to “condemn this tasteless portrayal of terrorism and its victims” in the form of the show Jihad the Musical.  Quite how the mover of the petition knows that it is tasteless is not clear but the show’s producers have been quick to defend themselves: “We have no intention of causing offence or insult with this show,” said producer James Lawler.

Why not?  The only way to avoid giving offence to someone is to produce theatre that is so bland that it says nothing - but you’ll then offend others - especially me! - by making theatre boring.

As Nick Hytner said some months ago - no one has the right not to be offended.

But the searching for offence brigade find rich pickings at the Fringe.  One show, Prodigal Daughter at C Chambers Street, has fallen foul of the censor morons, as D H Laurence called them, because of its poster.  Shockingly the poster shows a cartoonish pencil drawing of a naked woman (coloured a rather unbecoming and very unnatural pink)!  I’ve seen it and was horrified to realise that you can actually see a small scribble which represents pubic hair!  I mean, I didn’t realise such things existed!

And who is protesting?  Well, director Asa Gim Palomera says some of the shops have refused to take the poster but the main ban has come from - wait for it! - C Chambers Street.  That’s right: the venue at which the play is being performed.

They do children’s shows, you see, so they think the poster is “inappropriate”.  I’ve spent many an hour in C and I can tell you that their walls are so plastered with posters that you have to really focus to make one out from another - and I’ve never seen any children looking at them: they’re far to busy doing childreny things.

If the Edinburgh Fringe is to have any value, it has to have artistic freedom at its heart, and that means in its advertising materials as well as its performances.  OK, any advertising much comply with the law, I understand that, but when a central part of the Fringe starts setting itself up as a guardian of morality, that’s a political correction too far!