The launch of the National Theatre of Wales is the final judgement on the National Theatre of Scotland: the blueprint works.

So there’s no home base, and a policy of topographical inclusion and community based projects. Michael Sheen leading his home town’s Passion Play in Port Talbot sounds juicy but one rather shudders at the thought of John Osborne’s “lost” first play; unless it turns out to be half as good as Martin McDonagh’s belatedly produced first play, The Pillowman, of course.

And how ironic is it that the NTW’s artistic director is called John McGrath? The late, great playwright of the same name was in effect a founding father of the Scottish national theatre with his 7:84 touring company in the 1970s.

The previous bidders for running, or indeed forming, the NTW, Michael Bogdanov and Terry Hands, have taken to the hills and we don’t know whether either or both of them will take part.  

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The news that Ambassador Theatre Group, run by Howard Panter and his wife Rosemary Squire, has acquired ownership of Live Nation’s British theatres for £90m is surely a mixed blessing.

In the Times, producer David Pugh declares that power corrupts — and that monopolies tend to dictate mean-minded deals to touring companies — while Benedict Nightingale feebly says that it’s hard to see the acquisition as anything but good news.

But judging by the upkeep in some of its West End theatres, ATG is struggling to maintain a decent service in the theatres it runs at the moment, let alone any future operations.

The Trafalgar Studios is the most uncomfortable auditorium in London, the Duke of York’s is badly run down, the Comedy seriously unwelcoming. And there’s a scandalous one-size-fits-all glass of wine policy at £6.40 a gulp.

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The new president of the Critics’ Circle, Charles Spencer, pours scorn from a low height on the idea that critics should welcome new ideas or practices in the theatre, or that they should respect the dignity of artists.

I suppose coming from someone who thought that Trevor Nunn deserved a good kicking — such witty intemperateness! — or whose heart sinks at the very mention of the name of Katie Mitchell we should not be surprised.

And I’m half in sympathy with his dislike of the suggestion that critics are either part of the theatre commmunity, or should even sign up to a manifesto pledging support to the art form.

But, really, have you ever heard of a football writer who was not totally dedicated to his subject, or a political writer who was not interested in new ideas of political theory, or a gardening correspondent who closed his eyes to the advances in new rose breeding techniques or the untold possibilites of ericaceous compost?”

It’s not a critic’s job to be nice,” harrumphs Spencer in his Telegraph column today, and no-one’s going to disagree with him there, however brave and independent-minded he thinks he sounds. Read the rest of this entry »

“When my cue comes, call me…” yawns Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, awakening from an erotic adventure with the sudden realisation that he’s supposed to be appearing in a play.

An actor’s nightmare is to find himself “off” or, even worse, forgetful of his lines, though audiences never really mind about this too much: the reality of the contrived situation of theatre, and their part in it, is reinvigorated by such mishaps.

But the New York Times today reports something a little more serious: customers at previews for the actor Matthew Broderick’s new off-Broadway play by Kenneth Lonergan have been joined in the front row each night by a prompter feeding lines throughout the performance.
 
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A small group of Whatsonstage.com theatregoers made their way to Hammersmith last night for Sean Holmes’ first production as artistic director of the Lyric Hammersmith. Choosing to revive Trevor Griffith’s 1975 classic Comedians Holmes’ directed a stellar cast in a really entertaining evening of theatre.

A play in three acts, Comedians asks big questions about what it is to be funny, what is at the heart of the comedian’s art and how to push the boundaries of that art. Matthew Kelly plays Eddie Waters the retired comic training the six aspiring comedians while David Dawson does justice to the role of Gethin Price the one comic most willing to question the established norms. Reese Shearsmith, Mark Benton, Simon Kunz, Billy Carter and Michael Dylan as the other aspiring comics are all funny and touching by turns and play their specifc characters with striking honesty. Keith Allen as the formidable talent scout plays the cynic with style and is a fantastic counter to Matthew Kelly’s  ideas of comedy as truth. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s an exhibition of Polish theatre photographs at the National that is something of a minor disgrace. The photos themselves are fine, but there is no captioning and no contextual literature for the show to make any sense.

The subject is poignant enough: the very last performance, in Milan in 1979, of Jerzy Grotowski’s Apocalypsis cum figuris, one of the most famous productions, in its day, of Grotowski’s “poor theatre” that continued the great 19th century tradition of Polish theatre and literature into the age of the late 1960s international avant garde.

If you already knew what he looked like, you can detect the great Christ-like Ryszard Cieslak — the hero in Grotowski’s even more (once) celebrated production of The Constant Prince, an adaptation of Calderon played in circumstances of monastic simplicity to an audience of no more than a hundred people.

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What pleasure Tennessee Williams might have taken in the European premiere of his 1937 play Spring Storm at the Royal & Derngate in Northampton. It’s a prentice piece all right, but one well worth reviving.

And it’s a spirited rebuff, too, to all the lazy commentators who’ve dismissed it down the years. Williams’s fawning, deadly dull official biographer, Lyle Leverich, doesn’t tell you anything about the play at all.

And when Donald Spoto confidently declares that the play is awash in obvious melodramatic sentiment and devoid of any original touch you just wonder whether he even bothered to read it.

Williams had obviously been smitten by T S Eliot and first called the play “April is the Cruellest Month” but he wisely changed that to Spring Storm.

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Last night Whatsonstage.com theatregoers were treated to a classic revival at the Young Vic as the wild West came to London with Irving Berlin’s 1946 Broadway hit, Annie Get Your Gun. There was shooting, dancing, a chicken, a plethora of well known songs and four pianos to name but a few of the treats in last night’s truly entertaining performance.

This is a classic love story, the great hurdle to overcome being Annie Oakley’s abilty to shoot better than the man she loves, Frank Butler. It may not be the most politically correct story (Annie cannot win at shooting if she wants to win Frank) but the fantastic music and lyrics and the very heart of the piece allow you to enjoy this show for what it is, a wonderful piece of very entertaining theatre! Julian Ovenden plays Frank Butler with real panache and with his beautiful voice and fantastic costumeshe has us all the ladies wishing that they were Annie! Jane Horrocks plays a marvelous Annie Oakley. Her vocal range is astounding and her Annie is honest and engaging throughout.

This is a massively stripped down prodution with only four pianos and a fantastic ensemble cast who play a variety of roles showing amazing skill. The set design is impressive and a simple stage is by turns an inn, a train and a boat. After this enchanting show we were treated to a really entertaining Q&A attended by the Young Vic artisitc director David Lan, Julian Ovenden, Jane Horrocks and many of the other members of the cast as well which was a real treat! Edited highlights from this Q&A will appear on the news section of the site shortly so please check those out!

Please do feel free to email your comments and thoughts about the play, as well as any photos you have of the event and the evening through to  feedback@whatsonstage.com, we love to hear from you.

Thanks for joining us for this event, and do check the homepage to keep up to date on all of our upcoming Outings.

Laura Norman

Club Manager

A concert performance of songs by Jacques Brel was a right old dog’s dinner last night, with some hefty, well justified booing for Diamanda Galas, the Greek Anatolian Goth, and an anaemic opening set by oddball Scottish rocker Momus in an eye-patch that drained Brel of all drama, rhythm and poetry.

The excuse for the shindig was Brel’s eightieth birthday (he died, aged 49 in 1978) and a Francophone season at the Barbican that was launched by Nick Kenyon and Graham Sheffield at a pleasant reception beforehand.

One of the guests was Peter Straker, someone who really can sing Brel, and I tried to drum up a petition in the interval for him to take over the second half of the show.

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By an odd coincidence, I’d been reading Simon Callow’s second volume of his Orson Welles biography when I was invited to a BAFTA screener of the new film, Me and Orson Welles, released here in December.

It’s a fascinating and very well acted movie, directed by Richard Linklater, which tells the story of a young high school student, played by Zac Efron, who gets caught up in Welles’s famous 1937 Mercury Theatre production of Julius Caesar and falls in love with one of the secretarial staff, played by Claire Danes, who is plotting her next career move.

The performance of Welles himself (the boy genius was twenty-two at the time) by Christian Mackay is quite astounding — gravid and authoritative, sensual and mercurial — but above all, this is a great film about the theatre.

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