Why size matters
We need to overturn the cliché thinking that consigns musicals to big theatres and plays to small ones.
Musicals are for big stages. Plays work best in small spaces. Right? Actually, no. On recent evidence, I’d say that the familiar rules have been reversed. In short, I’ve had some outstanding musical experiences in intimate theatres while I’ve seen a number of straight plays expand to fill larger houses.
Confirmation of the way musicals are often best in small spaces came with the Menier Chocolate Factory’s La Cage aux Folles. Back in 1986, when I saw it at the London Palladium, Arthur Laurents’ Broadway production struck me as a bland, feathers-and-frills spectacle. But what happens at the Menier? We become part of a raffish St Tropez nightclub. Philip Quast’s under-praised Georges comes before the pink, ruched curtains to woo our applause. Douglas Hodge’s Albin saucily ogles the guys at the front-row, café tables. We even get to peer into the cramped dressing room where the campy Cagelles are wriggling in and out of their basques. In short, we are complicit in the world the musical seeks to create: that of a louche Riviera niterie.
Something similar happened when Sam Mendes staged Cabaret at the Donmar Warehouse in the early 1990s. Good as the large-scale productions by Hal Prince and Rufus Norris have been, I’ve never seen a Cabaret to match this. Once again, we couldn’t help becoming voyeuristic, ringside spectators at a decadent Berlin night-club. Alan Cumming’s creepy bisexual Emcee seemed to be in our midst and even persuaded one of the critical fraternity to dance with him. Kander and Ebb’s musical acquired a new force entirely dissipated in the Bob Fosse movie with its lavish floorshow. I remember once asking Stephen Spender if the movie evoked memories of thirties Berlin. He tartly pointed out that neither he, Auden or Isherwood would have had the funds to get into Fosse’s Kit-Kat Club: they were so poor, he said, they spent much of their time sitting in the post office, which was at least warm and free.
Classic Broadway musicals have been re-invigorated in small spaces. Some would point to John Doyle’s Sweeney Todd moving from the tiny Newbury Watermill to the Great White Way. I was even more impressed, however, by Declan Donnellan’s earlier Cottesloe revival which brought out the barbaric horror of a work that had its origins in penny-gaff melodrama. Sondheim has gained more than anyone from the downsizing of his work. You have only to think of Sunday in the Park with George at the Menier or Merrily We Roll Along, Company and Assassins at the Donmar. In every case, the dramatic sinew of the musical was more apparent and a smaller orchestra meant we could actually savour the Sondheim lyrics.
Small is bountiful where musicals are concerned. But I’d also argue that plays often gain from being seen on bigger stages. I’d always thought of Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross as a studio work: seeing it recently at the Apollo, I noticed that the ransacked, real-estate office became, in Anthony Ward’s upscaled design, an even more potent metaphor for a debased capitalism. Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen and Democracy both profited by their move from the Cottesloe to the West End. Even Rupert Goold’s Macbeth not only survived the transfer from Chichester’s Minerva to the Gielgud but, curiously, became even more chilling.
I’m not denying the value of studio drama: look at the excellent work done by the currently threatened Bush and Orange Tree. However, if anything cheers me about the National’s new programme, it is that Howard Brenton, Tony Harrison, Michael Frayn and Rebecca Lenkiewciz will all have new work staged in the Olivier and Lyttelton. That’s as it should be. Our dramatists have to rise to the challenge of occupying big spaces just as the musical can be refreshed by playing in smaller ones. Size, as in everything, is relative.
February 14th, 2008 at 8:31 pm
Having just seen La Cage aux Folles I was delighted to read this post. Although I have seen many memorable productions in theatres large and small since I first discovered theatre in Lincoln in the ’60s, I believe that this was the first time that I came out of a theatre with that same sense of wonder and magic that I felt at 18. By contrast and almost by accident, we saw Dealer’s Choice at the Trafalgar Studio the night before. That was also a production that we enjoyed greatly but, on leaving the Menier after la Cage, we did wonder if we had missed something by not seeing it in that intimate space.