Glad to be grey
I had an odd experience the other day. I went to a Wednesday matinee of Iolanthe at the Gielgud. “Nothing odd about that,” you might say. Except that, for the first time in years, I found myself in the midst of an audience even older than I was. I’m so used, certainly at theatres like the Young Vic, Stratford East or many regional reps, to being surrounded by shining, eager young faces that it was a shock to see an audience all of whom would have qualified for a Saga holiday.
It also set me thinking about theatre’s need to cater for senior citizens. Don’t get me wrong. I passionately want to see young people going to the theatre as regularly as they do to the movies. I’m also delighted, incidentally, at government plans to give children five hours a week of culture in school and am appalled at the downright hostility displayed by established arts figures ranging from David Bailey to Michael Nyman. A love of the theatre usually starts young. And I’ve been thrilled, in recent months, to see hordes of adolescents flocking to the National’s War Horse, the RSC King Lear and, on a Saturday night, the unfairly vilified The Lord of the Rings.
I suspect we’ve all been guilty of intolerance towards the over-60s. In my time, I’ve had a go at the Chichester audience for its silvery seniority. I also remember taking part in an Oxford Union discussion where Kenneth Tynan mischievously suggested that, to counter the newly-opened Young Vic, the Old Vic should target elderly spectators. There would, he indicated, be special toilets for the incontinent and free deaf aids with every programme. When some young prig piped up, “I think that’s disgusting”, Ken wearily replied, “It’s what we used to call a joke.”
Tynan’s jest expressed what many of us secretly felt in the Seventies: that theatre was no place for the old. Now that I’ve reached bus-pass age myself, I sing to a different tune. There is, however, a serious point here. Everyone knows we are confronted, demographically, by an ageing population. The old also, if they’re lucky, have a certain amount of disposable income. And they are attuned to the act of theatregoing. It was striking what an attentive, well-behaved lot we were at Iolanthe. No one was texting in the stalls. No mobiles went off in mid-number. The whole theatre seemed bathed in what I can only call a pleasurable glow of nostalgia.
How should theatre cater for the old? There are several obvious answers. More cheap seats (I was pleased to see that OAPs got a third off all tickets at the Gielgud). More, rather than fewer, midweek matinees. The West End particularly could profit from a bit more age-awareness. You can’t, of course, generalise: there are many older theatregoers who enjoy Complicite or Kneehigh just as much as the young. But there are large areas of the canon that appeal to a certain generation. G & S obviously, as the success of the Carl Rosa season at the Gielgud showed. But there are also many dramatists worth re-examining, whom the West End wantonly neglects.
Producers regularly revive Wilde and Coward. But when did you last see a Pinero? Why do we largely ignore Somerset Maugham? I have a hunch that JB Priestley, Emlyn Williams and Graham Greene are worth another look. I’m not suggesting that we should ignore new talent. I just think we need to be aware of the fact that the old will soon constitute a majority; and, instead of contemptuously dismissing them as a “greying” audience, theatre needs to embrace them as heartily as the fairies did the mortals at the end of that delightful Iolanthe.
