More bad news from the regions
Next weekend, the Oxford Playhouse is celebrating its seventieth anniversary in Beaumont Street with two gala performances, one hosted by Libby Purves, the other by Gyles Brandreth. I hear that the preparations are chaotic.
But does the theatre have all that much to celebrate anyway? A new book by Don Chapman, the former admirable critic on the Oxford Mail, tells a sad and sorry story of blundering mismanagement and pusillanimous pottering about by the university authorities. And it’s years since the theatre had anything resembling a permanent company, let alone a national profile.
Our regional theatre is in a parlous state. I hear that the beautiful old Lincoln Rep is threatened with closure after the local authorities have withdrawn their measly annual support of £170,000.
And the Northcott in Exeter, saved from the Arts Council chop by a concerted campaign of outrage, is now advertising two highly paid jobs — that of “creative director” and “marketing and customer service director” — to work with the board and chief executive.
It’s a complete scandal. What does this chief executive, Kate Tyrell, do, exactly, if she’s not arranging the programme and overseeing the relationship of the theatre to its own community?
Artistic directors should be in charge of theatres, end of story. The whole system has gone belly-up because of the appointment of administrative apparatchiks, Arts Council nonentities and gormless “marketing” people to the top jobs.
The only regional theatres that seem to have any justifiable function at all at the moment are the West Yorkshire Playhouse and the Birmingham Rep, and that’s because they are run by experienced and imaginative artistic directors, Ian Brown and Rachel Kavanaugh, though I dare say the Arts Council wallahs are looking at ways of undermining them on an almost daily basis.
One current topic of idle conversation in the arts world is the upcoming vacancy of chairman of the Arts Council to succeeed the hapless Christopher Frayling, who told me in a theatre toilet recently as we peed in adjacent pissoirs that he’d had enough, wanted no more to do with public appointments and sounded generally cheesed off with his time in office. As we all are.
Names being touted to succeed him include, inevitably, Liz Forgan (not a bad idea, I suppose), Genista McIntosh (maybe even a better one) and even Richard Eyre, which would be the best idea of all, but I’d bet heavily against him taking the job.
Whoever does take over from Frayling should sack the drama panel immediately. They’re a bunch of winkers (sorry, that’s a misprint). And I’d round up all the talented directors on the fringe — Josie Rourke, Anna Mackmin, Sean Holmes (he should forget the Lyric, Hammersmith, anyone can do that job), Neil MacPherson, the girls at the Gate, Jonathan Munby, the whole lot of them — and bribe them all with a big salary to go and work in the regions. The little London fringe can take care of itself, and it’s not as important.
We got into this terrible mess because the previous generation — Declan Donnellan, Deborah Warner, David Farr and Rufus Norris — chickened out and did their own thing. Let’s get some proper directors into these regional theatres and throw the Arts Council approved rubbish impostors out the window.
October 21st, 2008 at 6:50 pm
Well Michael - it’s a personal blog and you’re entitled to your opinion but factually speaking I think you’ll find that the Chair of the Arts Council is being advertised on an Open Application process - anyone can apply - so it might be worth asking Genista McIntosh and/or Richard Eyre if they have! But do we really want someone for the job who has already run the National Theatre (both McIntosh and Eyre) - isn’t it too inbred? Let’s have some fresh blood from outside; Forgan seems to go from one chairmanship to another. It might work. Maybe there’s a dark outsider coming up on the rails. I certainly hope so. Re the ACE Drama Panel I think you’ll find it was disbanded a while back…these things are easily checked on ACE’s website b4 you rush into print!