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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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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There was an absoutely knock-out West End debut in The Rise and Fall of Little Voice last night.

And it wasn’t made by X Factor finalist Diana Vickers, good though she was in the Jane Horrocks role. No, the real star turn is that of Lesley Sharp as her mum, Mari Hoff, the blowzy, boozy mother from hell, or at least somewhere like Rochdale or Burnley.  

There are certain actors who, whenever you see them, you think, well, there is simply no one else better than this.

The thought crosses my mind whenever I see Miranda Richardson (too rarely) on the stage. Or Mark Rylance. Or Lesley Sharp.

And amazingly, despite a list of impressive credits at the National (where her performance in Simon Stephens’s Harper Regan won nominations in both the Whatsonstage.com and Evening Standard awards), the Royal Court and on television, she’s never been in the West End before. 

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The Evening Standard Awards for 2009 were decided on Friday and will be announced on 23 November.

Which means that important shows opening in the next few weeks — the Alan Bennett play at the National, new plays by Mike Bartlett and Michael Wynne at the Royal Court, the RSC Twelfth Night — won’t be considered.

And what about the brilliant new Annie Get Your Gun at the Young Vic, which opened only a few hours after the deliberations were concluded?

It’s the only possible rival to Spring Awakening in the best musical category, unless there’s a rush of blood for Sister Act or Priscilla.

Why are these awards decided so early? They never used to be. But when the Oliviers were brought forward to gazump the Standard gongs, the Standard promptly moved even earlier. This was pretty silly and showed instant loss of dignity.

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Sean Holmes’s fine revival of Trevor Griffiths’ modern classic Comedians is a reminder of how little great new work is produced on the regional theatre main stages these days.

The first night at the Nottingham Playhouse in February 1975 was an electrifying occasion, and not just because of the career-defining performance of Jonathan Pryce alongside Stephen Rea, Tom Wilkinson and Jimmy Jewel.
 
The premiere occurred slap bang in the first eighteen months of Richard Eyre’s artistic directorship, a period in which he premiered David Hare and Howard Brenton’s Brassneck, Adrian Mitchell’s Yorkshire version of The Government Inspector, Brenton’s The Churchill Play and Ken Campbell’s Bendigo.

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The National Theatre’s tribute to Ken Campbell last night was a delicious ragbag of capers including one I’d never seen before: Toby Sedgwick playing a rasher of bacon as it sizzled in the pan, flipped over, then sizzled again.

Sedgwick curled up into a crispy foetal ball, somehow reducing the length of his body into that of a well fried rasher.

We also relished the sight of Nina Conti proceeding to the back of the Olivier stalls with a fifty foot length of knicker elastic that she was stretching from the mouth of her “husband” in order to pang him out of his dangerous invasion of his own posterior.

Hubby gripped the lethal device in  his teeth. Was he ready? Yes. Knicker elastic rebounded at top speed in the wrong direction…

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The death of Stephen Gately is sad for many reasons, not least because the fellow was so utterly modest and charming. He was a joy to meet and more than just interesting to talk to.

Indeed, everyone who met him — fan, or fellow professional — sort of fell in love with him; as many people have said in the past twenty-four hours, his death makes no sense at all.

When Boyzone had their big hit with Andrew Lloyd Webber’s and Jim Steinman’s “No Matter What” from Whistle Down the Wind, Stephen became a regular at ALW’s Sydmonton Festival and was soon building a new career in the musical theatre in the revival of Joseph and as take-over casting as the Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at the Palladium.

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In a revealing moment at today’s Press launch of Love Never Dies, the Phantom follow-up set among the freak shows and big dippers of Coney Island in 1907, Andrew Lloyd Webber and director Jack O’Brien said they had “no idea what the budget is.”

Alongside the two leads, Summer Strallen is expected to be announced as Mme Giry, so I hope her agent is taking advantage of  lax accountancy at the Really Useful and pushing for a maximum wage with City-style bonuses.

The composer finished the score six weeks ago, and the two people he most wanted to hear it, Cameron Mackintosh and Sarah Brightman, have expressed their pleasure, Cameron writing him the most touching letter he can remember receiving.

And how will he measure the success of the show alongside his other big hits?

“I’m happy with it as a piece,” said a mellow ALW, looking spruce and fit in a grey suit and mauve shirt, “and that’s enough for me.”

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