Curtains!

So it's the final week of my big adventure in London and time for another wrap-up of what I've seen since 16 November.

The Glass Menagerie - Young Vic

The Robbers - New Diorama Theatre

Criterion Theatre

Novecento - Trafalgar 2

Billy Elliot - Victoria Palace Theatre

Romeo and Juliet - The Roundhouse

Che Walker Double Bill - Riverside Studios

Wicked! - Apollo Victoria

Les Miserables – Queen theatre

An Ideal Husband – Vaudeville Theatre

Zack - Royal Exchange, Manchester

Kaspar – Southwark Playhouse (Arch 6)

War Horse – New London Theatre

Safe – Oval House

Mary Stuart (reading) – Waterloo East Theatre

The Opinion Makers (reading) – Prince of Wales Theatre

Flesh and Blood & Fish and Fowl – Barbican, Pitt

Midsummer – Tricycle Theatre

The Comedy Theatre

Stop. Rewind (reading) – Camden Arms

A Drop to Drink – Soho Theatre Studio

Antonioni Project – Barbican

39 Steps – Criterion Theatre

Landscape and Monologue (Pinter) – Ustinov, Bath

Clybourne Park - Wyndham's Theatre

The Children's Hour - The Comedy Theatre

Beachy Head - Jacksons Lane

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (open dress) - Curve, Leicester

The Curve Theatre, Leicester

and for the week ahead:

The Heretic - Royal Court

The Last Days of Judas Iscariot - LAMDA

Fatherland - Gate

Great Expectations - Watford Palace Theatre

Yes, I was pretty impressed with myself too... until I came to the shocking realisation (too late) that, as many keen-eyed readers would have already spotted, after six months in London I HAVEN'T BEEN TO THE NATIONAL THEATRE!!

And I bet 'What did you see at the National?' will be the first question I'm asked too. 

However, I suppose in a way that's the good news for the theatre scene in the UK isn't it? That a girl can spend six months in the country in a theatre-going frenzy but never get around to visiting the country's National Theatre?

Now I should just clarify, it's not like I avoided the National. Last week I attended a 'Talking Shakespeare' question and answer session with Simon Callow, Charles Edwards and Finty Williams in the Cottesloe Theatre in the National Theatre building... and I've visited the bookshop twice! (What makes it even more shocking though is that it is literally a 10 minute walk from where I'm working but we'll just keep that to ourselves without splashing it about in any public forums, OK?). OK.

Theatre Royal, Bath (currently with a tour of Avenue Q!)

One word...

CRINGE. That was my word but I didn’t say it when the microphone had made its way to me around the circle at the conclusion of the three day Devoted and Disgruntled conference. The concept of this open-space forum is fantastic and I do believe is can be a positive and constructive exercise… but there’s something about the earnestness and naivety with which SOME artists speak about themselves and their work that makes me want to commit a violent act.

As a means of concluding the three days of conversation and debate, the convenor of the conference (from Improbable Theatre) asked everyone to say one word into the microphone. Given that there must have been almost 80 people there (reduced from probably closer to 200 on the first day) this took some time.

OPEN. INSPIRATION. THANK YOU. NOW. And on it went.

York Hall, Bethnal Green - again!

The conference was well-structured as a participant-led gathering. Topics for discussion were announced by participants on the first day and then scheduled across three days. People were free to join or leave discussions as they wished so groups would build, or disperse in an organic fashion (no, they were not made of beans). Around the room, posters reminded us of the principles of the conference: Whoever is here are the right people. It took me a while to get around the grammar of that one but its meaning soon became clear.

I joined discussions such as “How can we make the process of tour booking easier for artists and companies?”; “It’s not all cheese: why do people look down on Musical Theatre?”. Topics such as “Do you miss your pet Living or Dead?” and “Wildflowers real or metaphorical?”, I gave a wide berth.

Drifting from one group to another was a fun way to sample the prevailing attitudes and interests. Unfortunately I didn’t feel engaged or knowledgeable enough to get really involved in the debates or to convene my own gathering.

It appears that Devoted and Disgruntled unfortunately has a bit of a stigma about it among the broader arts community which is a shame as it has the potential to be a positive and effective way for people to engage across art forms and organisations on equal terms, without horrible name badges. In the last session I was in, I suggested a change of title for the conference (along with a rethink of the bleeding-heart-with-sword-through-it logo) which as a fellow participant rightly said “lacks ambition”. If D&D, which is in its sixth year, want to attract fewer flakes, or at least, more useful people, then I think a bit of an image overhaul is required.  [Click here for D&D blog]

Meanwhile I’ve been meeting some very interesting, helpful people in various organisations, attending readings and trying to live up to my insane show-going schedule from last year. I was very privileged last week to be given a tour of the Barbican and was introduced to the wonderful, energetic and friendly people who make up the drama department there.

This is a Durian

The Barbican is a fascinating place that reminds me of a durian fruit (alright well then give me another example of something that’s outwardly repulsive but delightful on the inside!). Everyone I spoke to there mentioned how attached they are to the peculiar space with its winding narrow corridors and disorientating stairwells.

Following my visit, I returned a few days later to see Flesh and Blood and Fish and Fowl as part of the mime festival. While waiting in the foyer (I’ve perfected the art of attending theatre on my own by now), I was leafing through the newly released February @ the Barbican brochure and two people approached me to where I’d found it, hurrying off to snap up their own copy when I told them. The next day I was speaking to a beautician in Stoke Newington who mentioned sort-of out of the blue that she had been in the same audience (of around 100 people) as me! She went on to say how much of a fan she is of the Barbican for its programming but also as a building to explore and discover. It seems that the Barbican has found and bottled the secret of engaging their audience!

This is the Barbican (looks a lot like the UTS Kuring Gai campus)

And as if that wasn’t enough excitement, Sunday night I spend the evening in the company of Simon Playschool Burke! IronBark  is a London-based company that organises readings of Australian plays with an emphasis on the work of playwrights living in the UK.

Last night’s offering was Stop. Rewind by Melissa Bubnic, a fantastic playful comedy about office-inflicted misery. The playwright was there – squeezed in amongst the audience – all of whom seemed to know each other in a little room above the Camden Arms. It’s such a great enterprise and I hope it continues.

I’m only sorry I didn’t hear about it sooner as my big adventure in the UK comes to an end in under three weeks! Before then I have a number of great shows to get to – including a return season of  Clybourne Park, the first preview of ETT’s Great Expectations, and a road trip to Bath. Hold on to your socks!

Travelling North

Last week I travelled north to experience life at a couple of regional venues in the UK.

First stop was Liverpool where I was greeted by the delightful producer there who gave me a personal tour of both the Liverpool Playhouse and the Everyman. The Playhouse is a traditional proscenium venue with a shallow, intimate auditorium. The Everyman on the other side of the city was built in the 60s and has seen the beginnings of the likes of Pete Postlethwaite, Bill Nighy and Julie Walters. The Everyman will go dark for six months this year for a complete overhaul under the same architects who redid the Young Vic so it looks promising!

That afternoon I made my way to , I made my way to Manchester where I saw a production at the Manchester Royal Exchange theatre. 'You are kidding me' are the words I said out loud (yes, I really speak to myself like I'm an in a Tom Cruise movie circa 1980), as I walked up the stairs into the foyer. Seen from that initial low angle, it knocks your proverbial socks off. For those of you who haven't had the pleasure: the theatre looks like a flight simulator built in the middle of Queen Victoria's drawing room. Allow me to illustrate:

climb aboard

Once inside, the foyer - which at first you can still glimpse from your seat through the framework of the capsule - goes dark and becomes the backstage area where costume rails are wheeled in and quick-change cabins spring up. The action on stage happens in the round and there is literally nowhere for the actors to hide (nerdy factoid: the three tiers of seats are arranged so that no audience member is more than 10 metres from the stage). The effect is that you are literally in the heart of the action - more so than at any other theatre in the round because there is no sense of separation. In any other theatre when the actor disappears behind the wings they are slipping into a world that is unknown to the average audience member and so there is a distance created between actor and audience.

The next day I was given a tour of the venue (there is a second Studio space there and a whole busy hive of offices upstairs). Everyone I met was warm and generous with their time so I felt very welcome.

Since getting back to London I’ve seen an independent production of Kaspar by Peter Handke and WAR HORSE… but that’s another entry.

The production of Kaspar was held in a railway archway that had recently been fitted out as an office space. The company had installed a small seating bank and some stage lights but other than that the whole thing was acted out on the office carpet and felt very surreal but also cosier than you would expect an office space to feel somehow. Yet another top night of theatre experienced by just a handful of people. The theatre world is upside down sometimes.

A Fresh New Year

Happy New Year to all!

I have to admit that after boasting about the many, many shows I had seen in the two months since arriving in London, December was a bit of a hiatus theatre-wise for me: last month I only saw one show a WEEK!

I do have a few things to report back on however. I was lucky enough to have a series of afternoon teas (technically just coffee and not always in the afternoon but it just feels a bit more British to call it that) arranged for me in early December so I could pick the brains of a number of established producers in London. Despite all referring to themselves - or being referred to - as producers, each had a slightly different job description to the next. Some had a mainly administrative role, but the rest had varying degrees of creative input into their respective companies: from selecting and bringing together artists for a planned project to actually generating the idea herself and then finding and commissioning a playwright to realise that idea - and doing it several times a year! I can think of worse ways to earn a living.

Each person I met with was so kind and generous with their time and I am so grateful to them. It was incredible to discover how small the theatre world really is with so many names flying back and forth in these discussions that were familiar to me or whom I'd met. I even realised five minutes into one of the meetings that the producer in front of me was someone I had already met in my first few days here when, hazy with jet-lag, I was taken along to the TMA AGM!

Shoreditch Church

Mid-December saw me (and my family) volunteer to help out behind the scenes at Streetwise Opera's Spitalfields Music Festival performance in Shoreditch Church. Streetwise Opera works with people who have experienced homelessness and uses performance (and regular rehearsal) to build their confidence and networks. The performance was a culmination of a year of workshops during which time they worked with professional artists to create four short films around well-known fables. The films were screened in the church and the performers sang between each film. Honestly the whole thing was goose-bump thrilling and had the audience on their feet several times during the night. It was great to be backstage and see the performers come off stage on such a high: definitely a worthwhile exercise.

Closer to Christmas and the more we were surrounded by temptations of every kind, we began to drift towards the West End and its sugary theatre treats. Wicked was actually really good: but then I did have quite a few reservations to overcome! But by the second song I was wondering why, when the green girl was so gritty and compelling, anyone had ever cared about that pesky little girl - and her little dog too. We were in the second section of the dress circle and it was clear where the ticket price allocations began and ended. While the first two sections were fairly full, the back section - way up in the gods - was literally packed to the rafters. There was possibly not a single seat spare. These seats cost around £20 which is clearly the threshold for what many in the audience were willing or able to pay for that kind of entertainment. I agree with them that the tickets are expensive. We had paid twice that amount to be close enough to the stage to actually see and hear what was going on. I wondered whether offering a £30 ticket would have filled in the gap. £30 is about as much as I would be prepared to pay for mid-range seats to a musical and I'm sure the bunch up the back would have paid a tiny bit more to have been part of the action. Just a thought!

At least we felt like we'd had our money's worth by the end of the show. The same DEFINITELY can't be said of Les Miserables which we saw just after Christmas. I have one question: who killed this wonderful musical and doomed it to wander the earth as a soulless zombie feeding on the ears and wallets of the innocent? Apparently when Les Mis was remounted for this season, it was resigned by the accounts department (no, seriously, the original director and designer weren't given any input). The set has been stripped back to a few sticks of furniture and half the cast seem to have gone the way of the French aristocracy during the revolution. The whole thing was done standing up with no more than twenty cast members - only about two of whom could sing without leaning on the wobbly vibrato stick (pick a note, any note, but just one!). AND to top it off - because time is money don't you know - the whole thing was sung in double time. Do you hear the people sing? Singing the song of men running late for the bus? Crikey dick. It's no wonder you hear people say they don't know why anyone likes music theatre when that's the kind of thing they can be exposed to. Oh the shame of it.

Oh and since this is the week for making and then breaking resolutions, I might just slip in there that I've cracked and actually bought tickets to War Horse and just as well I did as there are very few tickets left between now and when I leave in February. I might have missed out all together! Do you see what you almost made me do?

So now I'm raising a glass and clicking my heels to what I hope will be an exciting year of theatre and creativity. May everyone have a successful and inspiring 2011 and may the curtain rise one day more.

Free Theatre

The Sunday before last I was at the Young Vic to see a performance by the Belarus Free Theatre company. I went for two reasons: the first was to learn about Belarus - the people, the politics and why people risk getting arrested to attend theatre; and the second reason was to test my assumptions about the purpose and value of theatre.


... if I'm completely honest there was also a third reason and that was to see Jude Law (despite the mo - still a hottie!) in the flesh alongside Sir Ian McKellen, Sam West and Sienna Miller.


The Belarus Free Theatre company were formed around 5 years ago to give creative expression to the injustices faced by the Belarusian people under an oppressive neo-Stalinist regime. They are a small ensemble who rehearse and perform in secret locations that are advertised through word of mouth and a system of furtive text messaging. In a country where people who oppose the government regularly disappear, the theatre company is kept alive (literally) through a broad network of high profile international support from celebrities and organisations, particularly in the UK. As well as the people mentioned above, Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, and Steven Spielberg have been vocal supporters.


The company performed a double bill of two plays which focused on the suffering of the Belarusians. Both plays were Brechtian in style as they presented a flood of facts, statistics and stories to overwhelm the audience underscored by projected text and images, music and dance. The question of whether or not the theatre was any 'good' is kind of beside the point. The performers were obviously talented and passionate about the work. The writer(s) had a lot to say and the words tumbled over us in long unedited prose - like someone who is allowed to tell a story they've been bottling up for years and years and so they tell it in a rush trying to get all the words out without missing any detail.


Editing, design, structure, dramatisation and ambiguity are all luxuries we enjoy and indeed take for granted in theatre. Theatre that strives to educate can easily be boring. Which is where the active participation of the audience becomes crucial in forcing themselves to engage with what they are seeing and to appreciate the road it has travelled to reach the stage.


Theatre is story telling. Story telling which has become highly sophisticated in some parts of the world. So was theatre effective? The audience certainly sat up in their seats when Jude Law stepped onto the stage, and Sir Ian before him.
The producer of the company, Natalia Koliada, spoke to the audience and explained that their aim in performing tonight was to get ordinary people like us to engage emotionally with the ordinary people of Belarus and for us to give them our support. 


I was disappointed as I'm sure the theatre we were shown tonight is not the theatre that people risk their lives to see. Understandably they would have felt they needed to take this opportunity to impart some important messages to us and they wouldn't want to risk leaving the message up to our own interpretation.
It occurred to me as I watched the actors, that despite all the infastructure and production trappings that accompany theatre, teh essential magic of theatre is that it can be created out of thin air. While this 'dangerous' theatre is squashed in their country, these actors could carry their weapons on the street, through customs and across borders without detection. In fact, a number of their talented British supporters carried amunition - in the form of acting training  - into Belarus where they worked with the company in secret.


Writing from London - where there is theatre in every form -  the fact that the Belarus Free Theatre company exists is exciting. An art form that can sometimes be pure entertainment can also be a secret tunnel.

What's black and white and read all over?

Me! First reading organised on foreign territory: tick! Today's reading was one of the main events I've been tasked with here in London and (thanks to the support of my lovely colleagues) it went off without a hitch. Hurrah!

Over the course of yesterday and most of today, fourteen actors worked with the director and writer to bring the script to life. Watching this process has renewed my appreciation of the craft of acting. When I had read the script to myself, the version that played out in my head didn't have anywhere near the depth and range that these actors brought to the text. The ensemble of actors were extremely professional and focused and by this afternoon were able to practically perform the play for an audience of producers, directors and venue programmers.

There were drinks and nibbles afterwards and the cast seemed really pleased with the result. As one actress put it: they'd really made it 'sparkle'. I think a lot of credit for this should go to the casting director (another craft I have a new respect for!) who picked actors who could believably deliver the 'ye aulde English' dialogue but bring a freshness and, well, sexiness frankly. A bit of a Baz Luhrman meets R+J ... but without the screaming down the telephone (oh, did I slip that one in? hey it's my party and I'll blog if I want to).

I am conscious of my previous entry where I wondered at the usefulness of readings in giving useful feedback. And certainly for the financial investment these events require, you'd sure as eggs want feedback! After this afternoon's experience I think that at the very least it's possible to get a reading on the room (today's audience seemed engaged for the duration - might have had something to do with the handsome bugger reading the lead role though...). I'm sure that the senior staff at my company will get more detailed feedback in one-to-one chats over the next few days.

As I heard said many times since I've been here, if there were a magic formula for knowing what will work in theatre, we'd all be rich. Ultimately it just comes down to instinct. Hearing the script read was a very illuminating experience. I think I'll let it settle over the next couple of days and see what I make of it then... in case anyone is interested in my honest feedback!

Period Piece(s)

The Robbers: a show that gives more than it takes

After all my whinging, last night I had the best night in fringe theatre in two months sitting in one of the plush cinema seats at the New Diorama Theatre. This new adaptation of 18^th century German playwright The Robbers by Daniel Millar and Mark Leipacher was big, sexy and sophisticated (I honestly didn’t mean to make it sound like Sophia Loren – maybe their own adjectives are better: fierce fast and furious). I wish I knew more people in London so I could recommend they go see it as unfortunately the audience was a bit small last night. I wonder if it’s just an urban myth that audience numbers need to equal ‘the cast size plus one’ before a show can go ahead? My UK colleagues have never heard of such a rule so maybe I made it up…

The Glass Menagerie at the Young Vic was also excellent. Despite the auditorium being a strangely large cavernous space (imagine Belvoir with five times the ceiling height and a balcony), everyone in the room was completely involved in the action on stage. I’m guessing that if the performance was any less engaging, it would be very easy for a show to fall flat in that venue.

Anyhoo… I don’t intend to turn this blog into a theatre reviews site. There are enough people writing their own online already and frankly, apart from the company, who really wants to hear someone else’s opinion? Unless you get some sort of sick pleasure in seeing other people’s hard work getting picked to pieces, in which case you should subscribe to a site like The West End Whingers. Like I do.

Speaking of giving and taking away, I’ve recently learned that cuts to arts funding have meant that every organisation - from the National Theatre down – is required to apply for their funding as if for the first time. Basically everyone has until March 2011 to justify their existence and will know by September what their financial future will look like. I guess it never hurts for organisations – especially those that have been around for a while – to re-examine themselves and look for new directions to grow or collaborate. What's the expression? Adapt or die? This time next year the UK arts scene could look very different!