WHAT'S AILING BRITISH THEATER?

By Kevin Kelly

(Boston Globe c.1985)

Is the obvious liveliness of the London theater season a last cackle before death, as some critics have claimed? If so, is there a doctor in the house?

The April closing of the Cottesloe, one of three auditoria (as the British call them) on the relatively new South Bank home of the National Theater, has been viewed with alarm. The Cottesloe gone dark is seen as a dire warning and clearly symptomatic of what's wrong with theater in Great Britain.

To some, what's wrong with theater in Great Britain comes down to simple, blood-letting rivalry, the competition between bustling London and the bucolic provinces. The skirmish even includes London town itself, with the rivalry between the National Theater and the Royal Shakespeare Company, both of which once shared the loyalty of Peter Hall, with Hall - succeeding Laurence Olivier 13 years ago - now operating as the outspoken titan running the National. The clash of swords is heard in the heated midst of all this when both NT and RSC transfer successful productions to the West End, London's Broadway, there to compete with the likes of "Cats," "Strippers," "Stepping Out," "Run For Your Wife," "42nd Street," "The Corn Is Green," "The Mousetrap" and ''No Sex, Please, We're British."

Both the National and Royal Shakespeare - the latter operating in London at the new Barbican Center as well as Stratford-on-Avon - exist through funding from the Arts Council of Great Britain, plus, of course, box office revenue. The Arts Council - founded in 1942 to organize the art scene in evacuation areas and financed through the Treasury - currently is reflecting Mrs. Thatcher's kitchen-sink politics, which, while allowing money for bread and milk, reneges when it comes to cake and wine. Art is good, but, as in Reaganomics, if served at all, it comes well after the soup. Peter Hall has accused the Arts Council of stinginess sprung from politics, internecine sniping at the awful expense of the theater in general, the Cottesloe in particular.

Named after Lord Cottesloe, formerly on the council and chairman of the South Bank Board, which built the National, the Cottesloe is an open studio space with the capacity to hold an audience of 400. It's used basically for new and/or experimental work. When the council ran out of funds, and darkness spread to the two-tiered galleries, the Cottesloe became a convenient symbol of a certain decline in London's theater. Suddenly there was no workshop for new plays. Similar small theaters, such as the King's Head and the Royal Court, were threatened.

But Hall and other London-based theaterfolk see the problem on a much more dramatic scale. Hall has hollered down the Arts Council's intent to seed the government's $30 million theater allotment (out of $122 million funding all the arts) to theaters struggling outside London. Council chairman, Sir William Rees-Mogg, with all the hothouse persuasion of Gertrude Jekyll, called this new program "The Glory of the Garden," the metaphor meaning that theater had the right to flourish in England anywhere it could put down roots. The council's idea was that dramatic seedlings, struggling for light and air far away from Shaftesbury Avenue and Piccadilly, might bloom if given humus; that is, budgetary assistance. To quote Dolly Levi's dead husband Ephraim: "Money, like manure, doesn't mean a thing unless you spread it around."

Hall insisted "The Garden" policy was like cutting off the rose to spite its face. Obviously, the dollars withdrawn from London helped to cause the closing of the Cottesloe. The council's problem (separate now from Peter Hall's understandable paranoia, which started when the unfinished National became a political football) is that it doesn't have enough money to go around; give a small stipend, say, to Liverpool or Birmingham, and London suffers. While the situation may, indeed, stalemate the development of new plays, it's possible that playwrights with something to say could be stimulated by the adversity. There is some new work to be seen in London, not much, but some, notably the Howard Brenton-David Hare collaboration, "Pravda," and Stephen Poliakoff's "Breaking the Silence." Louise Page's "Golden Girls" and Robert Holman's "Today" only recently closed at The Pit, the RSC's small theater at the Barbican. The National - where "Pravda," at the Olivier, is the standout of the season - has continuing runs of Athol Fugard's "The Road to Mecca" (which premiered at Yale last spring), and Michael Frayn's "Wild Honey," a version of Chekhov's "Platonov," each alternating at the Lyttelton. Further, the National's summer repertoire includes two new plays, ''A Chorus of Disapproval" and "Martine."

Yet, it's obvious everything isn't coming up roses. One of the discernible differences in the spread of Arts Council money can be seen at Stratford-on- Avon, specifically in the RSC's breezy but surprisingly chintzy "As You Like It." Separate from the very high quality of the ensemble (particularly the work of a brilliant young actress named Juliet Stevenson, as Rosalind, and the equally brilliant Alan Rickman, as Jacques), the production is a worn shoestring. The modernist design - by Adrian Noble - does a lot with a bolt of billowy silk, a lot too much; in other words, the kind of forced invention you find where the spirit is willing when the cash is weak. Most of the ideas in ''As You Like It" are workable, but some need further definition. Conversely, the RSC's "Richard III," at the Barbican, glitters like a deeply cursed and very costly jewel. The production has all the richness of Anthony Sher's charismatic performance in the title role.

While the scramble for government funding goes on, while heated rivalries persist, the commercial side of the West End pretty much mirrors Broadway. London currently has 39 attractions, New York has 21. Of the 39, 16 are musicals (or revues, or plays with music). Six of those are English-cast versions of American productions (Broadway has 11 Broadway musicals). Home- grown London musicals include "Cats," "Evita," "Starlight Express," ''Me and My Girl" and "Singin' in the Rain," the latter not to be confused with the Betty Comden, Adolph Green, Twyla Tharp version opening June l3 in New York. The West End has 10 comedies (Broadway 3), ranging from the intellectual sleight-of-hand of Tom Stoppard's "Jumpers" to the quintessentially low-class "Daisy Pulls It Off." There are 13 plays (Broadway has 6) with selections as diverse as Harold Pinter's "Other Places," Michael Frayn's "Benefactors" and a revival of "The Corn is Green."

Reputedly, London draws an average of 12 million tourists a year, many of whom go to the theater. There are evening performances Monday through Saturday (as early as 7:15 p.m., as late as 8:30), with scattered matinees on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday (as early as 2 p.m., late as 5). The top ticket, say, at the National, is $12.50, with a West End hit such as ''Starlight Express" costing $20. The theaters themselves are - as I overheard an Anglophile with a Texas drawl say - "immensely civilized, real nice." Most of them have snug bars, where drinks can be ordered before the performance for the intermission (excuse me, "the interval"); some serve tea. A number of the theaters, of course, have venerable histories, such as the Drury Lane (four times rebuilt), which displays a copy of a charter, dated April 25, 1662, from King Charles II ordering a company of players and a playhouse. The newest theater is The Barbican Center, which opened in 1982 and houses the RSC. The center itself is a concrete eyesore. The theaters within it, although boweled into the earth, are functional and comfortable.

Despite these new, seemingly solid theaters, and the surrounding activity, there is worry for the future. It's unlikely that the rigors of the Thatcher government will relax for art. Peter Hall's struggle to bring the National to fruition has been recorded in his "Diaries," published last year, and it's a dispiriting account of the whole British theater scene. But there are glimmers of hope. An enclosure in the National's programs for "Pravda," at the Olivier, and "The Mysteries," which had been forced to the Lyceum by the Cottesloe closing, reads as follows: "The NT's Cottesloe Theater, closed due to insufficient Arts Council subsidy, reopens in the autumn thanks to a special GLC (Greater London Council) grant."

 

 

Originally on KelClancy's Page - now not accessable