Theatre

There is no doubt that the West End is what Newling calls ‘a bear-pit arena’ where plays have to attract something like 150,000 people in order to suceed rather than the 10,000 or so which will create a hit at the Almeida. Marketing budgets have to be massive – forcing costs up – in order to compete. There are, thank God, people who want to see new plays but, like the writers, they naturally look to the Cottesloe, Royal Court, Almeida, Soho, or the Bush, rather than the West End. The Cottesloe sometimes sells out to its members even before a play is in preview. Friedman believes that ‘people want to go to a place which feels comfortable and familiar. They know where to park and that there is a level of quality work that makes them feel secure. In the West End, we are starting from scratch every time.’ Feature continues

Also, there is a perception that West End ticket prices are high, the buildings cramped, the booking fees annoying, programmes a rip-off, and the West End as a whole a nightmare to visit at the weekend. At the Trafalgar Studios, which is trying to attract a more adventurous audience, a glass of wine costs over £4. SOLT is attempting to persuade the government to invest £125 million in refurbishing the theatres but it will be a difficult call given that they are owned by private, profit-making companies.

With such hurdles to overcome, it’s hardly surprising if artistic principles are occasionally compromised. It’s the belief of all the producers that critics go to the West End to see plays with their pencils extra-sharp while giving the subsidised theatre an easy ride. Rubinstein says, ‘I think that productions are looked at more harshly here. It is harder to open a show in the West End. People’s expectations are different.’

It’s more likely, I think, that critics are alert to where artistic principles have been compromised. Stars can often be a thorny issue. Producers are surely disingenuous when they say that they would never cast a star unless they were right for the role. Kelly Reilly may have acted Matthew Perry off the stage in ‘Sexual Perversity in Chicago’ (2003), but it was Perry who drew the crowds and gave the investors their profits. Those of us who saw Madonna in ‘Up for Grabs’ (2002) will never forget the degree of her lack of talent and yet the theatre was packed with people happy to breathe the same air as their idol.

‘Rock’n’Roll’ proves that quality plays can survive in the West End. But plays of such quality come along rarely. ‘The Play’s the Thing’, the TV programme that attempted to create a theatrical alternative to ‘Pop Idol’, set the bar too high by insisting that the winning play should be by a first-time writer and that the rewriting process should be over a matter of weeks rather years. The failure of the winning play, ‘On the Third Day’, to sustain a run at the New Ambassadors didn’t tell anybody involved in commercial theatre anything they didn’t already know. Friedman was quoted as saying at its outset: ‘I thought it could generate a debate about the fact that new work in the West End by first-time playwrights is commercial suicide. It doesn’t happen. And when it does invariably it doesn’t work.’ But the fact is that there has never been a time when first time playwrights have flourished in the West End.

Friedman admits that she hankers after the excitement of her early days with Out of Joint. But does it matter for the rest of us whether new plays are produced in the West End when we are spoilt for choice elsewhere? Playwright David Eldridge believes that it’s important for playwrights in that they need the experience of writing for all sorts of venues. He enjoyed taking his adaptation of ‘Festen’ to the West End from the Almeida. ‘Although it lost some of its intimacy, what it gained in terms of the storytelling in the West End was fantastic. The Almeida audience is very media-savvy and metrocentric. They had all seen the film or read the reviews and knew the story. What was fantastic about the West End was that you got punters – people who gasped at the revelations because they didn’t see them coming.’ Once a chic hit moves into the West End from a boutique theatre like the Almeida or the Donmar, then those people who were previously disappointed can finally get to see what the fuss is about.

Producers speak of the excitement of playing to a full house, packed with a wider cross-section of people, they believe, than is normally to be found in the subsidised sector. This, they claim, in spite of the latter’s dedicated efforts to reach out to those who have never been to the theatre before. Byam Shaw, calling from the Duchess in the middle of his hunt for a theatre for ’Frost/Nixon’, has the last say: ‘I’ve come to the commercial theatre because I love a flutter and I love trying to play to a full house. The West End is the greatest showcase in the world. Everyone decries us, but how come I’m always rung up by subsidised theatres asking whether I am interested in transferring their shows? I actually don’t think there’s anything to be ashamed of by a bit of glamour and I think that’s what the West End provides. If only the infrastructure of the buildings could be sorted out, then we could really give people a fantastic night out.’