Theatre

Brian Schwartz ran the Offstage Bookshop in Chalk Farm for 25 years, before being forced to relocate to Covent Garden. Like Calder, he bemoans what he describes as the ‘Tesco effect’, and even has a plan to give them a taste of their own medicine by selling discounted Pot Noodles and bananas. ‘You get the feeling more and more that we should be dressed in Victorian garb and showing people round a heritage shop,’ he says. His customers (‘curmudgeonly contrarians who refuse to be sucked into the modern world’) thrive on the delights of a raffish bookstore with a number of rare titles. ‘It’s serendipity,’ says Schwartz. ‘You come in and you find things you wouldn’t expect.’ Theatre bookshops provide an animating, social function.

Unemployed Withnail-types of the old Camden mould still come in searching for the perfect audition piece. He has a wicker chair in which they can peruse and a room downstairs for auditions. His plays ‘are like clothes – actors come in and try them on to see if they fit’. Feature continues

London’s bigger independent playsellers, meanwhile, seem to be thriving. Samuel French in Fitzrovia acts as a resource for many of the local theatre schools. They manage to find some of the more esoteric titles which might only otherwise be found on the internet. Their manager Amanda Smith denies that there has been a downturn in interest in plays. ‘If anything, it has never been more intense. With the increase in drama teaching in schools, more and more pupils are encouraged to read plays.’

Toby Radford, the manager of the National Theatre’s bookshop, also perceives a burgeoning market for play-selling. He doesn’t have the same worries about rent hikes. It is possible in his shop to buy the plays currently showing all over London. Now ‘print on demand’ technology makes it easier for new plays to be published at the time of performance. The NT bookshop has not only an excellent backlist, but an impressive ‘contextual’ list – academic, historical or critical works that illuminate and enrich the shows currently showing at the National.

With the news that Borders is pulling out of the UK, and many Waterstones branches closing, perhaps it is not all doom and gloom for the independent bookseller. ‘I am a great believer in chance,’ says Calder, for once throwing off his Cassandra guise. ‘Something might come up, to keep us going.’

Calder Bookshop, 51 The Cut, SE1
Offstage Theatre and Film Bookshop, 34 Tavistock St, WC2E
National Theatre Bookshop, South Bank SE1
Samuel French, 52 Fitzroy St W1