The theatre's phoney crisis
Will Waspe
The absence of a Theatre column from The Spectator this week will not surprise readers, for there was nothing much doing in the London theatre last week. Canny managements, noting all the election hoopla, decided it would be unwise to compete with it. First nights that had been planned were postponed and preview periods extended. Nothing new opened. Or, no, I tell a lie: there was the Monty Python show, fugitive from television to fill an unfortunate gap at Drury Lane, but I gather that our reviewer — whether by wise design or happy accident I cannot say — was not invited. What may surprise readers is that three new productions (one subsidised, one 'commercial' comedy, one musical) were due to open this week, and there are at least another three lined up for next week. A whole series of openings, indeed, is due to follow in the next few months, showing no diminution at all on the record of previous years. So what's all this you've been hearing — and reading — about a disastrous recession in the West End theatre?
It is a yarn being put about, I am reliably told, in an endeavour to get the Arts Council moving with its long-projected plan to inject public money into private theatre. The Council reputedly has a £250,000 purse ready for this curious purpose, and there are several interested parties keen to prise loose the purse-strings. At least one theatre columnist has been persuaded to put into print the news that the distribution of this quarter of a million is imminent.
I suspect he is wrong; and most especially so in the light of the vows to cut down on public expenditure that have been forced from the tongues of politicians on all sides of late. Expenditure on the arts has been leaping ever upwards through the years — from just over £3 million in 1964-65 to the projection of well over £17 million ten years later for 1974-75 — and though the amounts can look trifling when measured against, say, the trade deficit figures, the shrewder members of the Arts Council are not unaware of the dubiety with which the public in general views their activities. They do not want, in these hard times, to do anything that might precipitate the sort of storm that brings the whole concept of arts subsidisation under fire and could easily lead to a slash in their allocation in the next estimates.
Subsidising commercial thea
trical managements, however powerfully they may be lobbying to that end, would be just the thing to cause such a storm. For there is really no case to justify that kind of subsidy.
No management with a worthwhile production subject on hand is having any difficulty in raising the finance to get it on to the boards. Most of the money will eventually be lost, of course, for the great majority of stage productions are financial failures. The theatre is no business for a cautious investor. But there is no shortage of gambling investors ready to take a chance at proven odds of nine to one against, when they know there is always the chance of a winner coming in and paying off at thirty to one or more.
If it happens (and it does) that much of this wild money comes from the US — where being an `angel' is tax deductible — so much the better. It all helps the balance of payments.
The only plays or shows for which it is a problem to raise the cash are the duds — and often, as we all know, not even then. If the quality of the entertainment in London theatres sometimes seems uncommonly low, or at best frivolous, it is never because good plays are being neglected by managements in favour of trash, but because the good plays that everyone is looking for are not being written. The idea that an Arts Council hand-out to a commercial management would result in that management doing better plays is a myth. If it had any better plays it would be doing them anyway.
Certainly the theatre is not exactly enjoying a boom at the present time: is there any 'luxury' trade that is? But the big hits continue to be big hits: At the End of the Day, Habeas Corpus, The Constant Wife, The Party, The Danny La Rue Show — to name an assorted handful at random — are all doing very tidy business. Furthermore, there has rarely been so much future planning in the managerial suites. H.M. Tennent Ltd — the late Hugh Beaumont's old firm — have such projects moving as the musical version of Billy Liar (for Drury Lane in May), a play by Peter Luke about Lytton Strachey and the Bloomsbury set, and a new piece by the Australian, David Williamson, whose last, The Removalists, was acclaimed at the Royal Court last year. (The former general manager of the Royal Court, Helen Montagu, has lately
joined Tennents.) Eddie Kulukundis has booked Diana Rigg and Alec McCowen for a revival of Pygmalion. Michael White, with Maggie Smith already previewing in Snap! is bringing over the award-winning Broadway success, That Championship Season. Bernard Delfont has at least two costly musicals on the stocks, in addition to the five productions he has currently running — and Bernie is no man to be putting his muscle into a dying business.
Crisis in the West End? Give us some Arts Council money? They have to be kidding.
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