Making a drama out of a crisis?
AS the financial industry lies in ruins and manufacturing plummets, Terry Grimley asks whether theatre can buck the trend.
Is theatre a luxury that will come near the top of most people’s list of expendable expenditure, or a priceless refuge from ever more depressing news bulletins? I asked a sample of prominent theatre managers to give me their take
STUART ROGERS, chief executive, Birmingham Rep: At the moment, touch wood, we are seeing absolutely no sign of a downturn. We had a fantastic autumn and Christmas and bookings for the spring look great. I don’t think that’s unique, either – theatres up and down the country are thinking, when is this going to hit us?
During the autumn Cabaret played to 98 per cent and Enjoy played to 100 per cent. The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe has played to record-breaking audiences, 20 per cent up on last year’s Christmas show. We do The Snowman every year in the West End – this was its 12th year – and that was 16 per cent higher than last year. It just seems that the recession is having no effect – in fact, it’s having a reverse effect.
Having said that, these are entertaining and particularly family shows. Our bookings for His Dark Materials are so good that we’ve just extended it by a week. There seems to be a general feeling that people are prepared to spend money on entertaining the family.
Whether we will do as well with some of the serious drama coming, like The Hounding of David Oluwale, remains to be seen. We’re doing a revival of Caryl Churchill’s play Serious Money, about boom-and-bust in the 1980s. The recession worries me more in terms of its possible impact on sponsorship. We haven’t lost any sponsors yet but a couple have said they are not sure about next year.
NIC LLOYD, chief executive, Malvern Theatres: This is the third recession I’ve experienced but this is slightly different. I’m trying to be bullish about it but with an air of caution. At the moment we’re holding up pretty well. There’s some very good product this spring and being planned for the autumn.
Ian McKellen (in Waiting for Godot ) is a prime example. People still want to see Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart.
My personal view is that providing we’re clever with what we’re programming and keep the standard up, people will continue to want to be entertained.
I suppose I have to look at it selfishly because that’s the nature of the business, and we all need a break from this depression. I work on the principle that theatre and cinema are a release and will continue to be supported.
Where the difficulty might be is in a shortage of product. We are bringing a lot of product in and I know the producers are nervous. It’s not just what we do, it’s what the other 12 or 15 touring theatres do. If four or five theatres are in trouble that will affect us all. And we are very dependent on productions coming in and out of the West End.
There’s definitely a demand in both the theatres here for lighter things, rather than a deep-meaning Arthur Miller or Tennessee Williams. That’s a trend I’ve seen for a few years now.
CHRIS HILL, director of sales and marketing, Royal Shakespeare Company: Things are going OK from our point of view. At the end of the day people still want to go out and be entertained.
We have tickets on sale until October and we are doing very well.
Sales are pretty much like last season, ignoring the David Tennant factor.
Casting David in Hamlet caused a very positive blip because it sold out so quickly. David brought in many new theatre-goers who we hope will return.
For last summer season, from April to November, we sold about 90 per cent of capacity. For Hamlet we literally had queues round the block at every performance for returns, and I think there was a knock-on effect for other shows.
Obviously having only one venue in Stratford concentrates your audience, but the great thing about The Courtyard is that we never closed during the redevelopment of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. We will soon start talking about the new theatre now that the reopening is next year, rather than two or three years away.
At the moment things are going well but we would be foolish not to keep an eye on them in case we have to put contingency plans in place.
STUART GRIFFITHS, chief executive, Birmingham Hippodrome: All I can tell you are the facts. The present show Robin Hood is going to achieve its target and is significantly ahead of last year, which was a record-breaker.
We put the prices up as well, but it still means more people are coming to see the show.
All the shows from the end of the pantomime to the end of the financial year are absolutely on target. We have raised the targets on two or three of them but there’s nothing in there that isn’t going to reach its target with a reasonable following wind.
To be honest, if I didn’t read the papers I would be hard-pushed from our figures to know there was a recession. The worry is what might be further down the line but certainly in terms of the present there is no problem.
I have been looking at this in as much detail as possible for our board members, who are coming from other businesses which are feeling the pinch, and really not finding anything untoward at the moment.
We’ve got shows on sale to next Christmas and next Christmas’s pantomime is ahead of where we were this time last year.
I don’t want to be over-confident because we’re looking all the time and waiting to be in a position where we can react if necessary. Apart from the box office, we could be vulnerable in ancillaries that come with a theatre visit, like catering. We don’t sell restaurant bookings as far ahead as tickets, but bookings are holding up. I suppose it surprises me considering what I’m reading in the papers every day about other sectors.
I wasn’t running theatres in the early 80s but I was in the early 90s, and I remember discussions then about when it was going to hit us. It never really came, but I suppose the circumstances may be different this time.
NEIL DARLISON, deputy director and head of programming, Warwick Arts Centre: Our concert hall is closed at the moment so there could be an argument that we are spreading people to other performances, but it seems that the box office is standing up well considering what we hear on our radios before coming to work every morning.
We are going to launch our season with ten performances of the RSC’s Othello which have completely sold out. Our Christmas show did a lot better than it did in previous years.
Not everything has been great. We were disappointed with Talking Birds’ show Trevor Goose, which we thought might have galvanised a local audience more than it did.
Students account for 15-20 per cent of our audience.
Because we work across the art forms we might do a night of Bill Bailey or a night of specialist African music and those are completely different audiences.
After Othello we have a week of work for children and then we’re doing Kneehigh’s Don John, which is booking extremely well despite having already been at Stratford.
The Convicts Opera is also doing very well and all the comedians we have up to the middle of March are selling out fast.
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