‘This is not 9/11 or the Blitz, it’s far trickier’
Leading figures tell Dominic Cavendish how they are racing against the clock to save theatreland
When and how is British theatre going to open for business again? That question has been chewed over from the moment on March 16 when, owing to Covid-19, Shaftesbury Avenue went dark for the first time since the Second World War.
While the stages have been deserted, behind the scenes there has been a frenzy of dialogue, with existing productions put into suspension or folded up, and imminent ones being scrapped or deferred. Some shows such as the Menier transfer of the Jane Austen adaptation The Watsons to the Harold Pinter theatre – due in May – have been cancelled, others like To Kill a Mockingbird at the Gielgud have been postponed.
Venues and producers across the UK are juggling planned work and seasons as they try to fathom possible reopening dates, their finances creaking – notwithstanding government schemes and (in the case of the subsidised sector) rescue assistance from arts funding bodies. Every day brings a louder beat of dread.
There has been a heartening plethora of activity online – testament to the show-must-go-on resolve of a sector in disarray, with some actors who only weeks ago were standing in the spotlight turning supermarket assistants to make ends meet. But the main drama lies in the uncertainty over theatreland’s physical reopening.
Those in the optimistic camp have been holding on to the idea that
‘Every day I count the growing millions this period will have cost me’
things will be good to go again in the summer – indeed tickets are still being sold for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat the Palladium, from July. A consensus recently seemed to form around the idea that the autumn was a likely prospect – Andrew Lloyd Webber went public at the start of the month to talk of September as a likely possibility; the premiere production of his new musical Cinderella has been rescheduled to open in October. The pessimists have written off this year altogether and even some way into 2021 – the spring is being talked of in some quarters. Could the crisis last longer?
The most realistic appraisal shifts almost by the day and several industry insiders I approached refused to speak or be quoted because of this fluidity. “It’s dreadful, we’re in an awful situation,” one producer told me.
Compared to what else is going on in the economy, theatre might seem like a sideshow but the stakes are very high. The West End alone achieved a gross revenue of almost £800million in 2019 (bringing in more than £133million for the Treasury in VAT). Theatre is the capital’s big morale booster as well as a mighty income generator and job creator, a key part of the UK’S til recently burgeoning creative industries. We’re a world leader in the field but that status is under threat the longer the shutdown drags on.
On Broadway that suspension has been formally extended into June. As things stand, performances in the West End have been officially cancelled until the end of May but it’s a given that this time limit will be extended, explains Julian Bird – the chief executive of SOLT (the Society of London Theatre, dedicated to the West End) and UK Theatre (the countrywide association for theatre organisations) – and the man faced with the unhappy task of instructing the theatres to close that day in March.
The suggestion last Wednesday by Prof Chris Whitty, the Government’s chief medical officer, that social distancing measures will likely be required until at least the end of the year (“it’s going to take a long time”) sent renewed gloom through the industry and swung producer and theatre owner Cameron Mackintosh, whose production empire stretches round the world, from relative optimist to a state of glumness on a par with the folk of Les Misérables, his biggest success story.
He’s now contemplating throwing in the towel, temporarily. “We’re still planning to open in the autumn but if the Government really means to keep social distancing then we can’t keep extending what we’re doing,” he reveals. “We’re reaching a crunch point. Every day I count the growing millions this period will have cost me.
“After September it becomes untenable and the only way I can survive is to mothball my company.” That means holding on to his eight theatres (which he owns outright) but having to start up all over again with his productions down the line.
Introducing distancing in the seating for his venues isn’t financially viable, he says – “It doesn’t add up”. And whether offstage or on, he believes it runs against the unique nature of live theatre: “Are the actors going to be chorusing ‘Do you hear the people sing?’ while standing six or seven feet apart? No, it’s a nonsense. It wouldn’t be what made the show work in the first place.” The challenge is off the scale, he says: “This is not 9/11 or the Blitz, it’s far, far trickier to deal with.”
Rufus Norris, director of the National, is unsure how to view Prof Whitty’s alarming statement on social distancing. “I don’t know whether [his statement] is a government guideline or [ just] a scientist on telly giving his
‘We’re looking at self-cleaning door handles, as well as ways to clean the air’
opinion”. The NT is working on multiple scenarios, including shutdown for the remainder of the year. What’s striking, though, is that the National is considering social distancing within its auditoria.
“You’d be cutting capacity down by say 75 per cent,” he explains. “The Olivier seats 1,100 – how do you make it work for 250 people? If someone complains that it goes against the spirit of theatre, I just say, ‘We’ve got to do what we can do.’ If that model means having minimal sets, that’s what we’ll do. It’s time to start thinking the unthinkable.”
In a precarious profession at the best of times, and required to be ingenious round the clock, theatre’s leading players are looking for wiggle room at every turn. Daniel Evans, artistic director at Chichester, acknowledges that a socially distanced model in the main auditorium is economically unviable and faces the added worry that those in the upper age bracket – a core demographic – may be required to remain at home.
He’s still hoping the summer blockbuster South Pacific can go ahead, but like Norris is looking to “find a form of entertainment that could be light on its feet and done without décor. At the moment we’re wondering if there’s a version of outdoor theatre that could involve people standing two metres apart. It’s a new world.”
Evans instituted mass temperature tests of staff before the lockdown, using non-invasive kits, and is thinking that such checks for audiences “is undoubtedly something that could happen”. It’s one means of offering reassurances to audiences – assuming social gatherings get qualified official approval, ahead of the arrival of a vaccine.
For Nica Burns, co-head of Nimax theatres, it’s part of a range of tools. “Waiting for a vaccine would have disastrous consequences for live entertainment,” she says, revealing the eye-watering costs of keeping her six theatres dark (“It still costs me £150,000 a week to have the theatres sitting there mothballed, for 10 weeks that’s £1.5 million”).
She’s busy trying to sketch out a “third way”, whereby theatre finds alternative measures to social distancing to create as healthy an environment as possible. “The fundamental thing is that the audience needs to feel that the people they’re next to are not sick, and the same goes for the performers.”
That may sound like clutching at straws, but Andrew Lloyd Webber – whose LW Theatres has six major London playhouses dark – feels that every conceivable option should be investigated and points to the heartening fact that the Seoul theatre where the South Korean version of The Phantom of the Opera is playing has had two weeks of deep cleaning and is now back open to the public, with a full house. “We’re looking as a theatre group at everything from acquiring self-cleaning door handles to how we can clean the air. I want to get our theatres open, safely, as soon as possible. I’m going to carry on until the last moment.”
Although it has felt like the longest month in history since that week in March, and the clock is ticking, it’s relatively early days, according to Bird, who thinks the sector is still in the process of liaising with the Government about support and is only now fully turning its attention to recovery and reopening. No government instructions about social distancing and theatres have been issued. Lots of focus groups and marketing initiatives are under way.
“We’re starting to ask customers what would be the things that would encourage them to come: is it having demonstrable health measures in place, is it pricing, is it the knowledge that they won’t have to sit next to somebody?”
That theatre will open again – albeit in a shaken and weak state initially, and without many tourists to lean on – is clear. The $64million question – in fact considerably more than that – is when, and no one knows yet. But some theatres are continuing to take modest amounts at the box office for shows later this year, and last week the producer Sonia Friedman offered the tantalising promise of a revival of Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem for May next year. There’s no room for complacency, though.
Bird’s warning is stark: “We all know that the Christmas period for nearly every theatre is their most important period in terms of audience and profitability – that enables them to go on for the rest of the year. The closer we get to Christmas with venues not open, the more we will see venues and production companies the length and breadth of the country disappearing – you will get to a point where businesses start to run out of cash.
“The further we move into the autumn and towards the end of the year, the more we would need additional government support for the sector to survive in the sense that it has existed until now. “
Mackintosh offers a final ray of hope: “Theatre is part of our nation, part of our way of life. It will come back.”
Les Misérables: The Staged Concert
Charity Download, raising funds for Acting for Others, the Musicians Union Coronavirus Hardship Fund and Captain Tom Moore’s Walk for the NHS fund, is available at lesmis.com/concert