Come rain or shine, al fresco culture is just what we need
When my husband and I were first going out, in what he insists on calling “our salad days”, we went on a date to a youth group production of Hamlet in a Brixton car park. It was August and balmy. In the interval, we ran home to fetch cushions. Concrete is tough on the tailbone. Stiff limbs aside, it was magic. Outdoor theatre at its most inspired and transporting.
Now, I know what you’ll say: you got lucky. Hamlet on a summer night is one thing. Harder to have fun when it’s a frosty Faust or a drizzling Don Giovanni. But if we’re to save our theatres this summer, it will have to be cagoules in the stalls. Seven weeks after cancelling its summer season, Glyndebourne Opera House in Sussex has announced a “mini-festival” for July. The chorus has been cut, the orchestra reduced from 40 to 13 and the audience limited to 200 socially distanced seats on the lawn.
Glyndebourne has shown the way. Footballers are back on the pitch, but musicians, singers and actors are still “resting”. Broadcasts have kept us going, but long lockdown weeks of Frankenstein, Così Fan Tutte and La Fille Mal Gardée have shown that three acts on a laptop are only a stopgap. It is art without atmosphere, theatre without the thrill. I hate to see our playhouses shut. It isn’t just the loss of jobs, the exhausted coffers, the threat of permanent closures; it is the heartbreaking waste of creative energy: the actors, directors, choreographers, scene-painters, chorus-line hoofers and interval ice-cream sellers left without audience or outlet. So, let them break out.
Stage The Cherry Orchard in a cherry orchard and The Tempest on the beach. Give us Othello al fresco and Pinter en plein air. Replace the two-metre rule with the picnic-rug rule: one tartan blanket’s distance between each party of punters. Masks mandatory, waterproofs essential.
It seems needlessly cruel to keep the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in London or the Minack Theatre, cut into the cliffs of Cornwall, shut for the summer. Arts sector crisis talks have understandably focused on getting doors open for the winter season – many theatres depend on crowdpulling Christmas pantos and Nutcracker ballets to pay for the rest of the year – but for our open-air theatres, spring and summer are their palmiest days.
Where there are no outdoor theatres, create them in parks. Build makeshift stages. Invite a roster of companies: professional, student and happy, hapless amateur. Loos will be tricky, but no trickier than in the average West End venue. When it comes to technical hitches or iffy acoustics, we’ll be forgiving. Just entertain us.
A German friend once asked why the British have no word for Vorfreude – the joy of looking forward to things. One of the great distresses of the last few months has been the loss of Vorfreude. No party next week, no holiday on the horizon, no trip up to town with tickets to Shakespeare, Ayckbourn or a jukebox musical. We need dates in the diary: cultural as well as sporting and social.
There is no such thing, we are always told, as bad weather, only the wrong clothing. Forget black tie and ball gowns. Wear a onesie, bring a sleeping bag, swap champagne and smoked salmon blinis for cocoa and chilli con carne.
As a student, I arrived for a night at the Arena di Verona with a hot water bottle stuffed up my jumper. In thunder, lighting or rain … the show must go on.