Domenic CAVENDISH
The can-do attitude of the Fringe is just what theatreland now needs, says Dominic Cavendish
Few people can claim to have usefully alerted millions to the existence of Dominic Cummings. But that’s exactly what playwright James Graham did last year with his hit Channel 4 drama Brexit: The Uncivil War. Few, too, can be said to have kept millions entertained during lockdown. But again, that’s what Graham did with his ITV three-parter Quiz, about the Who Wants to be a Millionaire? “coughing major” scandal.
The Nottinghamshire playwright is one of the biggest names of the moment, and he owes it all, he says, to a little room above a pub in Earl’s Court, west London. The Finborough, a 50-seat space celebrating its 40th anniversary this week (under the canny supervision of Neil Mcpherson, its artistic director) gave him his first break in London, then staged his work over four formative years.
“The capital was a scary place when I was in my early 20s,” he recalls.
“I tried to find a theatre that might tolerate a young playwright who wasn’t writing a relationship drama set in a house-share, but a political history set before his time.
“Somehow, I found it. The perception was that plays like that get written by people with Sirs in front of their name, and that you had to wait until you’d established yourself.
“I can’t overstate how much that place was the making of me. There would have been no Quiz without the Finborough. It’s not a pretend line I’m drawing back to that pub. I don’t think I’d have been a playwright without it.”
Like every other theatre at the moment, the Finborough – set up in 1980 by actress June Abbott – is closed. There has been an inevitable song and dance about the fate of the West End, the perilous position of our major subsidised theatres, and the rocky road ahead for the UK’S regional playhouses. But there has been little evident concern for the Fringe, that vital undergrowth of our theatrical ecosystem, on the basis – presumably – that something will always stir in it.
As much as it has been an undercelebrated force in enriching the wider theatre and television culture, the Fringe warrants attention now as we look to the future: it’s the can-do attitude of Fringe theatre-makers, so well acquainted with pulling rabbits out of hats, that will be vital in enabling the sector’s rebirth after the pandemic. Big institutions look in peril of falling, and the Government appears tardy in responding to the clamour from industry leaders – led indeed by Graham. If the theatre world is going to end up rubbing pennies together, it’s practitioners on the Fringe who may well lead the way. Simon Callow has talked of theatre returning to “two planks and a passion – where theatre started” – and the essence of Fringe.
Burgeoning into life in the late 60s and 70s, and thriving up to the present, the London Fringe ranges from intimate pub theatres like the Finborough and King’s Head to larger independent spaces like the Menier Chocolate Factory and the Southwark Playhouse – around 50 venues in all; the annual Edinburgh fringe festival sees an explosion of activity (alas not this year) and the Society of Independent Theatres estimates that altogether there are about 200 small (under 300 seat) regular venues around the UK, including the studio spaces of regional theatres.
Compared to its bigger, Arts Council-subsidised west London neighbour The Bush, the Finborough might seem small fry – even expendable. But with an annual turnover of £130,000, and without subsidy, “it punches way above its weight,” in the words of Laura Wade, who got her crucial first London writing job there, later going on to write (the ultimately West End-hitting) Posh and Home, I’m Darling. “It has provided a space for things that were oddball, not quite obviously zeitgeisty yet still somehow current,” she says.
Appointed in 1999, Mcpherson’s inspired programme of new writing and revivals of neglected curios has seen the venue regularly win awards, playing to more than 12,500 people in 2018-2019. Rory Bremner, Kathy Burke, Jane Horrocks and Rachel Weisz are all alumni. It has even been ahead of the curve in terms of new writing. The mid Nineties saw the emergence of a generation who came to define the world in startling, visceral terms, dubbed “in-yer-face” theatre. There were plays by Anthony Neilson and readings of Martin Mcdonagh’s
The Pillowman and Mark Ravenhill’s smash-hit Shopping and F------.
“There was this incredible energy of hundreds of people who wanted to be there,” remembers Phil Willmott, who ran it in the Nineties. “We didn’t care about money. I don’t think we had a clue about career-building – in the 80s and 90s, the top strata of theatre were dominated by gods like Trevor Nunn and Richard Eyre – there was no vacancy at the top. We were happy to scrabble round at the bottom.”
They were also happy to put up with less-than-perfect conditions. “We’ve had the air-conditioning blow up, ceilings fall down and a superb flood,” notes Mcpherson drily, “which put the staircase under 4ft of water the night Kate Winslet came to see a show. Her immortal words were ‘This is actually worse than Titanic’.”
Can the plucky little Finborough survive the pandemic? With reopening in early 2021 now the cautious assumption, Mcpherson is launching a fundraising campaign – estimating that, by the time of the planned reopening, it will have cost £75,000 to stay afloat.
The downsides are clear for Mcpherson: “What’s really worrying is what happens in 10 years’ time. Is there going to be a James Graham or a Laura Wade who writes something that fills the NT Olivier or entertains everyone on TV? That’s the thing I think about most.”
Some can see new things emerging amid the upheaval – the Fringe may find new bases outside of its traditional home of the past halfcentury: the boozer.
The director, playwright and acclaimed television writer (The Night Manager) David Farr, who directed Weisz at the Finborough in 1992, reflects that there may be a shift towards other types of venue. “Maybe there will be more industrial spaces to rent out, as people stop relying on offices so much. We might see a lot of socially distanced site-specific work,” he says, alluding to the kind of work produced by pioneering “immersive” theatre company Punchdrunk, who staged a production of Faust in 150,000 sq ft of derelict office space in Wapping.
Willmott agrees with Farr: “I think we’re going to move out from rooms above pubs – it will be a few years before audiences want to sit in tight, enclosed spaces.” He foresees a who dares-wins youthquake, a survival of the most impassioned and committed: “It’s going to be almost impossible to make a living from theatre for the next few years. The people who get out there are going to the most passionate ones. The next age could be a time of innovation.”
David Eldridge – who was there in 1996 with his play A Week with Tony – suspects things might even spin on their axis, the mainstream becoming more like the Fringe. “Speaking to many playwrights, there’s a consensus that the culture might flip. The older audience may be the last people to come back. So theatre will need to face more to the under-40s. There may be a big hunger for new work, younger stories. Mainstream theatre could draw in a lot of what might have been done on the Fringe.”