JOHN NATHAN
THERE IS no denying it. This Tory government, often a favourite target of left-leaning theatre makers, has saved the performing arts from calamity. £1.57 billion — also for museums, galleries, independent cinemas and heritage and music venues — is a lot.
“It’s a better result than anyone dared hope,” director Nicholas Hytner told me after the announcement.
Credit is being heaped where it is due. Oliver Dowden, recently derided by some as being the latest culture secretary to be bussed into the job without any track record of being interested in the arts, deserves particular applause, says Hytner, as does Chancellor Rishi Sunak.
“It has also emerged that the prime minister was personally involved, so I extend personal gratitude to him too,” added Hytner. Others are more guarded.
“The profound untrustworthiness of this government stops me from breathing a sigh of relief,” said actor Elliot Levey, who was lined up to appear with David Tennant in CP Taylor’s Good later this year.
After Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt and Schnitzler’s The Doctor, Taylor’s play was set to be the latest in a series of West End shows tackling antisemitism before Covid-19 put theatre life on hold.
Interestingly, Levey sees this moment of government investment as an opportunity to address working practices. Production houses that have been saved from economic collapse might now recognise the permanent financial peril faced by many of freelancers they use. “Some organisations have got away for so long paying derisory wages,” says Levey. And while a new fund, headed by Sir Sam Mendes and backed by Steven Spielberg, will make grants to individuals working in the arts, it’s not nearly enough.
This could be a chance for theatre to reinvent itself; to have proper conversations about representation, rather than ticking diversity boxes. Might we also ask who gets to choose our theatre leaders; who commissions new plays and which plays are to be revived? And how has Covid-19 changed the way theatre is consumed in the era of online shows?
But at least it seems there will be a future for theatre to be discussed. I’ll breath a sigh of relief on Levey’s behalf. That said, a measured caveat to all that praise directed at the government might also be appropriate. I am thinking of a quote attributed to Winston Churchill who, when David Niven returned from Hollywood to Britain in the country’s hour of need at the start of the Second World War, said to the actor, “You did a fine thing…” adding “had you not done so, it would have been despicable.”