How the West End was won

ThE Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre are jointly ruling the West End, with sizzling hot ticket sales for the musical Matilda and the drama War horse.

Matilda, on at the Cambridge Theatre, has a whopping £5.3 million cash advance, which is pretty phenomenal — and a triumph for the canny RSC duo Michael Boyd (the artistic director) and Vikki heywood, and their team.

Matthew Warchus opens the production at the Shubert Theatre in New York in April and let’s hope Matilda waltzes in big time there, too.

The National’s War horse, based on Michael Morpurgo’s bestseller, has £5 million in advance ticket sales, which is sensational for a play, especially one that has been running a while.

The National’s other smash — the comedy One Man, Two Guvnors — is carrying an advance in excess of £2 million at the Theatre Royal, haymarket.

What’s happening here? The major subsidised theatres seem to know exactly what audiences want. Not always, to be sure, but often enough to make it count.

Which is more than the poor souls at the West End’s flagship theatre the London Palladium.

I’m a big fan of Des O’Connor, so I’m not going blame him for whatever ails The Wizard Of Oz. In any case, it’s coming off soon.

But Tommy Steele’s returning to the Palladium from October 24 in that tired old musical Scrooge.

It’s been on general sale for a while and has taken the grand total of £20,000 in cash, although it has speculative bookings of £100,000. That’s woeful.

Scrooge is naff nonsense, not really what audiences want these days; tastes have changed.

Thank heavens that in June, Sam Mendes is bringing in a new musical: Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, which, like Matilda, is based on a Roald Dahl novel.