#6: theatre is in its flop era rn

The talent is leaving, the exec appointments are depressing and the drama on stage is struggling to entertain. Are we in the danger zone?

June, 2021. The side of the National Theatre opposite the BFI displays a projected advert for buy now, pay later credit service, Klarna.

The end of this year heralded three events that suggested theatre is in a bad place in the UK at the moment.

One is merely embarrassing: a good, old-fashioned critical slating. State-of-the-nation play Manor received 2*s from the Independent, 1* in the Guardian and an astonishing nil points from The Times. Clive Davis’ review opens with a howl and screams of a critic desperate at the prospect of an art form in decline:

‘Buffini is taking on big themes here: global warming, sexual politics and the rise of the far right. But the results are beyond simple-minded. It’s a worrying trend. The National, the Royal Court and the Donmar are all staging ambitious explorations of politics and ideas, and all three are woeful. Are we running out of playwrights who have even a basic grasp of how society works?’

And he really must’ve meant it too, because the review was followed up in a couple of days later with a feature entitled ‘Is it curtains for the National Theatre?’

I actually haven’t read it yet so I can’t comment on its argument, but maybe the sort of person who gets commissioned to do a landmark piece of theatre about ‘where we’re at’ should automatically be out of the running? Or maybe those big stages are impossibly big for work that is specific enough to draw truth about the various Britains that make up these shores? I honestly think that you’d be better off putting on a really good play about foot-and-mouth disease, or a devised piece that kicks off at pre-drinks in suburbia, or the Kylie Minogue jukebox musical my housemate pitched at me last week, than some metaphor about the English crumbling pile. A set of pans is humbling, but there have to be some bad plays mixed in with the average and the good. The other two incidents are more concerning.

This autumn saw the opening of another ostensibly big splash play, and one I’d actually been looking forward to: Rare Earth Mettle by Al Smith, on at the Royal Court. Until the Friday night before previews open and I’m scrolling through twitter and see that the main character is called…Hershel Fink? It’s a story about a greedy tech baron, casting direct parallels to Elon Musk. The name is unmistakably German-Jewish; as Emma Jude Harris points out in her recent piece for Exeunt magazine, Hershel is the government name of Krusty the Clown - it’s a Yiddish name, and shorthand for an Ashkenazi man. Over the weekend, the story unfolds. Disappointingly, the Royal Court’s initial apology speaks of ‘unconscious bias’; the character had never meant to be Jewish. In response to the scrutiny and hurt, just before the show opens, his name is Anglicised to Henry Fink; it turns out a Jewish director had pointed out the antisemitic framing during a workshop but the note had not been passed onto the playwright. The incident was grubby and sad, but it does sound like a new and much-needed dialogue has been opened between the RC and Jewish artists - it’s worth noting that I’ve often seen a lot of adoration for Caryl Churchill’s work (I’m only familiar with Top Girls, for my sins) but it can get pretty awkward when you note that the choice to title it Seven Jewish Children, rather than, more accurately, Seven Israeli Children is maybe a tell.

And during a period for the National Theatre that has seen an unfortunate dearth of new work hits (pre-covid, that is), the other Friday afternoon the NT announced its new Executive Director on social media. While they claimed to be proud of the appointment (and it’s a big role, as joint CEO of the largest theatre in the country, on around £150-165k) it was unusual timing. One would assume the press department would’ve wanted to go for a 9am launch on a Monday or Tuesday for the happy news. While the President of the Society of London Theatre tweeted congratulations, elsewhere the news that Kate Varah had got the gig received an altogether less positive response. Was this another case of Theatre Twitter being unduly precious?

This won’t be Varah’s first foray into senior leadership at a theatre building. While in the press statement, she says that she has ‘had the most amazing 12 years at the Old Vic and am incredibly proud of what Matthew [Warchus, Artistic Director at the Old Vic and director of the film Pride] and I have achieved there together’ and explains she worked as Chief Operating Officer and then Executive Director alongside Warchus, this misses out a key bit of regime change at the Waterloo venue. Kate Varah was COO at the Old Vic while Kevin Spacey was Artistic Director; the allegations of his conduct both within and outwith the building during this time are well documented, but for a refresher, here’s the beginning of a 2017 article from the Guardian:

Actors and former staff at the Old Vic have accused the theatre of turning a blind eye to inappropriate sexual behaviour by Kevin Spacey during the 11 years that the Hollywood star was its artistic director.

A number of people who have worked at the theatre in London have contacted the Guardian claiming it was well known that Spacey groped and behaved in an inappropriate way with young men at the time.

Roberto Cavazos, a Mexican actor, said he recalled a “couple of unpleasant encounters” with Spacey including, being “squeezed” by him in the Old Vic bar, in a posting on Facebook.

A former employee told the Guardian: “We were all involved in keeping it quiet. I witnessed him groping men many times in all sorts of different situations,” on a day when other allegations of inappropriate sexual behaviour by Spacey emerged.

While the anonymous employee claims they were ‘all involved’ in hushing up this behaviour, it’s important to note that Varah, the board and senior leadership from this period have maintained that they were unaware of any such activity and that no formal complaints were lodged against Spacey during his involvement with the theatre. Taking them at their word, it does seem astonishing to me that bad governance and management be rewarded with further positions of responsibility in the same sector. And it is bad because, while people involved at the heart of one of London’s most prominent theatres were unaware of the culture in the building, I know people who were uninvolved in the industry at that time (teenagers, even!) in London, California, Australia, and beyond who had got wind of Spacey’s reputation. The rumours had spread globally but could not be heard on the offices of The Cut, it would unfortunately seem. If anyone from the Spacey-era SMT or board is feeling generous, I’m sure there’s lots of people out there who’d eagerly take their recommendations for noise-cancelling headphones.

It’s not a crime to be out of touch - and I would argue being unaware of Spacey’s reputation while working in theatre would have made you so - but it is interesting that there appears to have been no repercussions professionally for the people linked to the Old Vic from that time. They haven’t been barred from trusteeships and some, clearly, have been promoted and are welcomed in particular spheres of the theatre industry.

At the start of this year, I was lucky enough to be a mentor on an NT programme for young people on producing. The Learning department take safeguarding incredibly seriously and I’m confident that they, and so many other people working there, will uphold this commitment the same in spring 2022 as they would have done in the past.

But when I saw that announcement, I couldn’t help but think of the front of house workers there - when lockdown was imminent in March 2020, some casual staff found out the theatre was closed via a public announcement on twitter, rather than any internal communications with managers. Having gone through a rough round of furlough and redundancies (which I covered for Exeunt this year), theatre is in the midsts of a hiring crisis (Alice Savile reported on this recently); morale is low. Does this appointment alleviate any of that? Will workers at the NT in the canteens, box office or bookshop feel able to report an incident with a big name star should anything untoward happen? I’m not sure I would be assured, in their position.

I took another look at the ED job advert:

The person appointed Executive Director will need to demonstrate creativity, vision, leadership, and the ability to represent the NT to the outside world.

Understanding what signals the outside world will take from a senior appointment is crucial, but it’s curious that there’s not an understanding or appreciation of how important internal “buy-in” is with regards to organisational leadership. Theatre workers (producers, fundraisers, marketers, technicians, designers, stage managers…) aren’t tethered to the sector out of unflinching love and sacrifice in the way they maybe were in 2019 - they know there are better paid options with room for progression out there. And the writers have got television money and the often sharp eyes of development people too - what’s keeping them interested in the slim chance of a stage commission?

It’s not all doom and gloom: as you’ll see later on this month, there have been affecting and timely shows on our stages this year. There are still too many decent plays and work available for too few slots. But, for a sector that prides itself on telling stories, the big takeaway from 2021 is that theatre is struggling to articulate its relevancy to the public and to its biggest devotees: its workforce.