News, reviews, features and podcast on theatre across the UK
The British Theatre Guide Newsletter
No 1143: 21 January 2024
Editorial
I’m old enough to remember the strikes in the 1970s; not just those later in the decade when bins were left uncollected and bodies were left unburied that helped Margaret Thatcher come to power, but even before that when we often had to get candles out of the cupboard when the power was cut during the evening due to strikes by coal miners. That was quite exciting when I was very young, but we didn’t have quite so many devices requiring power as we do now, though I may have been sad not to be able to watch any of the three channels on our black and white telly.
Those strikes were usually by blue-collar workers demanding better pay and conditions; we would have, I think, been surprised if they were joined by the chorus and orchestra of a leading opera company.
But that is just what is now on the cards, as Philip Fisher explains in his feature this week. While many people still see opera as something for the rich and privileged, most of the hundreds of people involved in putting on productions, both onstage and off, are anything but, many on or a little above Equity or Musicians’ Union minimum rates. So when the musicians and chorus at the ENO are being told of proposals “to fire and rehire me and my colleagues with a 40% salary cut and worsened working conditions,” as one chorus member said, it can seriously affect their ability to earn a living from working for one of the top opera companies in the world.
This situation can be traced back to one in a long line of short-lived Culture Secretaries, who isn’t even an MP any more, breaching the ‘arms-length’ principle of the Arts Council by bullying them into decisions that seem to comply with a government initiative; the Arts Council then blackmailed the ENO into moving at least partially out of London by threatening to withdraw all of its funding. The company’s management has responded with a plan that will have the worst impact on those at the bottom of the hierarchy who get paid the least but without whom there would be nothing to fund. This is the one form of trickle-down economics that does work.
We have a second feature this week, in which Tamsin Flower has interviewed leading choreographer Russell Maliphant OBE, whose most recent work, Vortex, will be shown on BBC4 tonight (Sunday) and whose company has also recently lost its Arts Council revenue funding.
Following last week’s podcast episode featuring Esther Richardson from Pilot Theatre, when we spoke about the current state of theatre for young people, we have a new episode this week in which I interviewed Jenny Worton, Artistic Director of Theatre for the Roald Dahl Story Company. This is the company that deals with the rights for the stories written by the popular children’s author in its name, but they have recently gone further than merely granting rights to actually commissioning and funding new adaptations for stage from writers, which they then take to theatres as co-producers.
The first productions under their name were those over Christmas of The Witches at the National Theatre—which still has another week to run—and The Enormous Crocodile at Leeds Playhouse.
Stay safe from Storm Isha and make sure that any hatches you have are securely battened down.
Phoebe Eclair-Powell's Shed: Exploded View, winner of the 2019 Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting, will première at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester.
Life of Pi (Simon Friend in association with Playing Field and Tulchin/Bartner Productions and Sheffield Theatres) - Theatre Royal, Newcastle upon Tyne, –
Yorkshire
La Traviata (Ellen Kent) - The Alhambra Theatre, Bradford,
Carmen (Ellen Kent) - The Alhambra Theatre, Bradford,
The Merchant of Venice 1936 (Trafalgar Theatre Productions and Eilene Davidson Productions in association with the Royal Shakespeare Company) - The Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, –
