Welcome to today’s edition of ShentonSTAGE Daily, in which I look back on the last seven days of theatre news and reviews (including my own).

FRIDAY APRIL 7

Commercial theatre has one criteria above all for what constitutes success: recouping its initial investment, and then turning a regular weekly profit thereafter.

In the West End, unlike on Broadway, producers are notoriously secretive about the numbers (on Broadway they are published weekly for all to see). But you can make guesses of what is doing well — and what isn’t — from simply observing the box office seating plans and monitoring the shows offering discounts (or even heavily papering); the National’s PHAEDRA, which closes tomorrow, had plenty of availability earlier in its run, but now there’s nothing for the last shows this coming weekend.

It’s one of the best shows in town — as was STANDING AT THE SKY’S EDGE that closed the week before winning its Olivier for best new musical. Fortunately that one is coming back, but I hope PHAEDRA does, too.

THE UNFRIEND closes next weekend at the Criterion, and is apparently searching out a new venue to extend its run. According to a report in THE STAGE,

I ran into Matt on Wednesday evening as I came out of seeing ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF AN ANARCHIST at Lyric Hammersmith before it closes tomorrow — and although his company Playful want to transfer it to town, they are struggling to find an available venue.

So that’s a second theatre that this one producer is looking for.

And it is why, having booked one limited run at the Pinter which quickly sold out before the show even opened, A LITTLE LIFE is having to move to the Savoy to extend its run. And in the constant round of musical (and non-musical) chairs that are also playing out in the West End and beyond, there are also solid gold hits like GUYS AND DOLLS at the Bridge that’s going to block off that venue for the foreseeable future, and the warmly received FOR COLORED BOYS… , transferred to the Apollo after selling out at the Royal Court, that makes a thrilling job of diversifying the audience the West End typically attracts at exactly the time it needs to. As I remarked in my review for Plays International of the black-majority audience I saw it amongst, “I’ve only rarely experienced a similar feeling as a white playgoer of being in a minority in a theatre, and it’s a massively welcome step.”

SATURDAY APRIL 8

There’s a very sobering thread on Twitter about how poorly a freelance director is remunerated, even when at the top of their game.

Its author is Adele Thomas, an opera director who works at places like the Royal Opera House and Glyndebourne — hardly small potatoes.s Citing a 2015 report on directors’ fees by Stage Directors UK (SDUK), she points out that directing four shows a year at some of London’s major London theatres would earn a director £20,830 for their work. (Of course, the fees may have gone up a bit since 2015; but so has the cost of living).  But looking at an average fee of £5000, she breaks down the amount of work directing a show entails, and it comes to 73 days. So the fee works out at £68.49 per day or £479.84 per week. From that, you still have to pay tax; agents fees; travel; and living expenses (especially if you are working away from home). On the figures she provides, she states; “You could be directing at a major London theatre and taking home £27.95 a day.”

And similar calculations could be made for other creatives like sets, sound and lighting designers.

This got me thinking about a critic’s life, too. When I used to review for The Stage, the base rate for a 250 word review was £25. (There were higher rates for the more rarely commissioned 500 or 800 word reviews).

I once reviewed a show for them at a theatre in Bowness-on-Windermere in the Lake District. Travel time was 6 hours there, 6 hours back. I had to stay overnight. My fee was £25 (They did pay for the hotel and train at least). But it was basically 24 hours, plus writing time for the review itself (but I’ll throw that in, as I did that on the train home); Stage critics also have to source and provide the photography with their reviews. So it was essentially a pound an hour to do that review!

Of course I CHOSE to do it — a critic can turn down the assignment, though you don’t want to do that too often, or you may not be asked to review more (assignments are always in the gift of the reviews editor).

No wonder so-called ‘national’ critics (who mostly choose what to cover themselves) largely stick to London. When you are paid the same fee whether you go to a theatre on your doorstep or 250 miles away, it is simply uneconomic to travel.

SUNDAY APRIL 9

In an interview in THE TIMES today, one-time journalist, turned serious thinker and playwright Michael Frayn talks to Andrew Billen about his new book, a series of essays about 13 of his friends — only three of them still alive.

He approaches his own impending mortality with a typically Fraynian mixture of acceptance but also annoyance at the possible inconveniences that lie ahead:

“I don’t fear being dead at all, but the approaches towards death are mostly pretty grim. I wouldn’t say I actively worry about it, but I can’t say I’m looking forward to it either, not to being in pain or stupid or incontinent, all the awful things that happen to people in old age. But being dead seems an extremely uninteresting experience.”

I find it difficult to imagine a world in which Frayn is not in it. It feels as if he is part of the very fabric of the theatre, not just because of the regularity with which we see his most famous play NOISES OFF revived, but also because he turns up (with his wife Claire Tomalin) at so many first nights. The same is true of Tom Stoppard, Alan Ayckbourn and Alan Bennett: for as long as I’ve been going to the theatre, their names have dominated the billboards from the West End to the National. I feel privileged to have gotten to know Alan Ayckbourn a bit over the years, and I once hosted a talk at the British Library with Stoppard. But I’ve strangely never formally met Frayn or Bennett.

MONDAY APRIL 10

After dipping my toes back into the Edinburgh Fringe last year with a short three night visit, I’ve decided to extend my stay this year — to four nights!

I booked myself in today to student accommodation in Roxburgh Place — just along from the Roxburgh Reading Room, now run as the Pleasance Roxy, that I long ago hired and ran as an Edinburgh fringe venue back in 1986.

I don’t remember precisely what we paid to rent this gigantic former church hall. But four nights in a single room in a converted former office building opposite is costing me £515. Add in a flight to get there, and I’ve spent over £700 before I’ve even left my front door. Edinburgh is essentially unaffordable, yet I still feel I want a few days there.

TUESDAY APRIL 11

If there was a personal upside to lockdown for me, it was the time I had to devote myself to a recovery programme fellowship that I joined in the summer before lockdown, and was able to complete the 12-steps for during by attending online meetings and working online with my fellow traveller). ’

But I also discovered television, of necessity, for the first time in my adult life during lockdown.

Sure, I’d chance upon occasional programmes in the past that I’d become hooked on, like the glorious Schitt’s Creek, or Downton Abbey which we watched in its entirety when on holiday in Florida in the midst of a polar vortex that made staying in a lot essential.

 But this was the first time, ever, that I was actually home most of the time and not at the theatre every night, with time to actually watch stuff.

So my husband and I sat down and watched the streaming equivalent of a lot of boxed sets: Homeland, The Designated Survivor, The Crown (and of course we’ve just caught up with the most recently series of that) and The West Wing (we finally finished the last of this utterly compelling series just a couple of weeks ago).

Right now we are watching, in real time, the latest series of the searing Succession — as each episode is released every Monday. This has proved to be real “event” television, with saturation media coverage (so if you wanted to avoid spoilers, you really did need to watch it before everyone wrote about it).

But we’ve also got a long list of shows to still catch up on, and this week we finally began watching Ted Lasso.  

WEDNESDAY APRIL 12

I’ve just had an unprecedented five-night theatre-free stretch: the last show I saw was last Thursday evening. But it’s the lull before the storm. Today I headed to New York, again, for a 12 night stay, in which I’m seeing at least 17 shows.

My schedule includes two new Broadway musicals (SHUCKED and NEW YORK, NEW YORK), the new revival of the Lerner and Loewe warhorse CAMELOT (with a newly updated book by Aaron Sorkin, opening officially tomorrow, April 13) and Ibsen’s A DOLL’S HOUSE, four new Broadway plays (FAT HAM, opening officially on Broadway tonight after transferring from the Public, THANKSGIVING PLAY, SUMMER 1976 and GOOD NIGHT, OSCAR), two transfers from London (PETER PAN GOES WRONG and LEOPOLDSTADT), and three cabaret shows at 54 Below (Kate Baldwin and Aeron Lazar, Varla Jean Merman and Charles Busch), plus repeat visits to PARADE (now transferred to Broadway after I previously saw its City Center run last November) and Bob Fosse’s DANCIN’ (which I saw at a press performance before it first opened last month). I’ve also got a gala fundraiser for Classic Stage Company that celebrates the 40 year collaboration of Ahrens and Flaherty.

This means that by the time I return home on April 24 I’ll have seen all but one of the current season’s openings: a late entry was added of a Broadway transfer for Lorraine Hansberry’s THE SIGN IN SIDNEY BRUSTEIN’S WINDOW, seen at BAM recently, and beginning performances on April 25 prior to a fast opening two nights later, the last date for it to still be eligible for this year’s Tony Awards.

I start my marathon run with a  breezy, exhilarating return visit to DANCIN’, a kinetic explosion of signature Bob Fosse moves and attitudes in constant motion, that was originally premiered under his own auspices in 1978, and has now been re-staged (and somewhat embellished) by Wayne Cilento, Fosse disciple and an original cast member (for which he was Tony nominated for Best featured actor in a musical), featuring a highly adrenalized company of fabulously fit (and fabulously diverse) dancers.

The additions include an extended sequence in tribute to Fosse’s final original Broadway show Big Deal, a 1986 flop. The show is a kind of hybrid that is part Vegas floor show, part art-house dance show that might grace the stage of the Joyce in New York or The Place or Sadlers Wells in London.

I loved it more the second time I saw it than the first (when I wrote about it here): already knowing what it is, I went in with my expectations already duly adjusted. I can see myself wanting to return yet again. As with all dance shows, there’s always something new to see, a new move you missed before.

THURSDAY APRIL 13

New York is already my favourite city on earth; and my favourite place there is quite possibly 54 BELOW, the cabaret club located in the basement of the former nightclub Studio 54 that has now reclaimed as a Broadway theatre.

This gorgeous room opened its doors in 2012, and with the long ago passing of such iconic rooms as Rainbow and Stars (atop the Rockefeller Centre), the Algonquin’s Oak Room and Feinstein’s at the Regency Hotel on Park Avenue, it is now the cabaret venue of choice in a city that has had a long history of promoting the intimate art of cabaret performance.

But cabaret rooms come and go here, and often tend towards either an exclusivity that is essentially unaffordable (an evening at the Cafe Carlyle at the Carlyle Hotel on the Upper East Side can set you back $400-$500, after the obligatory cover charge and meal minimums) or the scruffy and makeshift (like the spit-and-sawdust charms of Don’t Tell Mama’s, located behind the piano bar of the same name on Restaurant Row). 

But 54 Below is a happier combination of proper glamour with a mixed range of pricing from bar seating to premium ringside that makes it both attainable and aspirational. Billing itself ‘Broadway’s Living Room’, Broadway’s biggest stars do seasons here — like Patti LuPone, Kelli O’Hara. Brian Stokes Mitchell and Laura Benanti — in a busy and eclectic lilne-up that programmes two shows nightly, featuring cabaret specialists like Ann Hampton Callaway and her sister Liz Callaway (appearing either separately or together), whom I’ve seen here more than anyone else. 

Tonight I made an evening of it, seeing both the 7pm and 9.30pm shows, and it is precisely why I love the room so much. The early show featured Broadway regulars Kate Baldwin and Aaron Lazar, who’ve appeared in three shows together in the last twenty years, most recently last year in THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY (which I travelled to New Jersey to see last year, and reported on here). So I’ve been a fan of both long before tonight.

Individually they are exquisite singers of warmth and range; but it’s in their duos that they truly shine, exhibiting an effortless rapport and mutual respect that puts them in a class of their own. It was particularly lovely to revisit some of their Bridges of Madison County songs.

Then at 9.30pm, I saw Varla Jean Merman, a drag performance artist who I’ve been seeing regularly over the years  for over 20 years in their annual seasons in Provincetown. This is a performer now at the height of their considerable powers: not just fiercely funny, but also completely original — and all live. There’s a warm and wonderful humanity to Varla Jean Merman and a storyline about suffering from anxiety attacks that offers a recipe for alleviating it.

SHOWS AHEAD IN LONDON, SELECTED REGIONAL THEATRES AND ON BROADWAY

My regularly updated feature on shows in London, selected regional theatres and on Broadway is here: https://shentonstage.com/theatre-openings-from-w-c-april-10/

See you here on Monday

I will be back on Monday. If you can’t wait that long, I may also be found on Twitter (for the moment) here: https://twitter.com/ShentonStage/ (though not as regularly on weekends)