Rev Stan's theatre blog

Katie Mitchell under the critical spotlight or do the critics hate Katie?

When What's on Stage posted review round up of Katie Mitchell's latest, Trial of Ubu at the Hampstead Theatre, the headline was 'Critics judge Mitchell's Trial of Ubu' a pun on the plays title of course but maybe an unconscious reference to how she is viewed by the industry - someone to be judged as if she could possibly have done something wrong.

This, together with a comment @oughttobeclowns made last night about how some critics love to hate Mitchell's work got me thinking about whether some critics have indeed got it in for her regardless of what she does.

So I set about doing some research  to see if this rang true. As critics generally rate plays out of five I thought I could apply a Mitchell/Critic score. My methodology was to choose regular theatre critics and a selection of plays performed in the UK, directed by Mitchell.

Mark, who was mentioned last night as a potential culprit, doesn't give his reviews a rating so I've had to eliminate him from the research leaving Michael Coveney (What's On Stage), Michael Billington (Guardian) and Charles Spencer (Telegraph).

The plays I chose were the Trial of Ubu, Woman Killed With Kindness, Pains of Youth, ...some trace of her, The Seagull and Wastwater. Only Coveney has seen every one but Billington and Spencer have seen four a piece which I figure is a reasonable amount to judge against.

Has theatre critics vs bloggers just become critics vs Twittersphere?

The critic vs blogger debate is a well trodden path and I can't be bothered to re-visit the arguments - I'm sure one of the critic-bloggers can be relied upon to bring up the topic again at some point in the not too distant future. 

What does interest me in the whole theatre and the social media discussion though is how it is moving beyond bloggers writing reviews before or after press night.

More and more theatres are cottoning on to the power of the internet and I don't mean having a website through which you can buy tickets, I'm talking about Facebook, Twitter, blogs and YouTube.

The National Theatre, Donmar Warehouse and Royal Court are just three to have Facebook pages using them to post links to reviews, productions photos, videos, news and more. It not only acts as a promotional tool generating interest in productions weeks before they open but also a news outlet and means of interacting with audiences. 

And there are a growing number of theatres with Twitter accounts too. Today an email from the Bush Theatre in West London took social media usage to a new level. Included in the usual marketing blurb about its latest production The Kitchen Sink was a link to a hash tag search on Twitter:

It is the first time I've seen this done but essentially what the Bush is doing is linking to audience opinion about the play. And it is still in preview. It has decided to promote the views of the audience ahead of the critics. Of course I can't imagine them doing the same thing had the comments been stinkers but it certainly puts a different spin on the critic vs blogger debate. 

The cost of theatres not co-ordinating and a plea

In the rush to get tickets on sale before December and Christmas spending really kicks in (it's a bona fide tactic I'm told from at least one box office) three of London's main theatre's have inadvertently announced new seasons at the same time.

The Donmar Warehouse was first last week with three new productions - I'm expecting my friends membership mail out with ticket purchasing schedule to plop on the doormat any day. Then the National Theatre announced four new productions with tickets going on sale for members on Thursday.

And finally the Royal Court is doing its usual, and extremely irritating, announce at 7am, tickets on sale 9am tomorrow morning. (It's irritating because it leaves only 2 hours to co-ordinate production choices and available dates with friends before hitting the website and battling with the refresh button.)

But that is a different bug bear. Essentially the timing of the announcements means is that if you want to see everything (and I want to see nearly everything) between now and most likely the end of the month you are going to have to stump up a minimum of £188 on theatre tickets.  

OK so not everyone will go for everything and is quite as mad a theatre fan as I am, but still. Even if you manage to get the cheap and naturally very much in demand tickets - £12 Travelex at the NT, £10 Mondays at the RC and £20 Monday at the Donmar it is getting on for £200. And that's before you start buying tickets for others.

So this is a plea to the National, Royal Court and Donmar: Talk, plan and stagger, just a little bit. Please. Some of us want to be able to afford to eat this month.

Empty pocket pic: Dan Moyle on Flickr

Help save the Southwark Playhouse

Am quite fond of the Southwark Playhouse which is nestle underneath the railway arches at London Bridge Station. The rumbling trains overhead, the exposed brickwork, the higgledy-piggledy homey feel of the bar area and of course its myriad of great productions. Admittedly not everything I've seen there has been absolutely wonderful but then neither has everything I've seen at the National Theatre just down the river.

The great thing about Southwark Playhouse is that it is cheap - the airline style ticket seating is a great idea - and when you are as addicted to the theatre as I am, with finite resources, it's one of the few places I can get my fix without having to rob a small child of their dinner money.

But all that is in jeapardy. London Bridge Station is being redeveloped and the plans for the station don't include a home for the Southwark Playhouse. Imagine being asked to leave the room while it's spruced up for the party and then not invited back.

The station redevelopment won't be complete until 2018 and the theatre can find temporary space but really wants a permanant home back at the station. The Southwark Playhouse team is asking people to email the planners requesting that space be made for the theatre in the redevelopment.

I'll let them explain in their own words but if you've ever enjoyed a play at the Southwark Playhouse and feel it should be given a nice shiny new home then do send an email. The deadline is this Saturday (Aug 6) and all the details of how to do it plus a link to the planning application are below:

The Richard III trailer, no not the one at the Old Vic, the other one

Off to see Richard III at Hampstead Theatre tonight. It's the last of the Shakespeare plays I studied while at School/Uni that I've yet to see performed so I'm particularly excited.

I'm also curious to see how Ed Hall's all male cast works - although Richard III isn't renowned for its female characters. I've only seen a cross-dressing Shakespeare production once before - more than 20 years ago - when a man played Gertrude in Hamlet and it is a performance that lives indelibly on my memory for very good reasons rather than bad. So I know it can work incredibly well.

Despite having studied the play I'll still be doing a bit of swotting up as it's been a long time. And this trailer is a delicious teaser full of tension and drama and without plot spoilers, unlike the Arcola's Seagull trailer I wrote about last week.

And just in case you are wondering, yes I am seeing the Kevin Spacey Richard III at the Old Vic but not until August. I know some people are seeing both productions back to back which has its merits but I'm glad of the time lapse to give both a chance.

 

 

Fab War Horse puppet vid and that ridiculous Oscar talk

  

Watching this just wants to make me want to go and see War Horse for a third time - how truly amazing are the puppeteers?

It reminds me of some of the silly stories that were circulating after the play did so well at the Tony's earlier this month about the film, which comes out in December, being an early contender to win an Oscar.

What are they judging the play on and what are they judging the film on? Yes it is a wonderful, moving and heart-warming story but it is the puppetry that really brings the magic and awe to the stage production - something they don't have in the film.

I'm not saying the film won't be good, brilliant in fact, after all it does have an amazing cast and is directed by Steven Spielberg but it does seem slightly ridiculous to compare the two mediums of story-telling.

I'll probably be eating my words come February next year when the film has cleaned up with gongs.

Olivier Awards: Great night for After The Dance, bad night for the BBC

After the Dance has, deservedly, stormed it at the Olivier Awards scooping best supporting actor for Adrian Scarborough, best revival and best actress for Nancy Carroll.

I'm particularly pleased Carroll won best actress. Her character gets kills off two thirds of the way through but her performance had already made such a huge impression.

It was also a good night for theatre in that the BBC decided to cover the awards, albeit via the red button. Shame they fudged the opportunity so fundamentally that they earned the wrath of many a theatre tweeter, myself included.

The terrible choice of Jodie Prenger to do red carpet interviews had me switching over for a time. She seemed more concerned with kissing everyone she knew and demonstrated such a gulf in her knowledge of theatre I'm surprised the arriving celebs didn't fall into it.

Then onto the awards themselves. The problem is that the BBC was doing a dual Radio 2 and television broadcast with DJ Paul Gambaccini doubling up as voice over during the ceremony and winners interviewer for Radio and TV. The result was a lot of bad editing decisions cutting to interviews rather than the awards. For example Nancy Carroll's acceptance speech was cut in favour of an interview with Gok Wan.

Only a select few awards were actually shown mainly acting and musicals - none of the technical achievements.

Not so much going solo but going Twolo to the theatre

This post on the Guardian Theatre blog last week seemed to irk rather a lot of people who go to theatre alone. The piece questioned why there is a stigma attached to going solo to see a play or indeed a film.

Stigma? Pretty much all the thirty or so comments were from people, like myself, who go to theatre on their own regularly and don't feel in the least bit awkward or embarrassed by it and why should we, we aren't living in Victorian England anymore?

What would have been more interesting is if Emma Love, the blogger, had instead looked into the increasing use of social media by theatre-goers and producers.

Take last night, for example, I went to see Vernon God Little @youngvic and mentioned it in a tweet as I was leaving home. By the time I'd arrived at the theatre there was a reply from@pcchan1981 saying 'I'm here too let's meet up in the interval'.

And that is happening more and more. Most of my theatre trips used to be solo but now more often than not I either bump into fellow theatre twitterers or end up arranging to go with like minded people who share my passion for the theatre and whom I've got to know first through social media.

The numbers of theatre fans on twitter is growing, as are the number of those involved in producing it. It's becoming a great source of information about forthcoming productions, ticket offers and of course some good old gossip.

Perhaps for Emma Love's next post on the Guardian Theatre Blog she should get involved with the chat about theatre on Twitter and write about where that takes her rather than worrying whether the person sat next to her thinks she's some kind friendless weirdo.