Who still bothers to go to the theatre when there are so many rival attractions competing for one’s leisure time, from watching TV or going to the cinema to just gawping at the glamorous lifestyle of Goga Ashkenazi? Well, about 14 million at the last count. Box-office receipts for London theatres grew in 2010 for the seventh year running. And quantity is trumped only by quality, as the shortlist for tomorrow night’s Olivier Awards, celebrated in today’s Times Magazine, underlines.
Yes, there will always be evenings after which playgoers, when asked what the show they saw the previous night was about, are tempted to reply: “About two and a half hours too long.”
But such nights are eclipsed by those in which audiences have sat bewitched by Sir Derek Jacobi’s King Lear at Michael Grandage’s Donmar Warehouse, or by Rory Kinnear’s Hamlet at the National, two performances that plant both actors firmly among the very finest of their generations — and two portrayals so dazzling that even Roger Allam’s Falstaff, or Mark Rylance in La Bête, or David Suchet’s mesmerising performance as Joe Keller in Arthur Miller’s All My Sons are likely to be overlooked when the prizes are handed out.
Danny Boyle’s version of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein — which pivots on the daring conceit of getting the two leads, Benedict Cumberbatch and Johnny Lee Miller, to alternate the roles of Victor Frankenstein and the Creature — has reminded London audiences that while Boyle may have found glory in Hollywood with Slumdog Millionaire and 127 Hours, he began life in the theatre and he retains the talent to make magic on stage.
Little surprise, too, that Frankenstein is staged at the National, which has attracted 17 Olivier nominations. The National’s repertoire reflects the enthusiasm, inventiveness and mischief of its director, Sir Nicholas Hytner. In return, the theatre has been rewarded with swelling attendances under his reign, for everything from Carousel and a fistful of Alan Bennett gems to Kinnear’s Hamlet, so deftly staged that even familiar lines hit the ear as if for the first time. It is to the National, too, that Sir Peter Hall, an earlier steward of the theatre, returned to stage his Twelfth Night.
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But England’s grandest playhouses have not monopolised the glory. The Tricycle Theatre’s staging of The Great Game, 12 playlets that explore Afghanistan’s history over the past 170 years, proved so historically illuminating that the Pentagon commissioned two command performances last month. It is one of the many London shows that regularly cross the Atlantic, though more usually to Broadway than to the Beltway. And win prizes when they get there. Among the shows that won Tony awards last summer, A Little Night Music and La Cage aux Folles began life at the Menier Chocolate Factory in Southwark, and Michael Grandage’s Red started at the Donmar. War Horse is en route to New York and Hollywood.
The traffic is just as busy in the opposite direction. The London stage lures everyone from Kevin Spacey to Elisabeth Moss. And there is no shortage of audiences queueing to welcome them. The hurdles put in the path of London playgoers can be daunting, from transport disruption, ash clouds and deep snow to booking fees and interval glasses of merlot that are priced at the cost of a bangle in Bulgari. And still the audiences come so that they might, for one more heavenly evening, sit in the gods and look down at the stars.