A big-ticket item, as listeners to the Today programme’s business news will know, is something with a high selling price and a high profit: a flat-screen TV, a fridge. High street shops are struggling to shift them.
Big-ticket theatre is a different story: as Kevin Spacey channelled the unctuous evil of Keyser Söze as Richard III in the triumphant opening night of Sam Mendes’s sold-out Old Vic production this week, it was clear that, though we might balk at buying our child a £200 Doctor Who Ride-in Dalek, our love affair with the high-profile, high-value performance is far from over.
This year we’ve had Kristin Scott Thomas; Elisabeth Moss and Keira Knightley; Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller; David Tennant and Catherine Tate — and still to come are Jude Law in Anna Christie, Ralph Fiennes in The Tempest, Michael Sheen in Hamlet, Dominic West and Clarke Peters (of The Wire) in Othello and Ian McKellen in The Syndicate.
West End revenues rose last year in spite of the recession and, despite a slow start, 2011 is looking similarly healthy. But are big names maintaining thespian standards as well as allowing theatres to turn £60 tickets into proverbial hot cakes? It’s hard to separate the thrill of being within spitting distance of a living chunk of Hollywood (and in Richard III Haydn Gwynne takes advantage of this by gobbing in Spacey’s face — satisfying for those of us who have sat through K-Pax) with an objective weighing up of their acting powers. But most of them have stage pedigree, and they are not doing it for money, but love — though whether that’s love of theatre, of Shakespeare or of themselves we never can tell.
The really short version An honest tale speeds best, being plainly told — preferably by an Academy award-winning multimillionaire.
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Richard III, Old Vic, London SE1, to Sept 11