I Still Get Excited When I See a Ladybird

I’m chairing a post-show discussion of Katie McCullough’s first full-length stage play, I Still Get Excited When I See a Ladybird. I’ll be interviewing Katie and the show’s director-dramaturg, Melissa Dunne. I first met Katie when I ran a workshop at the Soho Theatre and we’ve kept in touch, sort of, ever since. I think she’s a writer with talent and a great attitude. The show’s at Theatre503. Everyone go see; I’m sure it will be smashing.

First Episode published

My edition of First Episode by Terence Rattigan and Philip Heimann is now out, published by Nick Hern Books. This is Rattigan’s first professionally-produced play, which opened at the Q Theatre in Richmond and transferred to the Comedy Theatre London in January 1934. It was not a spectacular success, though it got some excellent reviews and caused a minor scandal at the time for its vivid portrait of louche undergraduate morals. Rattigan never published it and at one point claimed to have burned his only copy.

In fact there is a copy in the Rattigan archive. Actually, there are six versions of the play in existence. They’re all slightly different. Most of them have their own annotations and additions, making something like 10 implied versions of the play. In preparing this edition, it was necessary to establish a reliable text; this was partly about trying to reconcile typescripts but also making artistic judgments about the best possible version of the text. I’m pleased with the result.

Meanwhile, the introduction tells the full story of the play’s writing, its sources, background and production. I try to show that the play’s development revealed Rattigan’s sure dramatic instincts and reveals it as a surprisingly complex piece of work. It would now be interesting to see the play performed.

Divadlo a globalizácia

Well this is fun. Theatre & Globalization has been translated into Slovak by the Theatre Institute of Bratislava. They’ve also done Theatre & Education in the same series by my colleague Helen Nicholson.

From this book I have discovered two things. First, that in Slovak they translate names, presumably because nouns have different case-endings and names are part of the same system. Hence, Helen, on the cover of her book, becomes , Helen Nicholsonová. My name is untampered-with, curiously. The second thing I have discovered is that the title of John Galsworthy’s The Skin Game in Slovak is Podfuk.

Rattiganiana

I’ve been doing various Rattigan things in this centenary year. I wrote a programme note for the production of In Praise of Love at the Royal and Derngate, Northampton. On Monday, I gave a talk about Flare Path at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. I’m working on three new editions of the plays, which has included tracking down the six existing copies of his unpublished First Episode to produce a definitive edition. I’m also giving talks at the CMP Festival in Brighton, Chichester Festival Theatre and Harrow School over the next few months. Last week I was onBBC Radio 4's Front Row, talking about Terry (and sounding rather alarmingly like David Hare, I thought).

Cherry Orchard Programme

In the programme for the current National Theatre production of The Cherry Orchard, I’ve got an interview I conducted with the play’s director, Howard Davies, and its designer, Bunnie Christie. Both very interesting about the play and the process they go through in their collaboration. Having seen their work together on Philistines and The White Guard, and Davies’s production of Flight still being one of my most cherished theatregoing memories, it was a pleasure to talk to them both and I think the interview has come out pretty well.

Head of Department

Feels a bit odd announcing this on the blog, but hey it’s news. I was interviewed this morning and it’s been officially confirmed that I’m going to be the next Head of the Department of Drama and Theatre at Royal Holloway, University of London. The job starts in January.

It’s really not a job I ever thought I’d want to do but having really thought it through over the last couple of months, I think I could do some good, steering the Department through the choppy waters of a forthcoming Research Excellence Framework in 2013 and the advent of £9k fees.

Review

Rather to my surprise, I’ve just had perhaps the best review of my life from the Times. You can read it here without needing to vault the paywall. Hah, in your FACE, Murdoch.

​You can feast your eyes on it here. Oh and we're pick of the week too.

London Road platform

This evening at 6.00 in the Cottesloe, I’m chairing a Platform conversation at the National Theatre about London Road. On the panel will be the writer Alecky Blythe, composer Adam Cork, and director Rupert Goold. It’s a terrific show but it’s generated some controversy as well, so it should be an interesting discussion.

Philip Ridley

​Ben Whishaw in Mercury Fur

I blogged about Philip Ridley. He’s got a new show opening and I’ve written about how The Pitchfork Disney blew me away in 1991. I really do think there’s an untold story about British playwriting in the early 90s; apart from Phil who’s survived rather fabulously, it’s a really lost generation: James Stock, Paul Godfrey, some of Robert Holman’s work, Victoria Hardie, Kevin Hood, Julian Garner, Nick Ward, Trish Cooke, even some like Winsome Pinnock who had interesting work at that time appear not to have had the theatre careers they might have had. Of course the stories are diverse and complicated; Kevin Hood writes a lot for TV, Trish Cooke writes for children a lot now, but I still think there are riches in the repertoire from that period that will one day be revived.

Anyway, here’s what I wrote.

Chekhoviana

I wrote a short thing for whatsonstage.com about the idea of bringing Chekhov back to the present and the link is here. I cram in a reference to Doctor Who so all is good.

Terry & I

Nick Hern Books asked me to write a piece for their website about how I fell in love with Rattigan’s plays. And it’s been published today. Read it here.

Cuts

I’ve blogged for the Guardian about the arts cuts. Actually it’s less about the arts cuts as the vehemence of those who seem to be celebrating job losses and showing sheer contempt for the arts. Well, here it is. Quentin Letts replies in the comments and I reply to him. Even Christopher Hart joins in the fun.

Letter

I got a letter in the Evening Standard yesterday. It’s above. It makes a good punchy case.

It’s heavily cut down of course. Well fair enough. This is the longer version:

We can all quibble about the specific decisions – I’m saddened by the axing of Third Angel’s funding, for example – but on the whole I think the Arts Council has acted honourably and carefully. Rather than indiscriminately cut across the board, they have cut 206 organisations all together, increased some grants, reduced others, and brought 110 new organisations into long-term funding. Given the task in front of them, I think they’ve done as well as can be expected. It’s not just crisis management; it’s a forward-looking funding round.
​
​It’s not a task they should have had to undertake. The Coalition claims that ‘we’re all in this together’. This makes no sense at all. Is the aim to get the deficit down? Then let the arts do their bit and increase arts subsidy – the arts bring in much more to the Treasury than it pays out. The cynical comment-boxers who love to moan on about how contemporary art and theatre is obscure and unpopular – take note: the arts are very popular. Arts subsidy is a very successful investment. The arts employ hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps millions; we export much more art than we import; the arts generate knock-on economic benefits to the tourism, restaurant, travel industries; the arts are a hugely successful part of our economy and it makes no economic sense to cut them because they pay for themselves and more. It’s not a choice, as some would have it, between hospital beds and theatre shows; the theatre shows help to pay for the hospital beds. 
​
​But the economic value of the arts isn’t the whole story. It’s not even the main story. What’s King Lear worth? How much should Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring cost? The fact the value of art translates extremely badly into economic terms. This is why the arts, though profitable, don’t fare as well with private sponsorship. Art sometimes takes a long time to make money (many treasured works of culture were rejected by critics and public when they first appeared); it can be economically very risky (if you were looking to make money, would you, in 1952, have sunk your inheritance in Waiting for Godot?). The great thing about subsidy is that it frees artists to make the most artistically interesting work they can. Everyone wants to find an audience, to engage a public, but if making money is your overriding imperative, it leads to conservatism and repetition. If the whole sector is trying to make the most interesting work they can, the evidence is that much of it does find an audience and the sector as a whole pays for itself. 
​
​​But we’re all in this together, apparently. Last month, David Cameron threw up his hands and said he could do nothing about RBS’s proposed £950m of bonuses. This is a company bailed out and 84% owned by the taxpayer. This is also a company that lost £1.1bn last year. A little over 10% of those bonuses would have wiped out today’s arts cuts. Yes, we’re all in this together, but I guess some of us are more in this than others.
​
​​​Dan Rebellato
​​​Professor of Contemporary Theatre    
​​​​Royal Holloway, University of London

Julius Scissor

Yesterday almost half a million people protested in London against the cuts being perpetrated by this Coalition government. I was very pleased to be asked to write something quick for one of the fringe demonstrations which planned to turn Oxford Street into an art and performance site. The thing I wrote was performed by Dan Ford (he of Beachy Head), who apparently went on straight after Sam and Timothy West. It’s called ‘Julius Scissor’. The fun was trying to fit global corporation names into Mark Antony’s famous speech from Julius Caesar, preserving the iambic pentameter. I also liked the pattern towards the end where the sense gets completely overwhelmed by the intrusions. I didn’t see it performed and I suspect something punchier and funnier would have gone down better but it is what it is. And this is what it is:

In line with the government’s strategy for the Arts, 20% of this monologue has been cut and replaced with contributions from the private sector.

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me De BeersTM
​I come to BurberryTM Caesar, not to PowergenTM
​The EnronTM that men do lives after them
​The good is oft IntelTM with their bones;
​So let it be with Caesar. The noble BarclaysTM
​Hath told you Caesar was HitachiTM:
​If it were so, it was a SiemensTM fault,
​And SiemenslyTM hath Caesar answer'd it.
​Here, under leave of BarclaysTM and the rest--
​For BarclaysTM is an honourable man;
​So are they all, all honourable men--
​Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral.
​He was my friend, faithful and VodafoneTM:
​But BarclaysTM says he was HitachiTM;
​And BarclaysTM is an honourable man.
​He hath brought many CadburysTM home to Rome
​Whose GazcomsTM did the general CompaqsTM fill:
​Did this in Caesar seem HitachiTM?
​When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
​HitachiTM should be made of sterner stuff:
​Yet BarclaysTM says he was ambitious;
​And BarclaysTM is an honourable man.
​You all did see that ChevronTM the Lakshmi MittalTM
​I thrice PrudentialTM him a Kimberley-ClarkTM,
​Which he did thrice BPTM: was this HitachiTM?
​Yet BarclaysTM says he was HitachiTM;
​And, sure, he is an honourable man.
​I speak not to ChevronTM what BarclaysTM spoke,
​BNP ParibasTM VolkswagenTM know.
​ToyotaTM love him once, Royal Dutch ShellTM:
​AT&TTM you then, to FordTM for him?
​O Exxon! MobilTM Hewlett-PackardTM beasts,
​And men have lost their reason. CitigroupTM;
​​My J P Morgan Chase & CoTM with Caesar,
​Sir Philip GreenTM till Wal-MartTM to BootsTM.

New Rattigan editions

As part of the centenary celebrations for Terence Rattigan, Nick Hern is publishing several more single editions of his plays with, as usual, introductions by me. The first two out are Flare Path and Cause Célèbre, the former in a tie-in edition with the production currently running at the Haymarket. They’re lovely looking editions, I think, and as for the introductions, well! Such pleasures as have rarely been conceived in the world shall you find in these pages.

Chekhov Recasting

Simon Gregor, our wonderful first Chekhov in Plymouth, is unable to play the part in London because he’s, rather ironically, in a Chekhov play at the Arcola. So we’ve been seeing actors this week and last. A great shortlist - everyone I saw we could have happily cast - but we’ve gone for Simon Scardifield (above). He’s an actor and translator, fiercely clever, very funny, and I think he’s going to be great.

McTheatre

I’ve written a short think-piece for the Guardian about the megamusical (in part drawing on the material in my book, Theatre & Globalization).

You can read it here

Chekhov in Soho

Confirmed today: Chekhov in Hell is transferring to the Soho Theatre, London, in April next year. It should open on 21 April and close on 14 May. This is excellent news.

The only sadness is that Simon Gregor won’t be able to move with the production. He’s already committed to playing Astrov in, ironically, Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya at the Arcola. But, touch wood, we’ll have all the rest of the cast.

New Commission

I’ve been commissioned by the Drum in Plymouth to write another play. I have a good idea of where this play may go but it’s going to need some development time and research too. The beginning of a play, always daunting and yet full of possibility.

The Unread Bestseller

As an trailer to the documentary on John Wyndham that I’ve made and is on today, I’ve written a blog on Wyndham for the Guardian blog, the books page, not the theatre page this time. It suggests that the price Wyndham has paid for his great fame and sales is that his books haven’t been read closely enough to see their subtlety and indeed subversiveness.

You can read it here.