Lyn Gardner
Last month a little-known theatre group called Frantic Assembly played Singapore’s Zouk Club, described by dance guru Judge Jules as “the best club on the planet”. When they last played London, in the informal surroundings of the BAC theatre, the crowd looked like the overspill from one of the capital’s trendier nightclubs. That was for Sell Out, a brilliant, bruising physical performance set in a toilet.
This year Sell Out will be eligible for an Olivier, the peak of achievement in the old theatrical establishment. The hour-long show is about to take up residency in the heart of London’s West End at the Ambassadors, just opposite the famous Ivy restaurant and right next door to The Mousetrap.
You could take this as proof of Frantic Assembly’s meteoric rise, or a sign that it is finally selling out after five years of fringe triumphs. Then again, you could take it as one more piece of evidence of how much the West End is changing.
Yes, the blockbuster musicals still hold sway, and there’s plenty of stuff you wouldn’t be seen dead at without your granny as an alibi, but something is stirring in central London.
“The West End is pulling in a lot of energy and innovation,” says Dominic Dromgoole of the Oxford Stage Company. “What was once considered the fringe or the edge is fast becoming the centre.”
Frantic Assembly, regularly described as not just the edge but the bleeding, cutting edge, is by no means alone. The presence of plays such as Popcorn, Closer and Shopping and Fucking in the West End last year were what one industry insider calls “a massive statement” that an audience revolution was under way. More than 70% of the seats for those shows were sold to people under the age of 34.
The past few years have also proved that you can do sell-out seasons of new work in the West End without having a “phworr factor” lead like Rufus Sewell. Last December you could have seen Brecht in St Martin’s Lane, The Right Size winning an Olivier for Do You Come Here Often? at the Vaudeville and Theatre de Complicite’s Street Of Crocodiles at the Queen’s.
But the “fringe” triumphs did not end there. The Tricycle theatre’s recreation of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry, The Colour Of Justice, had a short outing at the Victoria Palace, more generally home to musicals; and who would have thought that Copenhagen, Michael Frayn’s demanding drama about nuclear physics, currently at the Duchess, would recoup its costs in just five weeks? And, of course, the Almeida has sustained a major presence, helped by what often seems like half of Hollywood.
And still they keep coming – Dromgoole has just been signed up to bring five productions to the Whitehall. Where will he find the works? More than likely at places like the tiny Bush theatre in west London, where he was once artistic director.
That major managements are prepared to countenance such experiments is down to four factors: a long-overdue recognition that the West End must adapt or die; the appointment of producers from the subsidised sector, such as Sonia Friedman and Nica Burns; the huge boom in new writing; and last, but not least, the success that the Royal Court, formerly in Chelsea, has made of its residency at the Ambassadors and Duke of York’s while its Sloane Square home has been rebuilt. The phenomenal success of Conor McPherson’s The Weir has not only kept the Court financially buoyant, but taught commercial managements that quality writing without star names can pull in the punters too.
“The starting point of our experiment of getting in new plays for short seasons at the New Ambassadors is building on what the Royal Court has already achieved there,” says producer Sonia Friedman. “Stephen Daldry didn’t just move the Royal Court from Sloane Square to the West End; he has moved it into the mainstream. It has been getting a much wider audience and we can build on that.”
The more relaxed relationship between commercial and subsidised sectors is partly born out of a greater business sophistication on both sides. In the old days a hit was something that made money in the West End and a flop was something that didn’t. But now if the deal can be tied up in the right way, the money is in the auxiliary spin-offs such as regional tours, overseas rights and film, and even book deals.
Take the Ambassadors Group, which owns not only West End houses but also a number of regional theatres. Its experiment with the New Ambassadors not only allows it to develop partnerships with others, but also to do advantageous deals with itself.
But if the edge – whether it’s metropolitan new writing at the Royal Court or regional touring theatre like Shared Experience – is now coming into the centre, where does that leave the edge?
Although the Royal Court will be a major partner at the new Ambassadors, it will be ironic if it returns to its home base in Sloane Square just as the centre of energy in British theatre shifts to the West End. Why, after all, should the audience that the Court has pioneered trek to Chelsea when it can see something similar in London’s cultural centre?
Opinion is divided. Drumgoole believes the avant-garde is indeed bound for the West End and that the fringe is “going to be left a bit forlorn. We may have to wait five or 10 years for people with a new aesthetic to pop up.”
Others are more optimistic. Simon McBurney, Complicite’s artistic director, argues that the edge is constantly reinventing itself, while producer Guy Chapman argues that collaboration with the commercial theatre has made the fringe go soft.
“I think what is going on in the West End will provide the opportunity for theatres like the Bush and the Court to be more radical,” he says. “They can do different things. We’re not trying to steal from anyone; we just want to widen what is available for everyone.”