Fighting for the future of live theatre

In this age where exaggeration and melodrama have been overtaken by events, theatre’s plight can hardly be overstated. It is now so bad that Friedman, who has shut down “17 or 18 productions” because of the pandemic, among them Tom Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt, recently sounded the alarm. And not just for the West End, but for theatre all over the country.

“British theatre is on the brink of total collapse,” declared the opening sentence of Friedman’s article in The Daily Telegraph. “Without an urgent government rescue package, 70 per cent of our performing arts companies will be out of business,” she continued.

“The timing of the piece wasn’t a coincidence,” says Friedman. “It became quite clear that the Government hadn’t noticed the extent of our problem and that we can’t come back from social distancing.”

The shut-down of Leopoldstadt, Stoppard’s most recent play, set in pre- and post-Holocaust Vienna “was brutal and deeply distressing,” says Friedman.

“With that particular work, we had a monumental hit. Rarely in my career have I produced something that had such enormous appeal. And even on the days before, when there was a lot of grumbling about staying away from theatres we were completely packed.”

The play will be back, she assures, but its “audience demographic is somewhat older. So I have to be absolutely sure that confidence has been rebuilt. Confidence is only going to come from shouting from the rooftops that theatre is safe.”

Meanwhile, theatres as grand as the National Theatre and as compact as the Menier Chocolate Factory are facing closure — by November, in the case of the National.

“We might be able to hang on until December or January,” says the Chocolate Factory’s David Babani. “But at that point so much damage has been done that we will need some form of rescue package to get ourselves out of it.”

The venue’s much anticipated production of Paula Vogel’s Indecent, which recounts the controversy surrounding Sholem Asch’s work, God of Vengeance, was in preview before shut-down.

For the Chocolate Factory, much depends not only on the kindness of strangers, who, as is the case with other theatres, can help by clicking the donate and membership buttons on the venues’ websites, but on others being reasonable.

Around 45 per cent of customers who bought tickets in advance for Indecent donated the cost to the theatre in its hour of need instead of asking for a refund. But there are those who are being less than sympathetic, says Babani, who has had “many sleepless nights” wondering how to navigate the theatre he co-founded nearly 20 years ago through the crisis.

“There have been certain people we’ve been dealing with who have been pretty nasty and horrible with their threats towards the Chocolate Factory,” he says. “Then there are other people who have been eye-wateringly kind.”

As for the future, “social distancing is a complete non-starter in theatre as a whole,” says the impresario. “If we were to adhere to the two-metre social distancing rules we would [only] be able to sell nine to ten per cent of our seats.”

Yet there is a determination to find a way. Nica Burns, whose company Nimax owns or runs six West End theatres, is on the case.

“I started very quickly doing research on how we could reopen theatres living with Covid 19,” says Burns, who is on the Society of London Theatre reopening committee, one of four working groups now collaborating with the Department for Culture, Media & Sport.

“For a cinema, all you need to break even is around 19 per cent occupancy,” says Burns. “For theatres it’s around 50 to 60 per cent.”

“We need the audiences to feel comfortable about sitting next to a stranger in the dark.

We’re looking at face coverings, people covering their skin so that if you’re sitting in a seat and you bump into someone else it’s material that is bumping.”

‘‘Temperature testing in the queue is also being considered.’’ Which is, “not as scary as it sounds,” assures Burns.

“It can all be done contactless. If you have a temperature above the Covid safe level you’ll get a card that says ‘Sorry you can’t come in today. Here is how you either exchange your tickets or get a full refund.’ Audiences need to know in advance how they are going to get their money back if they are not well on the day.”

Burns is determined to give the Government and the public the confidence that it is safe to return to theatres, which were among the first public buildings to close and will be among the last to reopen. The work is being done at breakneck speed and will be finished for the government’s consideration in about a week.

“This is good,” says Burns with evangelical belief. “The public need to understand that this is being thoroughly and properly done.”

But to reopen, theatres will have to exist. The recent closure of Southampton’s Nuffield Theatres is a terrifying omen of what is in store for theatres across the country.

“London without the West End, city centres without their music venues, theatres, galleries and museums, villages without their community art centres — they will have lost their soul,” warns Nicholas Hytner, the always measured, never hyperbolic former artistic director of the NT.

While the pandemic keeps his Bridge Theatre closed he’s been working on the starry BBC revival of Alan Bennett’s modern classic Talking Heads for which Hytner is both lead director and producer.

“There is very effective under-the -radar advocacy going on,” he says reassuringly.

That’s how he prefers to operate now , though “I’ll use Talking Heads when it’s broadcasting in June to say stuff publicly.”

But he is clear that what is needed for the arts is a level of support “that has never before been part of the public discourse. Something that is called a loan, or an investment fund and is based on immediate large-scale investment.

In return [there would be] obligations which we accept as a sector over the coming years. No one is asking for a no-strings hand-out.”

“There is widespread recognition of the role the arts can play in the process of healing and national renewal,” says Hytner. “And not just by explaining to each other in creative and beautiful ways what we’ve been through; not just expressing grief and anger, but by providing an escape that will allow individual and communal imaginative freedom again. It is the arts; it is the British cultural sector, that is going to do that.”

Friedman worries that habits might have changed over the lockdown period. “We have to constantly be reminding our audience about what they loved about live theatre. So that when we do come back we don’t have this other massive hurdle, which is that people have decided they prefer watching their theatre at home on a stream.”

Theatre “is something people love” assures Hytner. “For a lot of people – for a lot of readers of the Jewish Chronicle — it will be the absolute top thing they can’t wait to get back to.”

“What I look forward to at some point in the future, please God, is reading the review of Indecent in the JC,” says Babani. "Sooner rather than later.”

“I’m spending the dark hours on my future,” says Friedman.

“I’m developing big shows, musicals, because I do believe we will get though this. I just don’t know when.”