Chatting about theatre is just the best, right, guys? Guys?
On the joys of discussing shows, the moments that live in my head rent-free, and a new way of sharing all that in this newsletter. Plus: three shows to see next week.
Hello, and welcome to The Crush Bar, a newsletter about theatre written by Fergus Morgan.
This is the free Friday issue, which usually contains an interview with an exciting theatremaker or an essay on a theatre-related topic. This week, it is a bit from about the moments from shows that live in my head rent-free, the joys of discussing theatre, and a new feature I am trialling in The Crush Bar that will let us all do exactly that. After that, there are your usual three show recommendations: two in London and one in Edinburgh.
In case you missed it, here is this week’s issue of Shouts And Murmurs, which is a weekly round-up of the most interesting reviews, interviews and articles on theatre elsewhere…
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One of the great joys of interviewing theatremakers – one of the great joys of chatting to anyone about theatre – is when you discover that you both saw and loved a particular show.
There are no other conversations like it. Chatting about books or films or television series just isn’t the same. Maybe you have that book or saw that film or watched that series, maybe you haven’t yet, maybe you still might. Whatever. Theatre, though, is ephemeral. Unless it is a juggernaut musical, which I would struggle to have an enthusiastic chat about anyway, a show runs for a bit, then it is gone forever. Either you saw it, or you didn’t. So, when you find out that someone else has seen and loved a show that you saw and loved, it evokes an extraordinary sense of shared wonder. It is like you both know the same secret. It is like you have both witnessed a miracle being performed. And you can then bask in the smugness that confers upon you together.
This happened the other day when I was interviewing the actor Luke Thallon, who is currently playing Hamlet in Rupert Goold’s nautically-themed staging for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Thallon is a bit younger than me – a depressing realisation that makes me feel like Richard E Grant in Withnail & I – but we were both in our early twenties in London in the mid-2010s, seeing and loving a lot of the same shows.
For a few minutes, when I should have been asking Thallon about other things, we instead chatted enthusiastically about Carrie Cracknell’s National Theatre production of Terence Rattigan’s The Deep Blue Sea starring the late, great Helen McCrory, and about Rob Icke’s Almeida Theatre version of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya starring Paul Rhys, Tobias Menzies and Vanessa Kirby, both of which premiered in 2016.
We both vividly remembered the exquisite melancholy of The Deep Blue Sea and the desperate yearning of Uncle Vanya. I told Thallon how the moment in Uncle Vanya when Menzies’s Astrov and Kirby’s Elena came within inches of kissing was one of the most powerful things I have seen on stage. Written down here, that sounds like an embarrassing thing to say to someone out loud, but I’m pretty sure Thallon got me.
“Isn’t it amazing that shows like that can happen,” he said to me. “Shows that come along and bite chunks out of all of us and then disappear, but we are still talking about them today. I love this about theatre. It infuriates and confuses me, but I love it.”
Regular readers of this newsletter will know that I am sometimes fond of basic maths. Here comes some. Take Uncle Vanya. That ran at the Almeida Theatre from February 5 until March 26 2016. That is seven-and-a-bit weeks, or fifty-nine performances. The Almeida Theatre seats 350. That means only 20,000 people ever saw Rob Icke’s Uncle Vanya, less than 0.03 per-cent of the population. Finding someone else that saw and loved it is like finding a needle in a haystack. No wonder the smug chat factor is high.
Why am I telling you this? Well, partly because it feels like a nice way of pointing you towards that chat with Luke Thallon, which I am quite proud of. Partly because it has been a bleak, bleak February and I wanted to write something relatively cheery. And partly – sorry! – to point you towards a new feature I am trialling in The Crush Bar.
I am aware I have somewhat buried the lede here by waiting until the ninth paragraph to mention it, but if you have read this far, you are probably fairly invested in this newsletter anyway – thanks! – so it won’t matter. And, anyway, this is something of a soft launch, while I figure out exactly if and how this thrilling new feature might work.
But what is this thrilling new feature? Well, it is… a chat! Yes, that’s right, a chat!
You might have got a notification about this earlier this week that Substack decided to send you even though I didn’t want or ask it to – sorry about that! – but that above link will take you to a little online hangout that I am planning to use somehow. You can access it on a browser or via the Substack app, I think. For now, all subscribers can access it: paid supporters, free subscribers, everyone! The only rule is that you have to be a real legend, which, as a subscriber to this newsletter, you certifiably are.
Who knows how it will work out? Will it become flooded with bots? Will it become a thriving conversation between passionate performing arts people? Will it descend into tribal warfare between fans of Ivo Van Hove and Thomas Ostermeier? Will it be an awkward few weeks of me shouting into an online void that eventually fizzles out? Will it become an incredibly influential social network that eventually leads to me becoming artistic director of the National Theatre, where I will send shockwaves through the industry with my wacky ideas? Who knows? Let’s find out, though.
What it really needs to start, I think, is that spark of shared wonder I was rambling on about above: that thrill evoked by people realising they have both seen and loved the same show. So, as a conversation starter, below are five more theatrical moments that live in my head rent-free, and that I often bring up to interviewees when I should be asking them questions. Do you remember any of them? Do you have any of your own?
Why not jump into the chat and let me know! Why not? Why would you not do that?
Five moments from shows that live in my head rent-free
The last line of All We Ever Wanted Was Everything
Middle Child Theatre’s gig-theatre show about unfulfilled potential and the end of the world was all I talked about in 2017. At the end, an asteroid smashes into the planet, leaving the stage in darkness. The last line of the show, screamed at the audience by the magnificent Marc Graham, was: “Live your life! I fucking dare you!”
The costume change history sequence in Black Watch
I never actually saw the National Theatre of Scotland’s globetrotting early hit live, but I have seen a recording of it and was still blew me away, so I am including it. I could pick about fifty different moments, but I will go with the extraordinary sequence where Brian Ferguson relates the illustrious history of the regiment while being ferried up and down the transverse stage by the rest of the cast, his costume evolving through the various iterations of Black Watch uniform along the way. John Tiffany, eh?
That chorus at the end of the first half of Girl From The North Country
I saw Girl From The North Country on tour a few years ago and loved it. At the end of the first half, after a slow reprise of that extraordinary version of Like A Rolling Stone, the entire cast line up at the front of the stage and deliver this incredible chord, a three-second note that somehow captures all the desperation, longing, hope, joy and sadness of the story. It has been on my Spotify ‘On Repeat’ playlist for about five years.
Agamemnon mulling the sacrifice of Iphigenia in Rob Icke’s Oresteia
This was the show that introduced me to Icke and his remarkable ability to update classic texts. I saw it at Trafalgar Studios in 2016. I remember the first section best and particularly the unbearable, agonising dread when Angus Wright’s Agamemnon loomed over his young daughter, contemplating her sacrifice in order to send his ships safely on their way to Troy. It was so tense that I hardly dared move. Tim Bano wrote about this recently in Exeunt, so I know at least one person felt the same.
Gina McKee handing over to Deborah Findlay in The Years
I wanted to include a recent one. I could have gone with Maimuna Memon singing Sonya Alone in Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, or with the exquisite movement sequence set to Michael Kiwanuka’s Cold Little Heart in The Lonely Londoners, but instead, I will pick a moment from – yes, that show again! – The Years. Did you spot the brief, wordless moment when Gina McKee passed the storytelling baton onto Deborah Findlay for the final section? I don’t think I could put the weight and grace and solidarity of that gesture into words. Please, please go and see it.
Three shows to see next week
A View From the Bridge - Tron Theatre, until March 15
New Tron Theatre artistic director Jemima Levick’s first season kicks off with a revival of Arthur Miller’s classic play about Eddie Carbone, a Brooklyn longshoreman, whose life starts crumbling around him when two Italian immigrants move in to his family home. Levick directs, Alex Lowde designs, and Mark Holgate and Nicole Cooper star as Eddie and his wife Beatrice. You can get tickets via the button below.
A Knock On The Roof - Royal Court Theatre, until March 8
Khawla Ibraheem’s remarkable, grimly topical one-woman play about a mother living under Israeli bombardment in Gaza was one of the hottest tickets of last year’s Edinburgh Fringe. It was similarly acclaimed during a recent run in New York City, and now arrives at the Royal Court. You can get tickets via the button below.
Main Character Energy - Soho Theatre, until March 15
Actor, writer and comedian Temi Wilkey featured in The Crush Bar a few weeks ago, discussing her solo show Main Character Energy, a tongue-in-cheek exploration of her insatiable desire to be in the spotlight. Another hit at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe, it now runs at Soho Theatre for three weeks. You can get tickets via the button below.
That’s all for this issue
That is it for this week. If you want to get in touch about anything raised in this issue - or anything at all, really - just reply to this newsletter or email me at fergusmorgan@hotmail.co.uk. Or you can find me on Bluesky, where I am @FergusMorgan.
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Fergus