Enough about this f**king bear already
Sorry, can you explain to me again how they have made Paddington work on stage? Is David Harewood's third Othello any good? What's the best Shakespeare? All in this week's Shouts and Murmurs.
Hello, and welcome to Shouts and Murmurs, a weekly round-up of theatre news, reviews, interviews and more from The Crush Bar, written by Fergus Morgan.
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After a week off, I am bothering your inboxes once again with bi-weekly missives about theatre.
What did I get up to while I wasn’t slaving away here on Substack? Well, I slaved away for The Stage, writing a long-read about audio drama that will be out this Thursday, adroitly timed to coincide with the inaugural British Audio Awards, AKA The Speakies, later this month. More on that soon probably. I was asked to contribute some regular cultural picks to The Nerve, the new online thingy set up by a group of five former Guardian and Observer journalists, which is nice. I was also invited to a symposium – yes, a symposium – on criticism in Dublin this week. Maybe I will write something about that, too. Or maybe I have whined enough about my job recently.
Oh, I also went to London for a bit and saw some theatre: Meghan Tyler’s Crocodile Fever at the Arcola (surreally funny and violent; ends 22 November); Simon Stone’s The Lady From The Sea at the Bridge Theatre (decent, but not as gripping and elemental as his best stuff; now finished); Kip Williams’ The Maids at the Donmar Warehouse (cool but conceptually flawed; ends 29 November); Jack Holden’s adaptation of The Line Of Beauty at the Almeida (It’s A Sin crossed with Rivals; ends 29 November); and, of course, Garry Starr: Classic Penguins (still phenomenally funny; ends 14 December).
Anyway, what did we miss? Mostly an onslaught of gushing press about the musical adaptation of Paddington. Interviews with book-writer Jessica Swale. Interviews with composer Tom Fletcher. Interviews with book-writer Jessica Swale and composer Tom Fletcher. And about a million different pieces about how they have realised the bear on stage by combining the talents of performers Arti Shah and James Hameed. As WhatsOnStage’s Alex Wood has noted, all this was savvily choreographed to coincide with the production’s first preview, simultaneously stymying and capitalising on the accompanying wave of curtain call videos that flooded onto social media.
“In the end, Paddington’s reveal worked because it accepted how people actually experience theatre now: half in the auditorium, half online. The show didn’t fight that – it used it. And in doing so, it might just have set the new gold standard for how to surprise an audience in the age of social media.”
I agree that the reveal has been well executed and I do think the bear is impressive - even if its mouth doesn’t quite line-up with its voice, like an out-of-sync film - but I also find all this acutely depressing, symptomatic of a theatre industry cynically preoccupied with regurgitation, a moribund journalism in thrall to engagement, a culture driven by smartphones and social media towards circularity, and a society so directionless and leaderless that it attaches almost religious sanctity to a fictional bear. I would, though, wouldn’t I? We don’t need to go over all that again, do we?
Also, in the slow death of theatre by a thousand unimaginative adaptations of popular films, see: The Hunger Games: On Stage. I actually went to a preview of this in London as well, partly because I am a proud hypocrite, partly because I was curious after interviewing designer Miriam Buether for the programme, partly because my wife was a fan of the books as a kid, and partly because the stage version of Stranger Things was actually class. I should keep my opinions to myself as it hasn’t opened yet, but let’s just say that it is a bold choice to use a new multi-million-pound theatre for a two-and-a-half-hour PE lesson. Oh, and I saw Jamie Carragher there! Turns out star Mia Carragher is his daughter! Very few of you will know or care who Jamie Carragher is!
In proper news: the Royal Court’s 70th anniversary programme includes Kimberly Belflower’s John Proctor Is The Villain, Gary Oldman doing Krapp’s Last Tape, Tilda Swinton in Manfred Karge’s Man To Man, and a bunch of other cool stuff: here is artistic director David Byrne discussing it all on the WhatsOnStage podcast…
And, lastly, the government will scrap the English Baccalaureate, which was introduced in 2010 by then education secretary Michael Gove, and which has been widely blamed for the slow squeezing of arts subjects from schools. The decision has been met with a lot of love from the arts industry. Here is Lyn Gardner in The Stage:
“It created an inequitable divide between children in private education, who have continued to access the arts, and those in state schools for whom the opportunity to develop their creativity has disappeared. At last, change is in the air. Good for the arts, good for industry and long overdue.”
In other news: a Bon Jovi gig has been scheduled at Murrayfield during next year’s Edinburgh Fringe, prompting fears of a repeat of the Oasis situation this summer; Hampstead’s Pentameters Theatre has been turfed out of its pub home and replaced; Lily Dyble won the Sir Peter Hall Director Award; Jason Manford will star in Something Rotten!; the National Theatre of Scotland has announced its 20th anniversary plans; mid-scale venues are running out of cash; ATG has launched a new app; Glasgow’s Citizens Theatre and Manchester’s Royal Exchange have appointed some new associates; Avenue Q will return to the West End; the Old Vic has opened a new £17.2m “creative hub”; Equity has won the right to appeal in its case against Spotlight; Jesus Christ Superstar will run at the London Palladium next summer; there will be national tours of Sylvia, Karate Kid, Calendar Girls, 9 To 5, I’m Sorry, Prime Minister, and Jersey Boys, plus revivals of Blackbird, Nell Gwyn and Arcadia.
