I want to see a new theatrical movement. Someone start one.
When was the last time a group of artists with a new idea took our stages by storm? 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 me about theatre movements and the current dearth of them, inspired by a trip to the cinema. 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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I went to see A Complete Unknown, the new Bob Dylan biopic, the other night. I liked it.
Sure, there were a lot of moments where Timothée Chalamet’s Dylan strummed the opening to a famous song and other characters slowly turned around with their mouths open like Dr Alan Grant seeing a dinosaur for the first time. And, sure, there was a distinct lack of giant worms. But Ed Norton was good as Pete Seager and the finale at Newport Folk Festival in 1965, when Dylan went electric, was brilliantly done. What I liked most, though, was how well it captured - or how I well I imagine it captured - the feeling of an artistic movement. By which I mean: it made me wish I lived in New York in the 1960s and hung around in basements listening to banjos.
It also made me wonder: when was the last time theatre witnessed a movement? When did a group of artists last take the industry by storm? When was the last time a new ideology swept across our stages? Any ideas, reader? I’m genuinely asking.
The history of theatre has been marked by movements from the very beginning. The ancient dramas of Euripides, Aeschylus and Sophocles. The renaissance theatre of Shakespeare, Jonson, and Marlowe. The restoration comedies of Etherege, Wycherley, Behn, Congreve and Farquhar. The early modernism of Ibsen and Chekhov.
The post-war period is no different. There was the kitchen-sink realism of the Angry Young Men, typified by John Osborne and Edward Bond (the famous premiere of Look Back In Anger in 1956, I think, is the closest theatrical equivalent to Dylan going electric at Newport). There was Ionesco, Genet, Beckett and all the various iterations of the Theatre of the Absurd movement. There was the shocking In-Yer-Face movement of the 1990s: Mark Ravenhill, Sarah Kane, Anthony Neilson, and others. I could list more: the epic, political theatre of Brecht in the 1950s; the mega-musicals of the 1980s; the large-scale plays of the self-proclaimed Monsterists in the 2000s.
Now, I know that to classify art like this is reductive. I know that these are mostly labels that have been imposed upon a group of artists by historians and journalists, often after the fact and against artists’ wishes. I know that, in reality, these theatrical movements were not so connected and categorizable. They happened, though. They were messy, misunderstood and unappreciated at the time, but they happened.
When was the last time a theatrical movement happened? Is there one happening now? I can think of a few mini-movements I have witnessed: verbatim work; a new wave devising companies; one-person plays inspired by Fleabag; stripped-back stagings using live cameras and buckets of gunge inspired by Ivo Van Hove; Epic Rap Battles of History inspired by Hamilton; ironic, postmodern spins on classic works like Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of) or Titanique; the awkward uber-naturalism of playwrights like Annie Baker and Alexander Zeldin. I can think of a few individual artists who have been so prolific that they feel like movements, too: James Graham, for example, has produced so many political plays that he is almost a one-man movement.
None of those examples feel right, though. None of them feel like fully-fledged theatrical movements. They are too top-down, or too esoteric, or too lame, or too similar to something else. They lack the radicalism, the energy, the sense of something shifting that I would expect to feel when a theatrical movement emerged.
Maybe I don’t have a clue. Maybe I’m looking in the wrong places. Maybe I don’t see enough theatre. Maybe I see too much. Maybe I wouldn’t know a movement if it smacked me in the face. Maybe the theatrical movement of our time is movie-musicals. Maybe it is not a revolution in what theatre is made but who makes it. Or maybe theatre is fully grown and are there are no more movements possible.
Some of that could well be true, but I think I am at least a little bit right in saying that there has not been a theatrical movement to rival those that occurred in the twentieth century in the last decade. And I don’t think it takes a genius to work out why.
Movements emerge from groups of artists having the time, money and freedom to work and think together, to stage work that inspires each other, to fail and to try again. Since 2010, as public subsidy has shrunk and theatres have grown more risk averse as a result, those spaces have disappeared, and so have theatrical movements.
Case in point: in Scotland, a mini-movement of cleverly staged, wittily conceptual work emerged from The Arches in the 2000s with the theatremakers Kieran Hurley, Gary McNair, and others. The Arches closed in 201, no space emerged to replace it, and Scotland’s theatre culture has stalled as a result. Something similar is happening after the closure of VAULT Festival - previously a crucible of experimental work in London at this time of year - and the absence of anything in its stead. Where can that artistic fermentation happen now? Where can a theatrical movement spring from?
One of the things that frustrated me about A Complete Unknown was how it presented Dylan as a one-off, a prodigy, a maverick from outside space and time. That is never the case. Remarkable, boundary-breaking artists create remarkable, boundary-breaking work but they do so because of myriad economic, social and cultural factors working upon them. The movements that they are part of, or even come to define, do not appear from nowhere. They happen within a context that allows them to.
Before he blew it up, Dylan became the poster boy for the folk movement of the 1960s because he was inspired by his foregoer Woodie Guthrie, enchanted by his contemporary Joan Baez, and, crucially, able to live and make music in New York without selling a kidney. Shakespeare was inspired by classical writers, influenced by contemporaries like Marlowe, and able to live and work in London because of aristocratic, then royal sponsorship. Hell, Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag – and the mini-movement it sparked – clearly owes a debt to Bridget Jones, to the stand-up comedy of the 1990s, and to the oxygen it received at the Edinburgh Fringe.
I worry that equivalent circumstances do not exist for theatremakers today. I worry that the room for collaborative experimentation has shrunk so much, that our culture is so obsessed with regurgitation, and that our society is so expensive that we will not see another theatrical movement emerge. I worry that we are all so busy working to survive, and theatres and companies so skint and scared, and chances to regularly stage work risk-free so few and far between that the theatre industry has stagnated. I worry that I will never get to experience the modern-day theatrical equivalent of hanging around in a basement in New York in the 1960s, listening to banjos.
If you are a theatremaker reading this: prove me wrong. Have a bold idea. Find some like-minded people. Scrabble together the resources to make it happen. Fail. Try again. And, crucially, invite me along to watch. I’ll bring a tambourine or something.
Three shows to see next week
One Man Musical - Underbelly Boulevard Soho, until March 2
This Edinburgh Fringe hit from musical comedians Flo and Joan stars George Fouracres - a Hamlet at Shakespeare’s Globe not so long ago - as Andrew Lloyd Webber, staging a show all about his own life. The Stage’s Tim Bano gave it five stars last summer and called it “brilliantly written, superbly performed and surprisingly thoroughly researched.” You can read his review here, read Brian Logan’s Guardian interview with Flo and Joan here, and book tickets via the button below.
The Years - Harold Pinter Theatre, until April 19
Internationaal Theater Amsterdam artistic director Eline Arbo’s five-handed adaptation of Annie Ernaux’s memoir received heaps of praise - and a fair bit of press about how shocking one scene in particular was - when it premiered at the Almeida Theatre before Christmas. Now, it gets a much deserved West End transfer, starring Deborah Findlay, Romola Garai, Gina McKee, Anjli Mohindra and Harmony Rose-Bremner. You can read my interview with Mohindra in The Stage here - she told me the play had changed her life - and you can get tickets via the button below.
We Will Hear The Angels - Fruitmarket Gallery, until February 6
Edinburgh-based theatre company Magnetic North returns to the Fruitmarket Gallery with a show it first performed there in 2023, all about how heartbreak and melancholy are expressed through music. Written and directed by the company’s artistic director Nicholas Bone, and performed by Bone, Apphia Campbell, Caitlin Forbes, Marie-Gabrielle Koumenda and Greg Sinclair, it features music from Hank Williams, Orange Juice, Etta James, and more. The Scotsman’s Joyce McMillan called it “a strange and beautiful show” two years ago. You can get tickets for its return 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
Dear Fergus, You were very accurate and very kind about my LOSING VENICE in your podcast. Don’t imagine that’s the only one: I’ve been writing plays that present new values in new theatrical forms for 40 years now, and with consistent success- at the Traverse from 1985-93; Pitlochry 1993-2002; Edinburgh International Festival 1989,96,98,2003; Lyceum 2005,6,10,21. I don’t want to sound like a moan, but I’m about tired of hearing the ADs of theatres telling me they love my work but don’t know how to programme it; and it is really weird after all these years to find myself having to travel to Australia to get new work performed. Not to mention THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JESUS QUEEN OF HEAVEN which caused angry protests in the streets in Scotland and Brazil, has been translated into 5 languages and performed in 6 continents and which I’m still performing 15 years after its opening… only not in theatres. I’ve had to take it back to the roots of theatre - in the sacred space of churches. Which is a way of saying to you that I don’t think you’ll find what you’re after in mainstream theatre. Start looking elsewhere…..
Thank you. There's a lot to consider here. Theatre is an expensive medium. You can't stage the next great movement with a busker's licence and a street corner. And if you can, the form will drive the content. Economics is a form of censorship, I guess.