Shouts and Murmurs - January 28, 2025
Is Scottish theatre back? Plus lovely links for paid supporters, including a round-up of recent reviews, an interview with Brian Cox and an interesting bit on the current surfeit of Sophocles.
Hello, and welcome to Shouts And Murmurs, a weekly email for paid supporters of The Crush Bar, written by me, Fergus Morgan.
Every week, I round up the best theatre writing elsewhere - news, reviews, interviews, opinion pieces, long-reads - plus any other interesting or inspiring theatre stuff I find.
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Previously in The Crush Bar:
Is Scottish theatre back? Maybe.
For the first time since Covid hit in 2020, I am filled with optimism about the year ahead: a musical directed by John Tiffany (yes, I know, it is a movie adaptation, and I’m a hypocrite); the Glasgow Citizens reopening with a show about Lockerbie; new artistic directors at the Tron, the Lyceum, Pitlochry Festival Theatre (Alan Cumming!) and A Play, A Pie and A Pint; and, announced in the last few days, a new James Graham play starring Brian Cox produced by the National Theatre of Scotland at the Edinburgh International Festival, a West End transfer for David Ireland’s The Fifth Step, revivals of The Glass Menagerie and Doubt: A Parable in Dundee, eighteen new productions as part of Brian Logan’s inaugural season at Oran Mor, and a £50 million injection via Edinburgh’s tourist tax, some of which will hopefully reach theatres.
Before we start celebrating like its 1990, though, a reality check. On Thursday, Creative Scotland will announce decisions over its new multi-year funding programme, and, although the Scottish government have thrown an extra £20m in the pot, the spreadsheet could make for grim reading for many. Local authority funding is under threat across the country, too - as it is throughout the UK - as councils scrabble to balance their budgets. And, the situation at Summerhall seems to have taken its toll, with Paines Plough announcing that their much-loved Roundabout theatre will not be returning there this summer. I am still cautiously inclined to look on the bright side for once, though. It feels as if the 100mph winds of Storm Eowyn (my flat shook!) have blown some of the cobwebs away. It feels as if my lifelong mission to make Scotland the centre of the theatrical universe is moving in the right direction.
The Royal National Theatre of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has been in the news, too, for various reasons. It announced some cracking casts for upcoming shows (Clive Owen! Adeel Akhtar!) It also doubled down on its decision to axe it primary schools touring programme, despite opposition from teachers, students and parents. And it also published a wide-ranging report on the theatre sector’s current struggles, recommending a greater adoption of technology, more collaboration between organisations, more targeted funding and advice from both the government and the private sector to help theatres survive and evolve, and more clarity around the process of claiming tax credits. All that is fairly standard. The most interesting remark came from Battersea Arts Centre’s executive director Amy Vaughan, speaking on a panel at the report’s launch and reported on by Katie Chambers in The Stage. There has, Vaughan said, been a “social pivot” in the sector that is making life difficult.
“Ten years ago, I was allowed to just make art, and now I have to be doing stuff with the NHS and evidence how much I’m doing to help young people’s mental health. These are all things we know that art already does, but the evidencing of it is taking a huge amount of people’s time. People - leaders particularly - are having to develop these skills and make their organisations deliver all these things to justify keeping the same amount of funding that they’ve always had.”
Hey, I have literally just had a thought. Instead of the onus for evaluating arts organisations’ social impact being placed on the organisations themselves, why not establish an external, ACE-funded body do that work for them, leaving them to actually make art? Has anyone thought of that before? Have I just saved theatre?
In other news: Just Stop Oil protestors mercifully interrupted a performance of The Tempest in the West End, providing lucky punters with some actual excitement in an otherwise turgid production; musical developer Book, Music and Lyrics needs to raise £50k to survive; Tim Crouch’s An Oak Tree is coming back, with guest stars including Luke Thompson, Indira Varma and Michelle Terry; Julia Grogan’s Edinburgh Fringe hit Playfight will tour; The Glitch, the new venue from VAULT Festival’s producers, has opened, attempting to recapture the magic; the RSC makes video games now; the Theatre Royal Margate tops the Theatres Trust’s 2025 list of venues at risk.