Shouts and Murmurs - January 9, 2024
Shouts and Murmurs - January 9, 2024
The first ever edition of The Crush Bar's new weekly email for paid supporters (and for free subscribers for one week only).
Hello, and welcome to Shouts And Murmurs, a new weekly email for paid supporters of The Crush Bar, written by me, Fergus Morgan.
Every week, I will round up the best - and worst - theatre writing elsewhere, from reviews, to interviews, to features, to opinions, as well as any other fun or interesting theatre-related stuff I come across. It will mostly be UK-based, but I’ll keep an eye on international stuff, too.
As this is the first one, I have sent it out to all subscribers to show you what it will look like. As of next week, though, it will be sent out only to paid supporters. If you are not a paid supporter yet, then you can become one via the button below for just £50/year or £5/month. As well as receiving Shouts And Murmurs, you will be helping to keep The Crush Bar going in 2024.
If you only read one thing: Katie Mitchell on the differences between British and German theatre.
Well, if you only watch one thing this week, make it director Katie Mitchell’s Goethe Annual Lecture, delivered at London’s Goethe Institut in November and recently made available online. I wrote a bit about it in The Crush Bar a few weeks ago here.
In the lecture, Mitchell fascinatingly contrasts the politics and processes of making theatre in Germany with making theatre in the UK:
“As I worked between Germany and the UK, I noticed how I was always told to pull back my conceptual ideas in Britain, or as one British critic so kindly put it, to ‘stop putting my dirty fingerprints all over the play,’ whereas in Germany, I was told to go further with my conceptual ideas.”
It’s well worth watching. You can do so via the Goethe Institut’s YouTube channel.
The week in reviews: looking back on 2023 and looking ahead to 2024.
January is a slow time for reviews, as a lot of venues still have their Christmas shows running. Instead, most publications fill their reviews pages with looks back at the best shows of 2023 and lists of shows to look forward to in 2024. So that’s what I’ll do, too.
“Best shows of 2023” lists were remarkably varied. Some shows - Stranger Things, Sunset Boulevard, Infinite Life, A Streetcar Named Desire, Guys and Dolls - crop up in most critics’ lists, but otherwise they went for a wide range of shows. Here is Andrzej Lukowski in TimeOut; Sam Marlowe in The Stage; Arifa Akbar in The Guardian; Susannah Clapp in The Observer (my favourite); and Sarah Crompton in WhatsOnStage. Those are very London-centric, but Claire Brennan’s list in The Observer and this list in The Stage cover the rest of the UK. Elsewhere, the New York Times does New York, while Lauren Halvorsen offers a wider perspective in her Substack Nothing For The Group; Chris McCormack’s list in Feeling Good covers Ireland; and Natasha Tripney’s list in Cafe Europa covers Europe.
“Best shows of 2024” lists, on the other hand, were all the same: Sarah Jessica Parker in Plaza Suite, Sarah Snook in The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Matt Smith in An Enemy Of The People, Sheridan Smith in Opening Night, Ian McKellen in Player Kings, Steve Coogan in Dr Strangelove, Brian Cox in Long Day’s Journey Into Night and Jez Butterworth’s new play The Hills Of California. The Independent’s is pretty typical. The Guardian’s list and The Stage’s list are a bit more interesting and venture out of London a bit more. Natasha Tripney’s in The Stage looks ahead to European openings, including Rebecca Frecknall’s ITA debut in February. In Scotland, Joyce McMillan has looked into her crystal ball in The Scotsman. And on Twitter/X, The Rendition did a thread of “must-see Black theatre” in 2024, too.
A few shows did actually open this week. Kagami, a “mixed-reality” concert featuring the music of the late composer Ryuichi Sakamoto at the Roundhouse, was well-received: Sam Marlowe found it “serene, eerie and wondrous,” while Andrzej Lukowski found it a “haunting” experience that sits somewhere between “glossy concert” and “digital memorial” in their four-star reviews in The Stage and TimeOut. Elsewhere, at the Finborough Theatre, the UK premiere of Canadian playwright Michael Healey’s 1972 was less well-received.
The week in interviews: Julia Masli, Forbes Masson, Clarke Peters and Andrew Scott
Theatre interviews are mostly attached to shows, so they have been slow to emerge in the New Year, too. A few interesting ones have been published recently, though.
“When people cry in my show, that’s when I feel the most, ‘Yes!’” Estonian clown and Gaulier graduate Julia Masli’s late-night/early-morning agony aunt show ha ha ha ha ha ha ha was a hit at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe. She has been chatting to Brian Logan in The Guardian ahead of its run at the Soho Theatre.
“It is so frustrating that we still have to battle to make people realise the value of the arts, emotionally and spiritually. They are the heart and soul of the nation.” I chatted to actor Forbes Masson in The Stage, ahead of him starring in Gary McNair’s one-man adaptation of Jekyll and Hyde in Edinburgh.
“Theatre was what I wanted to do, more than anything else.” The Wire's Clarke Peters is, intriguingly, playing The Fool to Danny Sapani’s King Lear at the Almeida Theatre next month. He spoke to BBC Radio 4’s Front Row last week.
“Acting is the art of pretending that you don’t know what you are going to say next when you do.” Andrew Scott was interviewed by John Wilson on This Cultural Life on BBC Radio 4 last week as well, and discussed everything from Hamlet to Fleabag.
“Our creative process can be scatty and inefficient. But I like to think it always ends up with something beautiful.” And, in case you missed it, Friday’s issue of The Crush Bar featured a chat with touring company Strange Futures about their terrific two-hander The Endling.
Further reading: local arts funding crisis, The Stage 100, Edinburgh’s ‘festivalisation’ and audience etiquette again.
“This funding crisis is fast becoming a national emergency.” After Suffolk County Council axed its culture budget last week, Vanessa Thorpe reports on the escalating crisis in local arts funding in The Observer, with comments from Campaign For The Arts’ Jack Gamble.
“Increasingly, the obsession with “theatre etiquette” is reinforcing the feeling that this, more than any other, is an art form where there are rules.” The revelation that Andrew Scott stopped a performance of Hamlet in 2017 because an audience member was doing emails on his laptop has prompted a resurgence of the audience etiquette argument. I like Jessie Thompson’s contribution in The Independent most.
“In 2023, the National enjoyed its most consistently impressive year of work at the South Bank since Rufus Norris became artistic director.” The Stage published its annual list of theatre’s most influential people last week. It was topped by the team that run the National Theatre. Those that featured were very happy. Some people objected to how London-centric it was - and to the fact that only one Scotland-based theatremaker was included.
“The Arts Council's decision-making process is broken.” There are two Twitter/X threads you should read if you can bear to. Firstly: Paul Bradshaw on his Kafka-esque attempt to get some feedback on his five failed Arts Council England applications.
“I never wanted theatre to be a stepping stone to a TV career, but that's the way it's going.” Secondly: Rafaella Marcus on the number of television industry doors that opened to her after play Sap was a hit, compared with the number of theatre industry doors.
“You can’t buy what Edinburgh has. You can, however, rent out certain kinds of access to it.” I don’t agree with everything Rory Scothorne says in this London Review of Books piece on the “festivalisation of Edinburgh,” but I think it is a valuable contribution to an important discussion about the city.
Substack recommendation of the week: Kenny Farquharson’s The Jaggy Thistle.
I’m going to use this space to recommend another Substack newsletter every week, because there is lots of great stuff being written here. Sometimes they will be related to theatre, sometimes they will be about something else entirely. This week, I’ll point any Scotland-based readers towards Kenny Farquharson’s The Jaggy Thistle, which offers a range of essays and photography, and this week features a bit on the history of pantomime in Scotland, taking in Alan Cumming, Johnnie Beattie, 7:84, and more.
Distraction of the week: Lisa at the Fringe.
I’m going to use this slot for all sorts of fun stuff - puzzles, polls, pictures - but this week I am going to share one of the funniest theatre-related things I saw in 2023: Lisa visiting the Edinburgh Fringe in an upcoming episode of The Simpsons. “It’s so clever without being good,” is just a perfect line to describe so many shows. And I really want to see Three Tall Men Eating Cereal and Musical: The Play at the festival this year.
That’s all for this issue of Shouts And Murmurs. I’ll be back in your inboxes on Friday with your regular issue of The Crush Bar.
A quick reminder that if you want to get this email every Tuesday from now on, then you need to become a paid supporter of The Crush Bar, which you can do for just £50/year or £5/month using the button below.
Have a good week!
Fergus
Thanks, Fergus! ✊️