Theatre's most tedious debate, theatremakers Linus Karp and Joseph Martin, and three shows to see...

It's European, director-led theatre versus British, playwright-centric theatre once again. Plus: the company putting Princess Diana and Gwyneth Paltrow on stage, and three shows to see.

Hello, and welcome to The Crush Bar, a weekly newsletter about theatre written by me, Fergus Morgan.

Below, you will find a bit of a rant from me about one of the theatre industry’s most boring debates, which cropped up again this week. Below that, there is an interview with theatremakers Linus Karp and Joseph Martin, AKA Awkward Productions, whose Christmas show Gwyneth Goes Skiing is at the Pleasance from December 13, plus your regular three show recommendations.

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Okay. More from me at the bottom. Here comes the newsletter.

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Last week, director Katie Mitchell delivered the Annual Lecture at London’s Goethe Institute, and in doing so reopened one of the most tedious conversations in contemporary theatre.

It basically boils down to one question: which is better, German-style, director-led theatre with its radical disrespect for the text, or good, old-fashioned British theatre with its traditional prioritisation of the written word? Who is more important, the director or the playwright? Who would win in a fight, Ivo Van Hove or David Hare? (Ivo on points, for me. He’s quite tall so he’s got the reach.)

I have grown to really hate this debate for several reasons. Firstly, it crops up all the time and nothing ever changes. The standard playbook is always a variant of this: there is some sort of provocation, usually a striking production of a classic play; that show rubs some grand old man of theatre, usually Hare, up the wrong way and he writes an opinion piece about it; some Rob Icke stans – hi! – vehemently object and, in days gone by, one would have scribbled a riposte for Exeunt; Michael Billington then writes a bit in The Guardian saying on the one hand this and on the other hand that, and – to paraphrase the late, lamented @BillingbotCrit on Twitter – where has all the Wesker gone? That’s that: the conversation dies down, no-one changes their mind and none of it really matters.

Except, no, conversations like this do matter because they do a lot of damage. That’s the second reason I find these conversations about European versus British theatre annoying: they are incredibly reductive and reinforce unhelpful stereotypes. Depending on which side of the debate you find yourself, they either imply that all European directors are gunge-wielding iconoclasts and all British playwrights insightful scribes of social strife, or that all European directors are chic and omniscient auteurs and all British playwrights outmoded troglodytes.

Guess what? Neither of those outlooks is remotely accurate: Ivo Van Hove has directed some great productions and some terrible ones, and David Hare has written some terrible plays but also some really good ones. I think the theatre industry’s leading figures and critics should be exploding these binaries. Instead, they are fortifying them in a way that engenders genuinely uncomfortable consequences. Have a look at the comments below the line of Billington’s piece if you doubt it: it reads like the stuff you might read below a Daily Mail article on Brexit.

My third objection to this debate is that it ignores four vital groups of people: German playwrights, whom it suggests sit squarely beneath German directors; British directors, who it suggests are secondary artists only good for interpreting a writer’s words; actors, who do not even get a look-in in these hierarchies; and audiences, who are similarly ignored. That is actually the most shocking thing to me: no-one in this conversation stops to think that the ticket-paying punter might actually be the most important person in the room. I know, I know, people do not always know what is good for them – people like Coldplay and voted for the Nazis, in Peep Show speak – but, actually, a lot of the time, they do. I interviewed the multi-talented theatremaker Isobel McArthur this week for the V&A’s TheatreVoice podcast, ahead of her version of Thomas Heywood’s The Fair Maid Of The West at the Royal Shakespeare Company: hearing her speak about making shows with audiences at the forefront of her mind was so refreshing. She is an artist seemingly devoid of ego, and that is a very rare thing.

Fourthly, and finally, I find this recurring discourse frustrating because there is a genuinely interesting and constructive conversation to have around how British theatre and European approaches to making theatre differ, why they differ, and what each can learn from the other - but this is not it. That is a much wider, richer, more meaningful debate around cultural history, funding structures, organisational hierarchies, international exchange and more. I wish we had more articles written about those things, rather than this clickbait crap.

Despite the impression that rant gives, Katie Mitchell’s lecture at the Goethe Institut London is actually well worth watching. You can do so on YouTube here.

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Linus Karp and Joseph Martin in Gwyneth Goes Skiing.

Theatremakers Linus Karp and Joseph Martin have been busy in 2023. Really busy. The duo, who collaborate as Awkward Productions, have already staged two shows this year, and are preparing to put on a third.

“This year has been ridiculous,” says Karp, via Zoom from the foyer of London’s Pleasance Theatre. “I feel like we haven’t really stopped.”

“No, we haven’t,” agrees Martin, sat next to him. “It already felt like the busiest time of my life. Then, somehow, it got busier.”

“It’s exciting, though,” adds Karp. “It’s nice to be busy doing the things that we love doing.”

The first two shows Karp and Martin have staged this year are How To Live A Jellicle Life, a one-man PowerPoint presentation performed by Karp analysing and parodying the notorious 2019 film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats, which the duo first staged in 2020 and have revisited regularly; and Diana: The Untold And Untrue Story, an outrageous and extremely unofficial comedy cabaret about Princess Diana, played by Karp, which premiered in 2022 and has toured almost incessantly ever since. In August, both shows played alongside each other at the Edinburgh Fringe.

There is still one 2023 performance of Diana: The Untold And Untrue Story left – at Clapham Grand on Wednesday – but right now, Karp and Martin are in rehearsals for their Christmas show, a co-production with the Pleasance, with whom they are associate artists. Called Gwyneth Goes Skiing, it is a riotous retelling of the 2016 incident when “the Goop-founding, Door-Sliding, Shakespeare-In-Loving, consciously-uncoupling Hollywood superstar” Gwyneth Paltrow collided with retired optometrist Terry Sanderson while the pair of them were skiing at Utah’s Deer Valley resort, the ensuing legal battle that finally made it to court earlier this year, and the media circus surrounding it.

“In the first act, we take you to the Deer Valley slopes where the incident happened,” explains Martin. “Linus plays Gwyneth. I play Terry. We explore the world around the collision. The second act is set in court, when the audience hears testimonies from a lot of other unexpected characters and then gets to decide who is the guilty party. We have set it at Christmas, too, even though it happened in February.”

“Like all of our shows, there will be audience participation, there will be puppetry, there will be music, there will be voiceovers,” adds Karp. “Is there a point to it? Well, Diana definitely had something political to say. Maybe this has something to say about celebrity culture and the media. Really, though, I think this is just the stupidest show we’ve ever done. By far.”

Karp and Martin are a couple in their personal lives as well as their professional lives. Karp was born in Sweden, trained as an actor, then moved to the UK to find work. Martin was born in Northamptonshire, trained as an actor at East 15, then worked for BBC Radio for several years. The pair of them met in 2014 while working at the Platform 9¾ Harry Potter gift shop at King’s Cross station.

In 2019, frustrated with the acting roles he was being offered – “I’m queer and weird and foreign, so people would not see me for a lot of roles,” he says – Karp decided to self-produce his own show, a revival of Rob Hayes’ 2014 play Awkward Conversations With Animals I’ve Fucked at London’s King’s Head Theatre. Martin helped out, the show was a success, and one thing led to another. Martin has appeared in previous productions, but Gwyneth Goes Skiing is the first show in which the two of them will be on stage together throughout.

“Linus started making more shows, and I started taking on more and more responsibilities when he did,” explains Martin. “Nowadays, we are in each other’s company pretty much 24/7. The only rule is that we can’t talk about anything work-related until we have said good morning to each other. I think that is reasonable.”

Clearly, Karp and Martin are onto a good thing. Through a combination of imaginative theatremaking, social media savvy - they are no stranger to a viral headline, like when the right-wing press picked up the fact that Arts Council England funded Diana - and sheer hard work, the pair have established a reputation for making very silly shows about pop culture.

“This is the first time we have done a co-production,” Martin says. “Up to now we have always self-produced. It’s nice that some of the stress and the admin has been taken away, and we can just focus on making the show. And we have always got a couple of ideas on the back burner for what we might do next.”

“It probably will be about pop culture in some form, but it will be different, too,” says Karp. “When we did Jellicle, everyone asked us which film we would do a show about next. When we did Diana, it was which royal would we make a show about next. Whatever we do next, it won’t be anything like what we’ve done before.”

Diana: The Untold And Untrue Story is at Clapham Grand on December 6. Gwyneth Goes Skiing is at the Pleasance from December 13 until December 23.

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Cinderella at Liverpool’s Everyman Theatre and Chriskirkpatrickmas at the Seven Dials Playhouse.

Three (Christmas) shows to see next week

Chriskirkpatrickmas - Seven Dials Playhouse, until December 30

Chris Kirkpatrick was the founder and star of *NSYNC, the mega-famous American boyband that went on an indefinite hiatus in 2002. This new musical from theatremakers Valen Shore and Alison Zatta imagines what might have happened, with the help of Tony Award-nominated musical director Taylor J Williams and Six sound designer Joshua Millican. It is a parodic mash-up of A Christmas Carol and It’s A Wonderful Life, and it was a big hit at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe, when The Guardian’s Arifa Akbar called it “antastically silly” and “tremendously enjoyable” in her five-star review. You can get tickets for its London transfer via the button below.

Cinderella - Everyman Theatre, Liverpool, until January 20

Liverpool’s Luke Barnes has long been one of my favourite playwrights, ever since I was blown away by his phenomenal show All We Ever Wanted Was Everything back in 2017. This Christmas, he has turned his hand to pantomime, writing the Everyman Theatre’s rock’n’roll version of Cinderella. You can get tickets via the button below.

Snow White And The Seven Maws - Oran Mor, Glasgow, until January 6

This hour-long pantomime is not technically A Play, A Pie and A Pint production, but it is made by the same team behind Glasgow’s long-running series of lunchtime theatre, and basically works exactly the same. You buy a ticket, you see a decidedly adults-only slice of festive fun written by Johnny McKnight and directed by Martin McCormick, and you get a snack and a drink thrown in, too. It is a lot of fun. There are usually two shows every afternoon. You can get tickets via the button below.

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Thanks for reading

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 Twitter/X, where I am @FergusMorgan.

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See you next Friday.

Fergus