VAULT Festival is finished - but this cannot be the end of the ideas that inspired it.
They paved paradise, and tried to stage a Batman-themed immersive experience. 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 a Q&A with an exciting theatremaker or an essay on an theatre-related topic. This week, there is a reflection from me on the sad end of VAULT Festival, what made it so special, and where we go from here. After that, there are your usual recommendations for shows to see next week: two in London, one in Scotland.
In case you missed it, below is this week’s issue of Shouts And Murmurs, which is a weekly round-up of the most interesting reviews, interviews and other articles on theatre elsewhere.
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I am one of a handful of people sat in a small cavern in the arches underneath Waterloo Station. The air is thick and damp. Regular rumbles alert us to trains passing overhead. On a small stage, a woman is presenting a podcast about a haunted story: anyone that tries to tell it meets a grisly end. Isn’t that what she is doing right now, though? Crumbs.
It is March 2018 and I am VAULT Festival’s critic-in-residence. By the end of my two-month stint, I will have reviewed 33 shows for The Stage. This one is Hermetic Arts’ Unburied and it remains one of the scariest theatrical experiences I’ve had. It is one of several shows I will enjoy in those drippy caves that year. Others include Alex Oates’ Silk Road, David Aula’s The Rain God, Rafaella Marcus and Abi Zakarian’s I Have A Mouth And I Will Scream, Joseph Charlton’s Brilliant Jerks, Fran Bushe’s Ad Libido, Tatty Hennessy’s A Hundred Words For Snow and Joana Nastari’s Fuck You Pay Me.
Last week, VAULT Festival announced its permanent closure. In truth, it has been a long time coming. The festival was hit hard by Covid, which struck during its final week in 2020. The 2021 edition was cancelled. The 2022 edition was all set to go ahead, then cancelled. The 2023 edition did go ahead, but was marred when, mid-way through, the festival revealed it was getting kicked out by its venue-landlord to make way for a commercial, immersive, Batman-themed experience that never actually happened. “There’s only so much I can say without legal repercussions,” co-founder and director Andy George told The Crush Bar last year. For a while, resurrecting the festival somewhere else looked possible – another central London venue had been secured – but last week it was revealed that the principal funding had fallen through.
“We are devastated, we’re proud, and we’re grieving,” said George. “To come so close but ultimately fall short is agonising. We are grieving what could have been and what will be lost for future generations. I am certain that the impact from the loss of VAULT Festival will be felt across the entire UK creative sector for years to come.”
Looking back, it is obvious now that the editions in 2018, 2019 and 2020 were VAULT Festival’s apotheosis, its heyday. Since 2012, the event had graduated from a quirky curiosity into a fully-fledged festival: in 2019, it hosted 425 shows and attracted over 80,000 visitors. It felt like it had achieved critical mass: there was enough shows, audience members, industry attention and press coverage that, like the Edinburgh Fringe, the festival had earned its eight-week spot on the theatrical calendar.
It had its problems, but what festival doesn’t? The Edinburgh Fringe definitely does. At its core was a good idea: a theatre festival that did not cost thousands of pounds to perform at, but at which artists and companies could still earn industry attention.
How did it achieve this? There were several factors: short runs, generous deals, decent support, a central location, a massive potential audience, myriad performance spaces under one roof, cheap tickets, and a willingness to allow experimental, untested artists a platform were all key. The fact that VAULT Festival was a relatively small event in a ginormous city – as opposed to the Edinburgh Fringe, which is a ginormous event in a relatively small city – meant fewer issues with accommodation and travel. VAULT Festival was even enlightened enough to try new approaches with journalists: my residency was supported by We Are Waterloo, a local Business Improvement District that realised how useful having press coverage of a local festival was.
All of this added up to something genuinely industry-changing. You want proof? Just look at the list of artists and companies that have used VAULT Festival as a springboard to success: the writers Vinay Patel, Isley Lynn, Joseph Charlton, Margaret Perry, and Martha Watson Allpress; the storytellers James Rowland, Joe Sell-man-Leava and Katie Arnstein; the companies The PappyShow and Flawbored; the directors Simon Evans, Bec Martin and Lucy Jane Atkinson. I could go on and on.
As I wrote in February last year: VAULT Festival features somewhere on the CVs of most people interviewed in this newsletter. If you will allow me to get a bit Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi for a moment, I am not sure we really realised the value of what VAULT Festival provided. An accessible and affordable fringe theatre festival in central London? You really don’t know what you’ve got till its gone.
What next? That is the question that matters now. I would like to say that some ideas are too good to let die, but this is the UK theatre industry in 2024. Letting good ideas die is basically de rigueur. Just think of Travelex Tickets, Ideas Tap, or West End shows that you do not have to take out a mortgage to see: quaint concepts long gone.
Perhaps I’m being too pessimistic. Perhaps industry leaders will recognise the value of VAULT Festival and collaborate in filling the hole it leaves behind. But I doubt it. As this newsletter constantly reminds you, these are dark days for the performing arts industry. Most theatres, battered by Covid, inflation, culture wars and more, are still in survival mode, operating in silos, waiting for Keir Starmer to arrive on a big, white stallion, wielding big bags of cash for the Arts Council and playing the flute.
Still, I choose to live in hope. Theatres are remarkable organisations. When they pool their resources and expertise to collectively work towards something, extraordinary things happen. As if to illustrate that point, last Wednesday, when the news of VAULT Festival’s closure broke, I was spending the day at a retreat for musical theatre writers on the west coast of Scotland. Six teams from around the world were paid to spend a fortnight doing their thing, something that had not happened in Scotland before. And it was all because the country’s major theatres, corralled by Dundee Rep’s Andrew Panton, had worked collaboratively to make it happen.
Quite a few artistic directors and other industry leaders receive this newsletter. (No, I’m not telling you who. Haven’t you heard of a little thing called GDPR?) All I would ask of you, guys, is to follow Panton’s example; to listen to Lyn Gardner, who wrote similarly about the need for a collective response to VAULT Festival’s closure in The Stage earlier this week; and to heed the words of George as he brought the curtain down on VAULT Festival for the last time. “Our journey may have come to an end, but I implore others to pick up the baton, to fight the fight, and to be creative, courageous and kind,” he said. “Make art, make trouble, make change.” Then to pick up the phone.
Three shows to see next week
This Is Memorial Device - various, until May 11
Memorial Device was a post-punk band that were briefly big in Airdrie forty years ago Or were they? David Keenan’s documentary-novel This Is Memorial Device imagines they existed, along with a host of other lost legends that populated Lanarkshire in the 1980s. In 2022, it was adapted by Graham Eatough into a stage show, co-produced by the Edinburgh Lyceum and the Edinburgh Book Festival and starring Paul Higgins (Jamie from The Thick Of It, although I doubt he’d thank you for that) as a local journalist looking back at the time with evocative nostalgia. Now, it returns for a tour encompassing Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and London. You can read Mark Fisher’s four-star Guardian review here and get tickets via the button below.
The Lonely Londoners - Jermyn Street Theatre, until April 6
The Lonely Londoners is a 1956 novel by Trinidadian writer Samuel Selvon depicting the sprawling lives of London’s Windrush-era Caribbean immigrants. This new stage adaptation by playwright Roy Williams and director Ebenezer Bamgboye runs at the Jermyn Street Theatre until early April and has garnered some glowing reviews. The Guardian’s Arifa Akbar gave it five stars and wrote that “Every element of the show hypnotises.” Keep an eye out for Bamgboye - and get tickets via the button below.
Pansexual Pregnant Piracy - Soho Theatre, until April 13
Founded in 2016, AirLock Theatre is an emerging company devoted to telling outlandish queer stories in chaotic, comedic fashion. Comprising Eleanor Colville, Ro Suppa and Robbie Taylor Hunt, the group had a bit of a hit at the Soho Theatre in 2022 with Lesbian Space Crime and now returns to the London venue with Pansexual Pregnant Piracy, a rollocking adventure about the real-life female pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read. It runs until mid-April and you can get tickets 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 Twitter/X, where I am @FergusMorgan.
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Fergus