What Andrew Scott's Vanya reveals about risk, playwright James Fritz, and three shows to see.
Some thoughts on the West End's one-man Chekhov. Plus: a chat with the writer of new play The Flea, three shows to see, and more.
Hello, and welcome to The Crush Bar, a weekly newsletter about theatre written by me, Fergus Morgan.
What has been going on since I last emailed? Well, I was in Dublin for a couple of days last week, seeing stuff at the Dublin Theatre Festival: you can read my round-up here in The Stage. I particularly loved Janet Moran’s new play Quake. Last night I was in Greenock for the premiere of Al Seed’s new show about statues, Plinth. You can read my review in The Stage here. And I also interviewed the director Carrie Cracknell, ahead of her production of Marina Carr’s Portia Coughlan at the Almeida Theatre. You can read that chat here.
In this newsletter, though, you will find a quick bit on Andrew Scott’s one-man Vanya and what it reveals about the theatre industry’s redefined attitude to risk; a chat with playwright James Fritz ahead of The Flea opening at the Yard Theatre; and three shows to see next week.
One last thing: you can support this newsletter in three different ways. Firstly, you can share it with anyone that might be interested. Secondly, you can use it for promo purposes: click here for info on that. And thirdly, you can become a paid supporter for the cost of a cup-and-a-half of coffee a month using the button below.
That’s all for now. On with the newsletter. See you at the bottom.
Andrew Scott’s one-man version of Uncle Vanya is, by most reports, great.
I wouldn’t know as I have not seen it, but I am willing to accept that it is – partly because critics I trust say so, partly because I like and respect its creative team, and partly because, well, it is Andrew Scott. How could it not be?
What Andrew Scott’s one-man version of Uncle Vanya is not, however, is a risk, which is the narrative being pushed by its producers and promoters. They would have us believe that putting Vanya - the “Uncle” has been dispensed with - on is some tremendous, industry-shaking gamble. I am not so sure. From one angle, the show actually seems like a indictment of how risk-averse the theatre industry has become.
Of course, I appreciate that on an artistic level, transplanting a nineteenth-century Russian play to a twentieth-century estate in rural Ireland, having one man play all eight roles, including the female ones, and act out the entire thing, including the bits that require him to get off with himself, is fairly bold. And I would expect nothing less from a creative team as exciting as playwright Simon Stephens, director Sam Yates, designer - and former interviewee of this newsletter - Rosanna Vize, and Scott. They are, after all, bold artists.
On another level, though, Vanya is the opposite of bold: Scott is a scorchingly popular performer right now, with acclaimed roles in Fleabag and Sherlock earning him a legion of loving fans and two hotly anticipated screen projects – the TV series Ripley and the film All Of Us Strangers – about to be released. People would pay through the nose to see him do a crossword. Quite right, too, because he is magnetic. I saw his Hamlet at the Almeida Theatre in 2017 – and I was totally transfixed.
From a producer’s perspective, then, Vanya offers the chance to fill a West End theatre for five weeks with a one-man show with running costs that presumably pale in comparison to those associated with a play or musical with a full cast. It is, from a financial perspective, a no-brainer. Having Scott attached to a show means that it is no longer such a gamble – a point easily proved by the fact that it is all but sold out on the official ATG website, aside from a handful of £175 tickets for next Wednesday’s matinee.
Is this a problem? Yes and no. No - because Vanya being financially feasible does not mean it is not artistically interesting, too. It is. Pretentious pundits like me often make the mistake of instinctively dismissing commercially workable shows as creatively bankrupt when that is rarely the reality. Perhaps the existence of Vanya is to be celebrated as a savvy piece of producing, as a show that sits slap bang in the magical middle of the Venn diagram of theatrical daring and commercially viable.
But also, yes, perhaps Vanya is a problem - because of what the show and the narrative around it reveals about the state of theatre right now. The well-publicised financial difficulties plaguing the performing arts industry have forced theatres and producers to shy away from taking risks in recent years, and we have now reached the point where a one-man play starring one of the most famous actors around is presenting itself as a perilous venture – and critics and journalists are concurring.
To put it simply, I worry that the pandemic, inflation, the cost of living and all the other headwinds the theatre industry is facing have shifted the goalposts of what is considered risky now. I worry that we will see fewer genuinely radical shows reach big stages, and that our theatre culture will suffer as a result. I worry that we are doomed to be inundated with musical adaptations of much-loved movies.
Put it this way: four years ago, there was another version of Uncle Vanya in the West End. Adapted by Conor MacPherson and directed by Ian Rickson, it featured a cast of big, but not necessarily household names – Toby Jones, Ciaran Hinds, Richard Armitage. Would a show like that reach the West End today? I doubt it. It would be too commercially risky. And what does it say when even a rock-solid revival of a classic play with a strong ensemble seems like a non-starter?
Vanya is in the West End until next Saturday. You can buy one of those £175 tickets here.
In 1889, police discovered a gay brothel in Fitzrovia where aristocratic men would have sex with teenage telegraph boys. Rumour has it that a member of the Royal Family was involved.
The episode, which became known as The Cleveland Street Scandal, is the subject of James Fritz’s new play The Flea, which opens at Hackney Wick’s Yard Theatre this weekend and runs until late November. It is, the playwright explains, something of a departure from his previous work.
“The play is a big, mad, messy conspiracy thriller about this scandal and cover-up,” Fritz says. “I always try to find a form that fits with the ideas I’m expressing, so this play works like a chain reaction, following the fallout from this scandal from the bottom of society all the way to the top. It starts like a kitchen sink drama, then becomes a broad depiction of Victorian London with a cast of 25 characters. It’s a real rollercoaster ride, hopefully. I’ve never done anything like it before.”
“In a way, it is me writing about some things that have happened over the last couple of years through this real-life historical incident,” Fritz continues. “There are lots of mad characters and twists, but at its heart is a serious subject. At its heart, it is an exploration of how we are all interconnected, and of how our fates are controlled by people we will never know and never meet.”
The Flea does seem different from Fritz’s previous plays, which always have interesting structures, but which generally look to the future not the past, trade in ambiguity and uncertainty, and are imbued with engrossing, elliptical dialogue. There was his prescient 2014 debut Four Minutes Twelve Seconds, a slippery play about sexual assault and social media. There was his wittily titled 2015 Edinburgh Fringe hit Ross and Rachel, about a relationship turned sour. There was 2017’s Parliament Square at the Bush Theatre, which explored the politics of protest; and 2018’s Lava, which addressed grief through an apocalyptic allegory, and which, Covid-delayed, ran at the Soho Theatre last year.
“I am drawn to topics that I don’t have a clear answer to,” Fritz says. “Often, it is conversations that come up in the pub that I realise no-one has a clear answer to. It is the things that society is trying to figure out. I have written plays in the past that have never seen the light because they didn’t work, and they didn’t work because they were too certain. I am very wary of being too certain.”
Born and raised in South London, Fritz first got involved with theatre at school, and went on to study drama at Bristol University. At first, he thought he wanted to act or do sketch comedy, but it wasn’t until he penned a short play for a friend that he realised he was more passionate about playwriting.
Fritz did an MA in Writing for Stage and Broadcast Media at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, graduating in 2011. It was there, he says, that he discovered the work of Caryl Churchill, Dennis Kelly, and Lucy Prebble, and started to craft a dramatic voice of his own. After that, it was a case of writing as much as possible, submitting to every open call and scratch night he could find, and doing other jobs to pay the bills – until Hampstead Theatre called in 2014. Critical recognition – an Olivier Award nomination and a Critics’ Circle Award for Four Minutes Twelve Seconds, the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting’s Judges’ Award for Partliament Square, and the Imison and Tinniswood Award for his 2016 BBC Radio Four audio play Comment Is Free – has been regular.
Nowadays, Fritz’s composite career involves writing plays for professional companies; writing plays for participation projects, including 2016’s The Fall for the National Youth Theatre, 2017’s Start Swimming for the Young Vic’s Taking Part programme, and 2022’s Cashmoney Now for The Big House; writing for radio, which Fritz calls his “second home”, and writing for television, too.
“That’s a long-winded way of saying I’ll do whatever for whoever wants me,” Fritz laughs. “There is a lot of work in television now, but theatre has always been my thing. I feel like I have an authentic voice in writing for theatre. In theatre, I think writers have more of a fingerprint, a DNA.”
The Flea runs at The Yard Theatre until November 18. For more information, click here.
Three shows to see next week.
Elephant - Bush Theatre, until November 4
Anoushka Lucas - star of Oklahoma! at the Young Vic and in the West End, Henry V at the Donmar Warehouse, and Jesus Christ Superstar at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre - first performed her semi-autobiographical solo show Elephant in October last year, when critics praised its heartfelt and thoughtful exploration of racism in the music industry. Now, it returns to the Bush Theatre for a month. You can read my interview with Lucas from last year here in The Stage, and get tickets via the button below.
Meetings - Orange Tree Theatre, until November 11
Kalungi Ssebandeke has previous worked at the Orange Tree Theatre as an actor (in Athol Fugard’s Blood Knot in 2019) and as a playwright (his short play Prodigal was streamed from the venue during lockdown in 2021). Now, he returns as a director, and the winner of the 2023 JMK Award, which has previously been given to Orla O’Loughlin, Natalie Abrahami, Roy Alexander Weise, Joe Hill-Gibbins, and others. Ssebandeke is directing Martina Laird, Kevin N Golding and Bethan Mary-James in a revival of Trinidadian playwright Mustapha Matura’s 1982 comedy Meetings. You can get tickets via the button below.
Manic Street Creature - Southwark Playhouse, until November 11
Actor, writer and composer Maimuna Memon always seems to be incredibly busy. She is - probably - returning to her Olivier Award-nominated role in Chris Bush and Richard Hawley’s acclaimed musical Standing At The Sky’s Edge when it transfers to the West End early next year; she is composing the music for Carrie Cracknell’s production of Marina Carr’s Portia Coughlan at the Almeida Theatre; she released an EP earlier this year; and she is performing her own gig-theatre musical Manic Street Creature - a hit at the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe - at Southwark Playhouse from next Thursday until early November. You can listen to her music on Spotify here, read this newsletter’s 2021 interview with her here, read my review of Manic Street Creature at the Edinburgh Fringe here, and get tickets for its Southwark Playhouse via the button below.
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, where I am @FergusMorgan.
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See you next Friday.
Fergus