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Articles
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Articles |
It's Awards Time!Dateline: 13th November, 2001 Well, it's properly Autumn. You can always tell when that season is fully upon us for then we see the first awards ceremonies creeping up on us. As always, the Evening Standard is first, and shortly we'll have the Critics Circle, the Oliviers, the Barclays... Before we know it, we'll be up to our ears in them. Does anyone really take these things seriously? Yes, they do. Do they make or break careers? No, but they help. Are they meaningful? Of course not! How could they be? For a start, with the exception of the Barclays, they are all totally London-centric. The RSC wouldn't get a look in if they stayed in Stratford. It's as if there were no theatre worthy the name outside of the capital - a proposition which, as anyone who travels beyond the M25 will tell you, is total nonsense. Now I can understand that the Standard Awards will be focused on London - after all, it is London's evening paper - but the rest? Has nothing good been produced at Manchester's Royal Exchange? or the West Yorkshire Playhouse? or the Traverse? or the Citizens? Is there no theatre worthy of the name in Wales, or Lancashire, or Tyne and Wear? What about Chichester? Oxford? Bristol? Belfast? And they're not even consistent. The Standard's nominees for Best Play are all new (The Far Side of the Moon, Mouth to Mouth, The Shape of Things), but look at the Best Musical nominations: Kiss Me Kate; Merrily We Roll Along; My Fair Lady. The most recent is Merrily and that's from the seventies! And it was treated as a new musical last year! And how can the Almeida be nominated for Best Newcomer? Same company, same directors, a different building. It really gets my goat! I'll report them, of course, because I know many readers are interested, but don't take them as representative of British theatre. If they're representative of anything (and here I have to except the Barclays), it's the very incestuous world of London theatre. Let me repeat the message: there is theatre outside of London, and it's as good, and often better, than anything in the capital. Articles Indices: |
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