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Mamma Mia! They're All Hits!
Dateline: 15th September, 2002
On Wednesday evening we were sitting in the bar of our local theatre
- myself, a couple of the theatre's techs, three actors and one or two
girlfriends ...
(Drink in your local theatre's bar! It helps keep the theatre open.
Most theatre bars make more profit than the shows - not that that's
difficult!)
... and one of the actors said, "You know, it's soon going to
be impossible to put on a West End musical if it's not based on the
back catalogue of some crappy pop band."
General murmurs of agreement... moans about lack of creativity... complaints
that it didn't use to be like this... For goodness sake, none of them
are thirty yet! When I was a lad, people of their age looked forward,
not back. Oh dear, nostalgia isn't what it used to be...
But it did set me thinking, and I thought the time was ripe for another
look at the state of musicals in the West End.
As of 14th September, 2002, there are eighteen musicals running in
the West End (leaving aside G&S and opera). Of them seven (39%)
are long-running (for more than twelve months) and two (11%) are revivals.
In other words, half of all the musicals playing in the West End are
what we might call established shows, at least four of which can be
seen throughout the world.
There are six (33.3% - one third) based on the music of pop bands.
One - Mamma Mia! - is long-running. Two of these are based on
the music of one band - Abba (Mamma Mia! and Abba Mania).
Five of them (almost 28%) are new, in that they opened this year.
So, I thought, let's take a look at the musicals due to arrive in the
West End. There are eleven, of which six (54.5%) are revivals. Two are
based on the work of individual singers and one is dance-based.
So, how many of both the current and future West End musicals are new?
By "new" I mean shows which are receiving their first production.
The answer is ten, five of which (50%) are based on an existing body
of music and two (20%) are musical versions of a straight play.
In other words, in a period of two years (although obviously we can't
include shows which have not yet been announced and haven't included
shows which died very quickly in the last twelve months), there are
only three completely new musicals. - and one of them (Chitty Chitty
Bang Bang) is based on a film! Oh yes, and another (125th Street)
uses a lot of existing music and is based on a theatre in New York.
So we can honestly say that, in the time period we've chosen, there
has been only one totally new musical. What is it? Bombay Dreams,
produced by the much-maligned Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Makes you think, doesn't it?
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