This morning, 22 May, at the London Palladium, actor Timothy West, now as well known for East Enders as his classic performances as King Lear or his West End successes, and President of the Society for Theatre Research, presented its Theatre Book Prize for books about British theatre to a book written by a member of staff at the United States military academy West Point—a long way from the West End!
This year’s Prize competition (for books published in 2014) was already looking somewhat exceptional. The shortlist announced a few weeks ago was made up entirely of books from academic publishing houses. And a straight fight between only two of them, perhaps the most famous.
It is true that, at least when wearing one of its hats, the Society is an academic body that caters for serious researchers. Today, unlike the amateurs who set it up nearly 70 years ago, many of them operate in academia.
But the Society isn’t only academic; it caters for theatre enthusiasts of all kinds who want to know more about theatre past and present. Over the years it worked towards establishing a theatre museum, to creating better relations between different theatre interests, to preserving our theatre buildings, it made sure that when new play scripts no longer had to go to the Lord Chamberlain’s Office that copies have to be sent to the British Library and it commemorates past theatrical figure such as Gordon Craig and William Poel in its lectures, conferences and other activities that include helping train actors in good speech and delivering the classics.
It was particularly appropriate that when the time came the winner turned out to be, though American in origin, about something quintessentially British that reflects the breadth of the Society’s remit.
It was Oliver! A Dickensian Musical—about Lionel Bart’s ever-popular adaptation of Oliver Twist: what prize judge critic Matt Wolf called “a seminal British musical". Wolf went on to say:
Oliver! is one of the most enlightening books on musical theatre process—or, for that matter, theatrical process of any kind—that I have yet come across. Illuminating about both the art and the commerce of that endeavour that we call show business, the book combines context, analysis, and theatrical smarts into an immensely readable whole.
Academicians will appreciate its investigation into the art of adaptation while musical devotees will be delighted to find in one volume more than they could ever have hoped to learn about the making of arguably the first show to put Britain on the global musical map—not to mention the lasting legacy of Oliver! ever since.
Along with Wolf, the other judges: doyen theatre director Christopher Morahan, academic Professor Vivien Gardner and British Theatre Guide’s own Howard Loxton (who chairs the panel), talked about the range of the books that were entered, especially that shortlist which also contained The Oxford Handbook of Georgian Theatre edited by Julia Swindells & David Francis Taylor (Oxford University Press), a series of wide ranging essays about aspects of theatre of that period; Women and Shakespeare in the Eighteenth Century by Fiona Ritchie (Cambridge University Press) which shows how important women were in establishing Shakespeare’s fame; Home on the Stage by Nicholas Grene (Cambridge University Press); which looks at the way the domestic environment has been staged; and Moving Shakespeare Indoors edited by Andrew Gurr and Farah Karim-Cooper (Cambridge University Press), a fascinating study of both why Shakespeare’s company moved into Blackfriars and the research and ideas behind the creation of a similar playhouse in the Globe’s Sam Wanamaker Theatre.
Those five are only the cream of the books that were talked about. The STR web site lists all of the entries and a full report of the event is promised there later.
The presentation itself was a great mixture of people. You could encounter academics from Oxford and Cambridge, from Ireland, actors from Athens, the V & A’s Curator of Modern and Contemporary Performance, Professor Richards from Lancaster who's an expert on panto and popular theatre, a couple of stage managers who had worked with the National at the Old Vic, a BBC casting director, actor Oliver Ford Davies, directors Sam Walters and Auriol Smith, until recently running the Orange Tree, actor and dramatist David Wood, luscious voiced Fenella Fielding—both performers from West End shows and new talents like the playwright and actor with a fringe opening the night before.
There isn’t the red carpet and phony glamour of so many award shows but as well as the serious book business it felt like a theatrical get together.