Part 2
Plays
New plays didn't fare quite so well this year. The Standard judges, for the first time in the forty year history of the awards, refused to make an award for best new play, feeling that there was none of sufficient quality. The Barclays judges went for Simon Gray's The Late Middle Classes (Palace, Watford).
In fact, the biggest successes were revivals or plays which continued from 1998. Art went into its thirteenth cast and The Weir continued its successful run. In the provinces, the West Yorkshire Playhouse rep company, with Ian McKellan, had a major critical and public success with Chekhov's The Seagull, whilst, as we have already seen, the RSC's Richard III with Robert Lindsay took over £1m when it played a season at the Savoy.
One of the more unusual successes of the year was Tricycle's The Colour of Justice, which started in Kilburn and was broadcast on BBC2 in February. It was unusual, of course, because it was the subject matter of the play - the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry - which excited public interest.
Also exciting considerable interest, although meeting with mixed reactions, was Steven Berkoff's 25th anniversary revival of East at the Edinburgh Fringe which transferred to the Pleasance, London. However Berkoff had to support it financially to keep it going. The most controversial play at the Fringe, which also transferred - equally controversially - to London, was Terrence McNally's Corpus Christi, which led to a militant Islamic group declaring a fatwa, or death sentence, against McNally.
According to the pre-Fringe hype, the expected big hit was Richard Herring's Not the End of the World which, although receiving good notices in Edinburgh, simply vanished from the face of the earth thereafter. The big hit of the 1997 Fringe, Mike Cullen's Anna Weiss, finally had its West End debut and closed early after indifferent reviews.
Too Inward Looking?
Back in April Sir John Drummond described British theatre as "dangerously jingoistic and inward looking", arguing that we refuse to acknowledge that we can learn a lot from continental theatre and that British theatre is too text-based, dry and intellectual, thus echoing a sentiment which is increasingly being expressed by many of our best practitioners, Jude Kelly and Sir Peter Hall to name just two.
In fact, in February Hall decided to leave the UK and work in Los Angeles because ACE refused to fund his company. At the same time he set up the Shadow Arts Council, the aim of which is to act as a pressure group on the government and ACE regarding the funding of the arts in this country. Regrettably (in many ways), this has been somewhat of a "paper tiger", and has not made any impact - or even reached public notice - since.
On the Web
At long last an Internet Theatre Database was set up and, on this site, we secured the first online interview with one of its founders, Keith Scollick. Since then Keith tells me that visitors to this site have proved extremely helpful in providing information, which has helped it to expand more quickly than expected.
The number of sites devoted to British theatre continues to increase: more and more theatres are online, and online booking is becoming more common, although that has thrown up some problems during the year.
The number of sites devoted to British actors also continues to increase rapidly, to the extent that, at the beginning of the year, we had to split the two libraries into four and then, just a few months ago, into 25, because download times were becoming so long.
It is also pleasing to see that many of the newer actor sites treat their subject with some respect, looking at their contribution to theatre, TV or film rather than simply being a kind of shrine at which the smitten can worship. What I have elsewhere called the "slobber/drool factor" is - thank God! - declining.
The quality of British theatre sites has improved generally. It is now very rare for me to condemn a site totally, especially for poor design or navigation. As I was writing this article I received an email from a first-time Webmaster asking me to look at the site he was in the process of designing for his local drama group and I discovered it was making very effective use of Javascript and Flash: just a year ago a significant number of new Webmasters were struggling with basic HTML!
This year saw the formation of a Usenet group devoted entirely to British theatre and it has produced some very interesting and productive debates. Contrary to the expectations of many, it has not been filled with Americans asking what's on in the West End!
The other theatre newsgroups have continued much as before: they have a very definite US-bias, although we are now starting to see posts in French, Italian, Spanish and German which are answered in the appropriate language and do not produce - as some did in previous years - a torrent of "Speak English, can't ya!" replies. The Net is, of course, a global resource and non-English speakers are beginning to make better use of Usenet, which I, for one, welcome.
The "British musicals are inferior/not musicals at all/killing theatre" (strike out what does not apply) debate reared its head again once or twice, but I suspect this is, in gardening terms, a "hardy annual" and will not go away, just like those students who ask newsgroup denizens to do their homework for them!
In Memoriam
As well as Peter Jeffrey, who died, aged 70, on Christmas Day, British theatre has lost a number of its luminaries over the year:
- Dirk Bogarde, film actor and writer (78)
- Ian Bannen, actor (71)
- Lionel Bart, composer (68)
- Sarah Kane, playwright (28)
- Desmond Llewellyn, actor (85)
- Josef Locke, singer (82)
- Buster Merryfield, actor (78)
- Anthony Newley, singer, actor and composer (67)
- Derek Nimmo, actor (68)
- Bill Owen, actor (85)
- Bob Peck, actor (53)
- Oliver Reed, actor (61)
- Ernie Wise, comedian (73)