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Todrick Hall: “If people come away from the process of putting on a musical feeling traumatised, then I don’t think it’s worth it.”

When I reached out to Todrick Hall, I was struck by how many confusing and frequently still-unresolved twists and turns there have been. What in the name of sanity? 

Let’s be clear: the stuff that actually was occurring and public was wild enough. 

And so, a YouTuber, rapper, Broadway star — and now also, the self-proclaimed unsung hero of Burlesque The Musical, based on the 2010 film written and directed by Steven Antin.

That’s the story Hall tells about his tumultuous journey with the troubled production, one that’s left him feeling “used,” “erased,” and in a protracted fight for a “life-changing” sum in unpaid royalties.

We are talking on the telephone ahead of the show’s return at Marble Arch this Autumn. Hall was the musical’s driving creative force, penning eighteen and a half of its daunting 25 songs (plus reprises), playing Sean, and taking over as director and choreographer from Nick Winston. The production churned through creative teams — sets, costumes, lighting, all replaced — but Hall remained its constant. 

Until he wasn’t. Flash-forward six months, Hall discovered he’d been cut from the show’s new iteration not from the producers, but via Instagram, during London rehearsals for his own musical Midnight. “It felt like a slap in the face,” he declares. “There’s no way to deny that my gift has had a huge impact on the show. I felt a little bit used because now they’re going to cherry pick parts of my talent to use in this new version.”

We are two minutes into a conversation about his experiences. Behind the scenes, it was a chaotic ride. During previews at the Savoy, actors’ union Equity intervened over unspecified “issues.”Rumours swirled of cast members dashing to Primark to buy wigs because costumes weren’t ready — a tale Hall laughingly dismisses. “That Primark story is iconic,” he chuckles. “If people were going to Primark, it was to get socks. Unfortunately, it is not true,” he adds. 

Amazing indeed.

For pretty much everyone else, following the ins and outs of this musical is one of gathering chaos and rising disbelief. Jokes aside, he says he poured his heart into the show – one with significant structural and creative issues: “My experience with Burlesque has been quite the rollercoaster. I treated that show as if it were my own child,” Hall says. “I understood how passionate the producer was — I did not ever want to disappoint him or myself. I was willing to do everything to make sure we had a show on stage. But it was really difficult.”

Then there are the royalties. Hall alleges he’s owed a sum he describes as “life-changing” (rumoured to be £100,000) for his work as director, choreographer, and songwriter. “My DNA is still in that show,” he asserts. The producers’ response when he’s tried to collect? “That has been tricky,” he admits. “I do genuinely believe that someday soon I will get that money; we are in conversation. I’m fine with waiting because I believe it is going to come.”

‘Life’s not fair, it’s fabulous’ 

Elsewhere, a peek into TR Heels Ltd’s accounts, the company behind Burlesque, reveals a financial house of cards. Net liabilities skyrocketed from £5.87 million to £9.44 million in just one year. Trade creditors are knocking, owed £9.52 million, while cash reserves sit at a paltry £67,499. Yet, TR Heels has handed out over £800,000 in interest-free loans to other productions under the same leadership. 

Meanwhile, Burlesque on Stage Limited conjured up a £80,000 fixed asset from thin air, no paper trail in sight. Simultaneously, its current assets and creditors mysteriously quadrupled. For a show already grappling with a revolving door of creatives, these fiscal smokescreens add an ominous layer to the off-stage drama. The most riveting numbers in this production might just be on its balance sheets.

And I can reveal that Antin’s script control provisions are allegedly a masterpiece of paranoia — every script must be watermarked, numbered, colour-coded, printed only by Antin, distributed only by Antin, breathed upon only by Antin, and apparently blessed by Antin before it may exist in the physical universe.

Writer and producer Steven Antin & ‘producer’ Christina Aguilera

Hall has described his relationship with Antin, the show’s writer and co-producer, as “difficult,” alleging he was treated unfairly. “Listen, Steve kindly congratulated me on my show Midnight. Ultimately, he has the money and you need it — and if you don’t have the stamina, you just concede. His life perspective is very different from mine, so I allow some grace.” 

The crux of their clash, in Hall’s telling: credit. “I respect Steve. He is from a different era though. My experience with burlesque has been quite the rollercoaster. I do believe they’re going to pay me, but if you’re asking me now whether I have received the money I am owed, I haven’t.”

“There’s a lot of nuance, because the contract has not been signed. But I don’t plan on signing that contract until only the people’s names who had to do with writing the songs are [credited] with writing the songs.”

“For aeons, throughout history, white people have taken credit for work black people did. Straight people have taken credit for work queer people did. I am both of those – I’m a double minority, and I’m proud of that. But I am fundamentally against someone saying they wrote music that they didn’t write. I don’t want someone’s name on music that I wrote who did not write that music.” 

“I have respect for Steve Antin because I believe he has a level of passion that I think is rare in this industry. He is adamant and protective over every single detail of his show, and I find that admirable,” says Hall.

Through it all, Hall kept the brief Savoy run afloat — at times, he jokes, singlehandedly. “During the West End run, my character stated that his back was sore ‘from carrying the show.’ No matter what version of Burlesque they get to, they wouldn’t have got there without me. I have more music in that show than anyone.”

He continues: “If I get my royalties, I will be happy as a bird and I will be cheering the new casts on. There’s a chance that someday I will play Sean again; I loved that character. I do want there to be a world where if the show were to come to Broadway, I would participate in it.”

But that chapter of his career has closed, and a new one’s begun with Midnight. “When you’re working with people and you don’t share artistic visions, there is always going to be friction,” he reflects. With Midnight, he promises something “baked with love” that will sweep audiences away. “It’s an American story, and I am excited New York is going to get to see it.”

“We’re making art here at the end of the day,” he adds. “If people come away from the process of putting on a musical feeling traumatised, then I don’t think it’s worth it. There’s already so many awful things going on in the world — musical theatre should not be one of them.”

  • NOV 2023

ANNOUNCEMENT

Manchester production announced — creative team assembled

Directed and choreographed by Nick Winston. Produced by Adam Paulden, Sue Gilad & Larry Rogowsky, Steven Antin and Christina Aguilera. Sets by Soutra Gilmour; costumes by Ryan Dawson Laight. Audiences enjoy the show — but reports of “total chaos” behind the scenes begin to circulate.

  • MAR 2025

WEST END

West End run announced — overhauled creative team revealed

Version 2.0 brings new music by Todrick Hall and Jess Foley, with additional material by Kate Wetherhead. New producers include Jason Haigh-Ellery and Clint Culpepper alongside the original team.

  • 15 JUL 2025

EQUITY DISPUTE

Performers’ union Equity steps in ahead of opening

Equity confirms it is “engaging with both members and the producers over a number of issues.” Director and choreographer Nick Winston has been replaced mid-process by cast member and co-writer Todrick Hall — one of several significant creative team changes in the run-up to opening. Producers decline to comment.

  • JUN 2025

CELEBRITY SHADE

Diane Warren fires warning shot — before the show has even opened

During the preview period, Oscar-nominated songwriter Diane Warren — who wrote You Haven’t Seen the Last of Me for Cher’s character in the original film — posts on Instagram flagging that her song has been cut and the show is now only “lightly inspired” by the movie. She tags Cher. The post is subsequently deleted.

“So it appears Burlesque is no longer an adaptation and more lightly inspired by the movie… The cast who didn’t move from Manchester with the show have had a very lucky escape. Cutting ‘You Haven’t Seen the Last of Me’ though? These reviews are going to be very telling.”

  • 22 JUL 2025

OPENING NIGHT

Burlesque opens at the Savoy — and confounds expectations

Most critics, braced for a flop, are pleasantly surprised — awarding three or four stars. The Guardian and LondonTheatre go further, giving five stars and singling out Jess Foley’s central performance as “sensational.” TimeOut remains disappointed. Warren’s warning goes largely unreported.

  • 28 JUL 2025

FALLOUT

Todrick Hall speaks out about “bullying” — takes mental health day

Writing on Instagram, Hall shares screenshots from online forums speculating about problems on the show. “Imagine waking up every day and reading these comments from strangers… then having to go on stage night after night, smile and try to perform.” He attends Evita and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button on his day off.

  • 1 AUG 2025

FINANCE

Producers take out emergency loan — £6m debt disclosed

Companies House filings for TR Heels Ltd reveal creditors are owed £6.42m. The production has separately taken a debenture — a loan secured against assets — from Finstock Capital, a firm specialising in “short-term financial solutions.” Producer Adam Paulden’s company Adama Entertainment received £304,700 in fixed fees and £11,119 in royalties.

  • SEP 2025

EXPANSION

Japanese production announced via Instagram

Producers announce plans to bring Burlesque to Japan.

  • SEP 2025

CO-PRODUCER CONVICTED

Listed co-producer sentenced for Covid grant fraud

Suzanne Gilad — listed as a co-producer of the UK production — is sentenced in Brooklyn for fraudulently obtaining more than $69,000 in Covid-19 small business recovery grants by filing falsified records. Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez states she “took advantage of a public health crisis by falsifying records to secure government aid that was meant to keep struggling small businesses afloat.”

  • JAN 2026

COLLAPSE

Japanese production cancelled

Four months after the announcement, the Japan run is quietly shelved.

  • FEB 2026

PIVOT

Producers launch crowdfunding platform for theatre

Adam Paulden and new partner Jonathan Newman launch StageLight — an “all-or-nothing” seven-day crowdfunding model for stage productions. Contributors receive experiences (opening night tickets, backstage access, meet-and-greets) rather than financial returns. The pair cite the “challenging theatre landscape” as motivation.

  • MAR 2026

SACKING

Todrick Hall dropped — and finds out via Instagram

A rebooted production is announced with Hall erased from the credits and promotional materials. He tells podcaster Mickey Jo that he learned of his dismissal from social media, not from the producers.

  • JUN 2026

THIRD DIRECTOR

Racky Plews appointed — third director in two years

Plews, whose credits include I’m Every Woman: The Chaka Khan Musical, will helm a new pop-up production at Marble Arch and a subsequent tour. Producers Antin and Paulden frame the appointment as a deliberate shift: “We believe this story would ultimately benefit from a woman’s perspective.” The retooled production has yet to launch.

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rewrite the stars

FIVE STARS.


That was the verdict from several theatre critics I genuinely respect on a regional musical I’d been quietly plotting to see. Then this weekend, a message landed from a trusted friend — avid theatregoer, 64 years on the theatrical planet:“Oh my god. Seriously bad. Terrible in every conceivable sense. Let me save you the trip — it’s gobsmackingly bad. May even be the worst production I have ever seen.”

I found myself at a critical crossroads.


Here’s the thing about five-star reviews: there’s always a reason not to give one. Fault can always be found. To award five stars is a leap of faith — to put your head above the parapet, courage of convictions front and centre. Critics deserve credit for that. Not five stars, obviously. It is their job, after all.


But what is the star-rating economy actually worth in 2026?


Still, I’ve been thinking about this since falling down a rabbit hole with a Sunday Times Money investigation into Vodafone employees writing fake Trustpilot reviews on customers’ phones — without their knowledge. One victim said it best when he updated his fraudulent five-star entry: “I was disappointed to find that you felt it necessary to write a review on my behalf. That was a bit naughty of you.” Vodafone’s Trustpilot rating, for the record, climbed from 2.08 to 4.7 in three years. Draw your own conclusions.

Theatre is not immune. I recently studied a West End poster — big summer opening, a Dame attached — plastered with four- and five-star quotes from publications I’d never heard of. The broadsheets gave it two stars, almost unanimously. So who do you trust? How do you cut through the noise?

Anyway. It gets murkier. Anyone can start a blog; democracy and disaster in equal measure. And I’m increasingly convinced some theatre bloggers are quietly outsourcing their opinions to artificial intelligence. I ran one prolific reviewer’s High Society write-up through four AI-detection tools. Between 60 and 70 per cent machine-generated, each one suggested. I mean…


Yet every show this person reviews is apparently a contender for best of the year. Remarkable stamina. Suspiciously consistent enthusiasm.

I once pulled up a PR for slapping a four-star West End review across all the tour publicity — as if the two productions were remotely the same thing.


The touring cast was severely diminished, there were reports of it being a total shambles, and yet there it was: four stars, front and centre, borrowed from a completely different show that audiences were never going to see.


So. Are reviews important to audiences? Yes — though rarely the sole deciding factor. Do strong star ratings drive bookings? Absolutely, particularly in publications people actually trust. Are star ratings reductive and frequently unfair? Almost certainly. Will they disappear? Not a chance.


But here we all are for now, zero stars are now commonplace. Five stars are distributed like loyalty points. The system is visibly broken and widely known to be so — and yet here we all are, still counting, still printing them on posters, still letting them do the heavy lifting.

Please understand that I claim no superiority for all this stuff. What is undeniable, however, is that reviews should be a record of a moment in time – a kind of elegy.
Apart from sheer convenience, why bother with star ratings? Especially now.

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RTST Sir Peter Hall Director Award Winner Lily Dyble: “The landscape’s really hard right now. And who gets to do it?” 

Want to spot tomorrow’s directing talent? Look no further than the resident or associate director listed in your theatre programme. 

Last weekend, Lily Dyble stepped into the Globe’s courtyard with the unhurried calm of someone who has learned to trust herself under pressure. 

She is this year’s winner of the Royal Theatrical Support Trust Sir Peter Hall Director Award — and in the current climate, that distinction carries more weight than ever.

Photo credit Matt Chandler

Dyble has served as associate director to Joe Mantello on Stephen Sondheim’s Here We Are at the National Theatre — a connection that led directly to Broadway and an associate directorship on the starry Death of a Salesman. A remarkable trajectory.

But that pipeline is under threat. Producing theatres are making less, squeezed by years of stagnant funding. Less production means fewer opportunities for directors, actors, and every kind of theatre freelancer — and ultimately, a talent development pipeline running dry.

Patrick Marber, one of the directors she names as a formative influence, recently told The Stage that it’s “a really hard time” to make a living as a director, with even well-established figures struggling to land work. Dyble doesn’t flinch at this. “The landscape’s really hard right now,” she says. “And who gets to do it?” 

The award, she makes clear, isn’t a trophy. It’s a lifeline.“I hit a point in my practice where without meaningful intervention I couldn’t scale up, I couldn’t go any further. And then this happened.” 

Born and raised in Manchester, Dyble is a product of precisely the ecosystem she now champions. Free music lessons. The Hallé Youth Choir. A Northern brass band. “I went to a state school where I was really lucky that so much access to the arts was still free” she says — and she means it without sentiment. She knows how easily that luck could have gone the other way, which is why paid placements and access remain causes she returns to again and again. The first assisting job she took was unpaid. She worked back 139 hours to do it. “Getting in the room is so much of it.”

Much of her career has been built through associate work — a role she defines with precision. “It’s a really intimate relationship. You’re a sounding board. You operate as a real partnership.” 

She credits Marber, alongside Nick Hytner, Joe Mantello, and Nadia Fall, as directors she’s learned from profoundly. But it’s the other female creatives — Marianne Elliott, Bunny Christie, Vicky Mortimer — whose teams she watched obsessively as a student, spending every spare penny on tickets, trying to understand how those collaborations functioned.

“It’s a really short window of your career where you get to have that privilege of sitting in another director’s room,” she says. “It goes really quickly.”

Her chosen piece for the award is Sally Cookson’s Jane Eyre, and the choice is anything but academic. She first saw the production at eighteen in Bristol. “I remember when Jane walked across the gantry and it set on fire, sitting there and being so overwhelmed and thinking – that’s what love should feel like. It’s messy and it’s complicated, it defies a straightforward answer”. The RTST will also make a grant of £60,000 to support the costs of the production. 

Now directing it herself, across regional venues including Chester — close to where she grew up — she’s drawn to what the play demands: courage in uncertainty, clarity under pressure. “It gives a theatrical language to those feelings that you can’t articulate. Jane’s internal world is such a vast, emotional landscape.”

Right now she’s in rehearsals for an all-female Glengarry Glen Ross at the Old Vic. A new musical is finding its next home. Jane Eyre awaits. She is, unmistakably, moving. “Holding on,” she says. “Holding the line. Keeping the faith.” In a hard time for directors, that’s not a platitude.

It was a wonderful starry reception hosted by Sir Ian McKellen. RTST chairman Sir Geoffrey Cass said: “We warmly congratulate Lily Dyble and the runner-up, Sophie Drake, and applaud the six other directors on the all-female shortlist.”

So in more ways than one, UK theatre directors need a sustained ecology of work, not isolated chances. Without sufficient opportunity and invaluable schemes like RTST that come with cash to keep talent rooted in the regions, the next Dyble simply won’t emerge.

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End of the Rainbow

She’s drunk, scheming and downright hilarious. 

Jinkx Monsoon’s superbly vulgar star turn as Judy Garland in the last raddled months of her life is blackly comic.

The action is set in 1968, the year of Garland’s death. Garland on the comeback trail once again: “It’s a terrible thing,” says the heroine, “to know what you’re capable of and never get there.” 

Her greatest role, in an otherwise mediocre play, directed by Rupert Hands.

The camp action is mostly set on a staircase, in a suite at the Ritz, designed in flamboyant style by Jasmine Swan. What follows is a picture of the struggle and the wretched diva’s sympathetic gay pianist to get her through the season.

Judy is bookended by two men who embody her destruction and her salvation: her fifth husband Mickey (Jacob Dudman), a controlling enabler who feeds her addiction with one hand and tightens his grip with the other, and her devoted pianist Anthony (Adam Filipe), a quietly gay man who credits her with saving his life and repays the debt with unwavering tenderness. One might expect the latter to bring the best out in Garland, but the piece is too pettily contrived, and the craftsmanship is right on the surface. 

Alas, this lack of storyline means it’s heavily reliant on the soundtrack, showbusiness, and star quality and indeed is so ­consumed by the lack of those ingredients in the wider cast that the show often loses grip of its own continuity.

But it does bring me on to the quality of the acting, which varies wildly in End of the Rainbow. 

For, on the one hand, you’ve got luminously loony Monsoon, who is really good.

While on the other you have blandly dull Dudman and Filipe, who spend the duration struggling to suppress their frustrations with nightmare Garland. It’s is hard to tell, because their vacant stares are so prolonged and unnerving.

Have you ever lived with an alcoholic? It is hell on earth.

This bittersweet 2005 play sugarcoats that sadness. Tweaked out after decades of drug addiction and alcoholism, broke and haunted by past trauma, she is forced to go to London for five weeks of performances at the London Palladium in a bid to earn enough money to help her reunite with her two younger children.

Sensibly enough, Prema Mehta’s exquisitely styled lighting transforms the Soho Walthamstow Theatre auditorium in an instant — hotel room one moment, cabaret stage the next, flooded with colour and heat. 

Anyway. Monsoon shares the scatterbrained cultural icon’s vibrato, in capital letters, and she’s a keen mimic. And overall, Hands directs this three-hander with a bang; Nick Barstow’s big-band arrangements make it impossible to look away.

Monsoon has talked at great lengths about sobriety. (In the 2022 series, Monsoon won Drag Race’s “Snatch Game” round with impersonations of Garland) That’s probably why the actor, who has herself been sober from alcohol for around seven years, suits the part so well. And may also explain why she is the glue that holds the whole thing together. 

I was bored for most of End of the Rainbow. Why? Well, it’s not even a proper drama, for starters. The whole thing seems to exist in a frame of reference that rules out authentic feeling. Whether this mixed-up production and its star were offering homage, pastiche, or tribute to Garland, I left none the wiser. That is a problem. 

“I gave them everything,” she says wearily of her audience. “There’s nothing left.” 

It’s more exhausting than entertaining.

‘End of the Rainbow’ is on at Soho Theatre Walthamstow until 21 June

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Sold Out. Paid Peanuts.

THERE has never been a better time to love the arts. No?

We can be world citizens without leaving home and yet, in the very institutions built to house entertainment, the people who make the experience possible are still not being paid fairly. Hold that thought.

Firstly, a word to new readers who may wonder why this blog takes such a violently unpredictable course. 

Welcome to the twenty-first century. The themes will emerge from the apparent randomness, I promise, but it will often be a bracing read.

The times from which it is written are hard on the nerves, even for those of us lucky enough to lead charmed lives. If the things I discuss were not difficult, they would not be true. See my recent campaign on institutions slashing and burning through live music in live theatre.

Meanwhile, as I have mentioned before, something worth celebrating: more people are attending theatre in the UK than at any recorded point in history, according to the Society of London Theatre and UK Theatre.

A remarkable fact. Yet here is something worth being pissed off about, as I head to the 50th anniversary Olivier Awards at the Royal Albert Hall shortly. 

Indeed, the majority of West End front-of-house staff are not paid the London Living Wage (£14.80 ph). Casual FOH roles and bar work at Delfont Mackintosh pays as little as £13 an hour. 

The reason this matters is that this is not happening in isolation. Off the top of my head, LW Theatres pay £13.40 an hour and ATG (London) pay a pitiful £12.85 an hour. Working conditions also reportedly suck. 

Heavens. We know that UK theatre staff have been attacked, sexually harassed and abused by drunken audience members during performances.

This is important beyond the immediate consequences because well-trained front-of-house staff are not a luxury. They are the experience. Our theatre-going is still underwritten by short-term contracts, unreasonable shifts, and countless unpaid hours. At a time of cuts, nearly all of these short changed employees are afraid to speak up. 

That these workers — many of them young — remain underpaid is something I cannot accept. I have raised it in person with West End Producers, Heads of Unions, the Editor of The Stage, theatre landlords, funders, philanthropists, journalists. Nothing changes. 

Furthermore, I have, in the past, taken easy shots at greedy producers. Some are. Some are not. In any event, the rich should not be taking advantage of the less well off. 

Full stop.

The harsher truth, however, is that theatre owners, these operators are not sharing their record profits with the workforce. 

Alas, Andrew Lloyd Webber says every penny of LW Theatres’ profit is ploughed back into the buildings. Yet ATG (Sonia Friedman is now a major shareholder) have no excuse: the majority of the London venues are a dump.

Whichever way you slice it, the buildings, cannot function without the dedicated, skilled people who take care of us: the audience. Concrete does not get us out the building in an emergency, help us to our seats or gently welcome little children through the door.

As Union Equity recently stated: “It’s important that West End, Commercial and Subsidised producers share the success detailed in the report with our members – without whom the show does not go on.”

So yes, blissful ignorance, on all of this, is very much off the menu, especially now. 

And that connects to the governments Employment Right Act being implemented on a phased basis across 2026 and 2027: a commitment to improve everyday life for millions navigating the sharp end of the modern jobs market. 

We know that West End FOH workers juggling unpredictable pay and hours’ – with some shits as short as 90 minute – keeps staff from upskilling and finding new jobs. 

To understand this we need to remember that the gap between £12.85 and £14.80 is £2.05. On a 30-hour contract, that’s £3,000 a year — a holiday, childcare, a car, a flat with a garden.

Tell you what, in one of the world’s most expensive cities, that gap matters. 

Time to close it.

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Summerfolk

WHAT makes Robert Hastie’s productions different from other theatre directors is an extraordinary combination of visual richness and visual freedom. His shows just seem to flow. Summerfolk is stunning. 

It is the height of summer, and the well-off are well ensconced in their dachas doing very little. They walk. They write bad poetry. They complain.

Maxim Gorky’s 1904 satire of Russia’s holidaying middle classes — that unfamiliar layer between the landed aristocracy and the peasantry, people who’ve grappled their way up to wealth and promptly lost their nerve — fills the vast Olivier stage to the brim with people not having a good time, and telling us about it at considerable length.

It’s an ensemble evening, all drifting into a 20th century about which the only thing they know is that it is not going to live up to any of their private or public hopes.

“I want to live” is the repeated refrain of these restless, self-deceiving characters. It is also, one suspects, their problem.

Robert Hastie steers an ensemble of two dozen magnificently, and the acting is uniformly terrific. Paul Ready’s Sergei is infuriating and odious, all gravelly voice and grating laugh. Doon Mackichan’s Kaleria is a hilariously pitiable woo-woo figure with a penchant for cringey poetry.

Sophie Rundle’s Varvara perfectly strikes the balance between aloofness and likability. Best of all is Alex Lawther, whose Vlass is sharp, anguished and deeply funny: a comic performance of real precision.

Gorky’s script has been given an idiosyncratic, often coarse updating by siblings Nina and Moses Raine that will divide audiences (quite a lot of people left at the interval) but which I found entertaining. Peter McKintosh’s design and Paul Pyant’s half-gloom blue-green lighting conjur moods and subtle action with quiet authority.

Nipping at the edges of this charmed circle are the poor: beggars shooed away, servants barely acknowledged, a woman frantically searching for a missing child. The world, we sense, is quietly breaking apart.

Yet the evening remains fascinating rather than forceful. With 18 named characters, it is hard to care deeply about any of them for long. Once you’ve established who loves and who despises whom, dacha life proves stubbornly circular. Characters repeat themselves — “I’m so unhappy”; “This picnic is boring. Like life.” — and the play occasionally earns the same verdict. 

One character delivers a withering notice of The Cherry Orchard: “Went on too long. Didn’t like it.” Summerfolk goes on a tiny bit too long as well. It is, though, considerably more likeable than that. A sumptuous and emotionally charged experience.

There are a few minor imperfections: I could have done without superficial nod to female solidarity – it disrupts the tone and its simplifications put the past in an artificial perspective. On the other hand, it serves as an incredible reminder of how far we’ve come. Class is in the air. 

To me, this adaption is a fine piece of craftsmanship — every detail in place, nothing wasted. But it neither rouses nor amuses. It’s a class fable that knows exactly how close it stands to camp, and holds its laconic distance like someone gripping a ledge.

Anyhow. What unsettles me is not the rare, striking adaptations and revisionism — the ones that make us genuinely care about the characters and what befell them (Vanya, Yerma, 1536) — but the indifference of so many. The politics are in the original piece. 

Summerfolk is on at the National Theatre until 29 April

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Why Black Boys Theatre Club Fills Me With Hope

I’m running back and forward from the bar fetching cups of water at the Noël Coward Theatre for a group of teenagers waiting to Dracula starring Cynthia Erivo. 

It’s not the typical West End crowd. Producer Adam Kenwright has unlocked tickets for a variety of groups that may never otherwise be able attend. 

For many of the teenage lads here, however, it’s their first time inside a theatre at all.

The trip has been organised as part of an education matinee: youth charity Go Live, Erivo’s former school and in conjunction with Munya Chawawa, the comedian and satirist better known for viral sketches. But for the past year he has quietly been bringing groups of young Black boys to the theatre through his initiative, the Black Boys Theatre Club. 

After the show there is a Q&A with the resident director — and, crucially, a non negotiable trip to Nando’s.

Chawawa first publicly announced the project last October with a promotional video featuring actors including Jordan Stephens, Kedar Williams-Stirling and Mohamed Elsandel. The aim is simple but ambitious: to open up the world of theatre to a generation of young Black boys who rarely see themselves reflected in its audiences, or on its stages.

The project now has backing from major institutions including the National Theatre, Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre and the Bush Theatre. But its origins are personal.

Chawawa, who was born in Zimbabwe and moved to Norfolk at 11, discovered theatre relatively late. When he did, he realised how out of place he felt in those spaces.

“For me, Black Boys Theatre Club focuses on Black boys because they’re quite isolated from theatre,” he tells me. “There are cultural barriers and financial barriers.”

Those financial barriers are real. West End tickets can stretch into the hundreds — top price seats for Dracula are £225. (Prices start at £50 and there is a weekly lottery for a limited number of £30 tickets). 

Still, theatre audiences in Britain remain overwhelmingly white, and attending regularly is still largely a middle-class habit.

Yet Chawawa believes live theatre offers something increasingly rare.

“It’s one of the few places where you have face-to-face human interaction,” he says. “You experience a whole spectrum of human emotion — point blank. Not through a screen, not through digital means or VR headsets, but person to person.”

It got me thinking about a video that Reese Witherspoon recently posted a video encouraging young people to rethink the way they approach ambition. Instead of asking what their dream job is, she suggested, they should start by asking what they’re actually talented at. The advice struck a chord online — and it feels relevant here. Talent rarely reveals itself in a vacuum. Young people can’t pursue what they’re good at if they’ve never been exposed to it in the first place.

After the show, the boys stay behind for a Q&A with the resident director Amber Ruby and members of the technical team. We talk about lighting rigs, rehearsal processes and the many routes into the industry.

It’s the sort of backstage demystification that can quietly shift how a young audience imagines the arts.

“Black Boys Theatre Club aims to let boys know they’re allowed to enjoy theatre,” Chawawa says. “They have permission to.”

And at a time when the pressures on young people are perhaps greater than they have been at any time since the second world war, that sense of permission matters. 

However, a 2025 census by Major Players showed that Black men and women were on average the lowest paid across the creative industries, in both permanent salaries and freelance day rates. Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic representation had increased in the last 12 months, but is still below the UK national average of 18.3%. 

Exposure, he hopes, might plant a seed — not only for future audiences but for future storytellers. Some might end up on stage, others behind it.

“What we’re trying to do,” he says, “is plant the seed of them becoming storytellers themselves one day. That’s how humans have always connected — through stories.”

For me, it cemented the fact that have a storytelling crisis in our society. 

So what next?

“More bums on seats,” he says, laughing. But he’s serious about scale: more school partnerships, more shows, and eventually workshops where the boys can try acting, directing or stage management themselves. 

It isn’t hard to create an environment within a building that would be welcoming to groups that are historically shut off from engagement with the arts. Theatre will be the poorer unless this changes. 

For Munya, the long-term goal is simple: a theatre industry — and audience — that looks a little more like the world outside its doors.

And perhaps, for a few of the boys leaving this afternoon a new talent or passion they didn’t yet know they had. 

Say it with me: The work is never done.

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Olivier Awards 2026 – Who Should Win, Who Will Win🏆

TWO very different musicals — one about a marmalade-loving Peruvian bear, the other a darkly Sondheim fairy tale — have emerged as the dominant forces at this year’s Olivier Awards, earning 11 nominations each.

The annual event is the industry’s annual shop window, and the ceremony and media coverage honour SOLT’s description of the awards as “Britain’s most prestigious stage honours”. Even when they get it right, it’s often for the wrong reason – or show.

Anyway, this party’s like a hundred hours long. It is, though, good news that the Oliviers will once more get a prime-time screening in a new deal with the BBC.

The ceremony, marking 50 years since the first Olivier Awards were handed out, will take place next month and will be hosted by Nick Mohammed. 

Close behind the two musical juggernauts are three plays with six nominations: the stunning classic drama All My Sons, the crime drama Kenrex, and the Broadway transfer Stereophonic.

The acting categories are packed with star quality. In Best Actress, nominees include Cate Blanchett for her performance in The Seagull, alongside Marianne Jean-Baptiste for All My Sons, Julia McDermott for Weather Girl, Rosamund Pike for Inter Alia, and Rosie Sheehy for Guess How Much I Love You?

The Best Actor race is similarly competitive, featuring Bryan Cranston for All My Sons and Tom Hiddleston for Much Ado About Nothing. They are joined by Sean Hayes for Good Night, Oscar, Jack Holden for Kenrex, and David Shields for Punch.

The TikTok-grabbing summer stunt of Rachel Zegler in Evita at the London Palladium — that saw her perform nightly from the theatre’s outdoor balcony — put London theatre on the global map and drew huge crowds to the concourse outside and got everyone talking.

And with nominations for Here We Are, Shucked, American Psycho, The Producers, All My Sons, Stereophonic, Oh, Mary! and Brigadoon, we already have a clear overall winner: America.

Anyway, Among the most intriguing categories is Best New Play. Kenrex is nominated alongside Punch, Inter Alia, and Ava Pickett’s 1536 — 70s band saga Stereophonic bizarrely isn’t. 

Meanwhile, plenty of other surprising snubs. The powers that be have decided not to include Cynthia Erivo’s one-person Dracula, or the revival of Connor McPherson’s The Weir starring Brendan Gleeson. McPherson is currently filming a version of the play in Ireland with the cast from the revival. 

Director Jamie Lloyd also missed out for his directorial work on Evita and Much Ado About Nothing, while Mason Alexander Park failed to land nominations for both Oh, Mary! and the karaoke-fuelled Much Ado About Nothing. Giles Terera was nominated for Oh, Mary! but Mary’s strapping acting tutor played by Dino Fetscher wasn’t. A travesty. 

Anyhow. The prizes still depend heavily on subsidised theatre: look at the four awards nominations this year Punch and Kenrex that originated at the excellent Nottingham Playhouse and Sheffield respectively. 
Elsewhere, Mark Addy was overlooked for his tireless turn in The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, while The Fifth Step — starring Martin Freeman and Jack Lowden — drew a complete blank. The mind boggles. 

Read on for my thoughts on how seriously you should take Olivier…

No nods for the productions that have opened under the National Theatre’s new artistic director Indhu Rubasingham. Yikes.

For crystal clarity, greater transparency wouldn’t go amiss. The Society of London Theatre cannot guarantee every Olivier voter has seen every nominated show — and it’s unclear whether those who haven’t recuse themselves. By contrast, the Tony Awards enforce strict rules: voters must attend all nominated productions and log their attendance, or they lose the right to vote in any category involving that show.

Several industry figures I spoke to, however, suggested that Kenrex — and, to a lesser extent, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry — could prove formidable underdogs. But don’t be surprised, however, if quieter nominees lose out to work backed by the big guns.

Alas, Paddington the Musical feels unstoppable. Its real triumph lies in making theatre feel universally appealing. Yet while producer Sonia Friedman may have what looks like a licence to print money at the Savoy Theatre, she would do well to avoid £300 tickets and keep prices accessible for the next generation—especially now. High culture is for everyone. 

But look, my own feelings on all this, if anyone cares, two works stand apart: Kenrex and Stereophonic. Both were rare theatrical experiences: theatre is often at its best and most exciting when it takes you by surprise. 

Best New Musical

  • Here We Are – National Theatre, Lyttelton
  • Paddington the Musical – Savoy Theatre
  • Shucked – Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre
  • The Unlikely Pilgrimage Of Harold Fry –Theatre Royal Haymarket

Should win: Paddington The Musical

Will win: Paddington The Musical

Best Musical Revival

  • American Psycho – Almeida Theatre
  • Evita – London Palladium
  • Into the Woods – Bridge Theatre
  • The Producers – Garrick Theatre

Should win: Into The Woods

Will win: Into The Woods

Best New Play

  • 1536 – Almeida Theatre
  • Inter Alia – National Theatre, Lyttelton
  • KENREX – The Other Palace
  • Punch – Young Vic and Apollo Theatre Should win: Punch  Will win: Punch 

Best Revival

  • All My Sons – Wyndham’s Theatre
  • Arcadia – The Old Vic
  • Much Ado About Nothing – Theatre Royal Drury Lane
  • The Seagull – Barbican Theatre

Should win: All my sons

Will win: All my sons

Best New Entertainment or Comedy Play

  • The Comedy About Spies – Noël Coward Theatre
  • Every Brilliant Thing – @sohoplace
  • Oh, Mary! – Trafalgar Theatre
  • Paranormal Activity – Ambassadors Theatre

Should win: Every Brilliant Things

Will win: Paranormal Activity 

Best Actress

  • Cate Blanchett for The Seagull – Barbican Theatre
  • Marianne Jean-Baptiste for All My Sons – Wyndham’s Theatre
  • Julia McDermott for Weather Girl – Soho Theatre
  • Rosamund Pike for Inter Alia – National Theatre, Lyttelton
  • Rosie Sheehy for Guess How Much I Love You? – Royal Court Theatre

Should win: Marianne Jean-Baptiste

Will win: Rosamund Pike 

Best Actor

  • Bryan Cranston for All My Sons – Wyndham’s Theatre
  • Sean Hayes for Good Night, Oscar – Barbican Theatre
  • Tom Hiddleston for Much Ado About Nothing – Theatre Royal Drury Lane
  • Jack Holden for KENREX – The Other Palace
  • David Shields for Punch – Young Vic and Apollo Theatre

Should win: Sean Hayes

Will win: Bryan Cranston 

Best Actor in a Musical

  • Marc Antolin for The Producers – Garrick Theatre
  • James Hameed & Arti Shah for Paddington The Musical – Savoy Theatre
  • Andy Nyman for The Producers – Garrick Theatre
  • Jamie Parker for Into The Woods – Bridge Theatre
  • Diego Andres Rodriguez for Evita – London Palladium

Should win: Marc Antolin

Will win: James Hameed and Arti Shah

Best Actress in a Musical

  • Katie Brayben for Into The Woods – Bridge Theatre
  • Danielle Fiamanya & Georgina Onuorah for Brigadoon – Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre
  • Jane Krakowski for Here We Are – National Theatre, Lyttelton
  • Jenna Russell for The Unlikely Pilgrimage Of Harold Fry – Theatre Royal Haymarket
  • Rachel Zegler for Evita – London Palladium

Will win: Rachel Zegler

Should win: Rachel Zegler

Best Actress in a Supporting Role

  • Isis Hainsworth for Arcadia – The Old Vic
  • Julie Hesmondhalgh for Punch – Young Vic and Apollo Theatre
  • Lucy Karczewski for Stereophonic – Duke of York’s Theatre
  • Hayley Squires for All My Sons – Wyndham’s Theatre
  • Sophie Thompson for When We Are Married – Donmar Warehouse

Should win: Sophie Thompson

Will win: Julie Hesmondhalgh 

Best Actor in a Supporting Role

  • Hammed Animashaun for Dealer’s Choice– Donmar Warehouse
  • Paapa Essiedu for All My Sons – Wyndham’s Theatre
  • Zachary Hart for The Seagull – Barbican Theatre
  • Zachary Hart for Stereophonic – Duke of York’s Theatre
  • Giles Terera for Oh, Mary! – Trafalgar Theatre

Should win: Paapa Essiedu

Will win: Paapa Essiedu

Best Actor in a Supporting Role in a Musical

  • Trevor Ashley for The Producers at Garrick Theatre
  • Corbin Bleu for The Great Gatsby – A New Musical at London Coliseum
  • Tom Edden for Paddington The Musical at Savoy Theatre
  • Jo Foster for Into The Woods at Bridge Theatre
  • Oliver Savile for Into The Woods at Bridge Theatre

Should win: Jo Foster

Will win: Tom Edden

Best Actress in a Supporting Role in a Musical

  • Tracie Bennett for Here We Are at National Theatre – Lyttelton
  • Amy Booth-Steel for Paddington The Musical at Savoy Theatre
  • Kate Fleetwood for Into The Woods at Bridge Theatre
  • Victoria Hamilton-Barritt for Paddington The Musical at Savoy Theatre
  • Georgina Onuorah for Shucked at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre

Should win: Kate Fleetwood

Will win: Victoria Hamilton-Baritt

Best Director

  • Jordan Fein for Into The Woods at Bridge Theatre
  • Luke Sheppard for Paddington The Musical at Savoy Theatre
  • Ed Stambollouian for KENREX at The Other Palace
  • Lyndsey Turner for 1536 at Almeida Theatre
  • Ivo van Hove for All My Sons at Wyndham’s Theatre

Should win: Jordan Fein

Will win: Luke Shepherd

Gillian Lynne Award for Best Theatre Choreographer

  • Fabian Aloise for Evita at The London Palladium
  • Ellen Kane for Paddington The Musical at Savoy Theatre
  • Drew McOnie for Brigadoon at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre
  • Lynne Page for American Psycho at Almeida Theatre

Should win: Drew McOnie

Will win: Fabian Aloise

Best Costume Design

  • Enver Chakartash for Stereophonic at Duke of York’s Theatre
  • Linda Cho for The Great Gatsby – A New Musical at London Coliseum
  • Tom Scutt for Into The Woods at Bridge Theatre
  • Gabriella Slade (Costume Design) & Tahra Zafar (Paddington Design) for Paddington The Musical at Savoy Theatre

Should win: Tom Scutt

Will win: Linda Cho

Best Set Design supported by Blue-i Theatre Technology

  • Paul Tate dePoo III (Scenic & Projection Design) for The Great Gatsby – A New Musical at London Coliseum
  • Tom Pye (Set Design) & Ash J Woodward (Video Design) for Paddington The Musical at Savoy Theatre
  • Tom Scutt for Into The Woods at Bridge Theatre
  • David Zinn for Stereophonic at Duke of York’s Theatre

Should win: David Zinn

Will win: Tom Scutt

Best Lighting Design

  • Robbie Butler for Punch at Young Vic & Apollo Theatre
  • Jon Clark for Evita at The London Palladium
  • Aideen Malone (Lighting Design) & Roland Horvath (Video Design) for Into The Woods at Bridge Theatre
  • Joshua Pharo for KENREX at The Other Palace

Should win: Robbie Butler

Will win: Aideen Malone

Best Sound Design supported by d&b audiotechnik

  • Adam Fisher for Into The Woods at Bridge Theatre
  • Gareth Owen for Paddington The Musicalat Savoy Theatre
  • Ryan Rumery for Stereophonic at Duke of York’s Theatre
  • Giles Thomas for KENREX at The Other Palace

Should win: Stereophonic

Will win: Kenrex

Outstanding Musical Contribution

  • Matt Brind (Orchestrations & Arrangements) for Paddington The Musical at Savoy Theatre
  • Will Butler (Original Songs & Orchestrations) & Justin Craig (Orchestrations) for Stereophonic at Duke of York’s Theatre
  • John Patrick Elliott (Composition) for KENREX at The Other Palace
  • Chris Fenwick (Musical Supervision & Arrangements) & Sean Hayes (Live Piano Performance of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue) for Good Night, Oscar at Barbican Theatre

Should win: Kenrex

Will win: Stereophonic 

Best New Production in Affiliate Theatre

  • Ben And Imo by Mark Ravenhill at Orange Tree Theatre
  • The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams at The Yard Theatre
  • The Ministry Of Lesbian Affairs by Iman Qureshi at Kiln Theatre
  • Miss Myrtle’s Garden by Danny James King at Bush Theatre
  • The Shitheads by Jack Nicholls at Jerwood Theatre Upstairs at Royal Court Theatre

Should win: Ben and Imo

Will win: The Glass Menagerie

The Olivier Awards with Cunard are due to be held on April 12 at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

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Michael Morpurgo Interview: “It is the right of every child in this country to be able to go to a theatre and not spend a fortune.”

ON a beautiful late-winter morning, Britain’s storyteller-in-chief Sir Michael Morpurgo, 82, sits back in his armchair in a secluded Japanese-style tea house on his farm in beautiful Devon.

He is youthful and wise all at once as he begins to respond to gently probing questions a hush falls over the room. A kind of kinetic energy flows from this gentle and funny man.

We are talking about his book Private Peaceful which is about to be revisited as a major touring stage production that will return to theatres across the UK in Autumn, bringing fresh life to the acclaimed one‑person adaptation directed by Simon Reade.

Author of over 150 books, he is a defining voice in children’s literature: War Horse, The Butterfly Lion, Private Peaceful, Farm Boy and more are cherished as deeply by parents and teachers as by young readers.

In his award-winning 2003 novel Private Peaceful, Morpurgo delivers a deeply moving account by a seventeen-year-old soldier on the Western Front. Through the eyes of Private Thomas “Tommo” Peaceful, counting the hours to a dawn execution for cowardice. As he looks back over his childhood, his memories are full of family life deep in the countryside. 

Thirty years ago, while he was conceiving his story, Morpurgo and his wife, Clare, came upon a War Cemetery near Ypres, one name caught their eye: Private T.S.H. Peacefull, killed on 4 June 1915. It was never in question that this would become the name of his protagonist.

I ask why it is important for him to see his work regionally beyond major cities. “Well, soldiers from the First World War came from all over,” he says.

“Every single town should have a theatre. It’s the right of every child and every person in this country to be able to go to a theatre and not spend a fortune. When arts are decided in terms of worthwhileness; by the money you spend on them, then you have a problem,” Morpurgo says.

One of the pressures in schools today, Morpurgo believes, is time. “Teachers simply don’t have the space in the day,” he says. Then he leans forward. “I want to mention Mrs Skiffington.”

She was headteacher at Wickhambreaux Primary where he began teaching — and, he says, she understood instinctively why stories matter. Delightfully unconventional, she once arrived at a staff meeting with what she called a revelation.

“The school day is half an hour too long,” he nods. “I want to go home, you want to go home — and most importantly, the children want to go home. No one is learning anything. So, from three o’clock until half-past, every afternoon, choose a story or poem you love and read them aloud. Let the children leave school thinking and dreaming about stories.”

Morpurgo – a father of three, a grandfather of eight and a great-grandfather of four – smiles when asked about the importance of keeping storytelling alive. “It’s vital,” he says. “Storytelling is love in action.”

The former children’s laureate recalls recently watching his grandson-in-law read to his one-year-old great-grandson. The child was too young to follow the plot, he admits — but that wasn’t the point. “He feels the arms around him. He hears the voice resonating on his back. That’s where stories begin — in warmth, in closeness, in connection.” 

It echoes his own childhood, when his mother would sit between his and his brother’s beds and read aloud — Shakespeare, John Masefield, Edward Lear — giving each character a voice, filling the room with rhythm and music. “Sometimes it was funny, sometimes it was sad,” he says, “And do you know,” he adds, “it was always alive.”

That, he believes, is the essence of it: “If you’re telling a story to a child, you must mean it. Children know when you do. And when you do, the story becomes part of the bond you share — something that stays with them for life.” 

He and his wife Clare founded the brilliant Farms for City Children, following the arrival of the first city children, a group from Chivenor Primary School in Birmingham, on January 26th 1976. Fifty years on, he describes the charity as his greatest story.

What began as a bold experiment is now a movement, with farms in Devon, Gloucestershire and Pembrokeshire. More than 120,000 young people have lived as farmers for a week — feeding hens and pigs at dawn, milking in the early light, growing and cooking their own food, and walking fields that stretch far beyond the classroom.

Elsewhere, War Horse returns to the Royal National Theatre this spring —the most successful production in its history —and has now been seen by almost 9 million people.

He remembers the nerves of that first preview in 2007. “I’d seen it, and I knew it was too long,” he admits. A small puppet, perched on a table and newly arrived from South Africa, hardly inspired confidence. “I thought, this is ridiculous — it’s a pantomime horse. It’s not going to work.”

The defining moment came early in the show. “You’re five, ten minutes in,” he recalls. “It’s a boy and his horse in Devon before the First World War.” Then, in a heartbeat, the foal transforms into a full-grown horse: “more horse than a horse.” In that instant, he knew this was one of British theatre’s most phenomenal creations. “That was when I realised something wonderful was going to happen…” Surrounded by seasoned industry professionals, he was overwhelmed. “I was in bits, tears pouring down,” he says, smiling. “All these cynical people — they weren’t coping either.”

Private Peaceful is devastating, but full of warmth, humour, and love. I ask him how important it is that this new production preserves that balance. “Sadness is fine,” he says. “It’s important. It’s part of life. It was important to make it human, so that the friendships between people, families and homes, are there. There’s a solid base for them to understand the story, and the most important thing, for children reading about this kind of a tragic situation, is that there’s hope.”

We go on to talk about the fourth anniversary of the Russian bombs falling on Ukraine. A conflict that has turned tens of thousands of Ukranian civilians into soldiers overnight. He reflects: “History is never behind us,” he says. “Well, I hope they remember,” Morpurgo says quietly. “Not just in a ceremonial, poppy-wearing way (that has its place) but in an authentic way. These were real people. Real lives lost. Real families devastated. Whole societies shaken. War is a kind of madness,” says Morpurgo.

As our time runs out, I ask what he hopes audiences carry with them as the lights fade up.

He pauses.

“I’d like audiences to leave thinking: we must not let this happen again. But it does mean we have to try, constantly, to shape it differently. To understand one another better. To build something kinder. That’s what remembrance should be for.”

“I wouldn’t say I hope you enjoy Private Peaceful,” he adds. “I hope you carry it with you. I don’t think you’ll forget it.

This is his anthem for peace and humanity.

Private Peaceful 2026 tour will visit venues nationwide

War Horse runs 16 May until 30 July at the National Theatre

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How can we ensure real change in gender equality in new writing?

HOW many female playwrights have won the Olivier Award for Best New Play in the past 25 years?

Just four: Katori Hall, Lucy Kirkwood, Suzie Miller and Lolita Chakrabarti. 

Alas, the figures speak to a persistent gender imbalance in new writing and in the plays that reach major stages — particularly in the West End.

Indeed, a 2023 Sphinx Theatre’s Women in Theatre survey highlighted ongoing structural barriers facing women, including caring responsibilities and unequal access to commissioning opportunities.

And so to Dame Kristin Scott Thomas who has suggested that male theatre critics fail to grasp the female experience, arguing that plays by women receive unfair treatment. 

Picking up a lifetime achievement gong at the Women’s Prize for Playwriting ceremony, Scott Thomas said: “Where would I be without women playwrights?” she said. “To be honest, absolutely nowhere.” 

But Scott Thomas pointed to her recent role in Penelope Skinner’s flimsy drama Lyonesse, that ran at the Harold Pinter Theatre. The shoddy play, an exploration of the raw deal women get, drew strong audiences but sharply divided critics. “The play was mostly hated by the critics,” she said. “So why did people flock to the Pinter to catch it before we all vanished?”

Producer Ellie Keel, the co-founder of the The Women’s prize for playwriting later told The Stage: “Lyonesse was received as a very mediocre play, when actually it wasn’t. It feels like women writers are held to different standards, and written about in different ways.”

She continued “We don’t necessarily need more female critics. I just think the men should do better.” 

Cards on the table, sometimes I see things like this and just think sod it, just bugger off; Lyonesse was an entirely mediocre play. Negative (truthful) reviews come from respecting theatre not hating it.

That said, we are thankfully a long way from the kind of reviews by Telegraph critic Charles Spencer, who coined the phrase “pure theatrical Viagra”, that he used to describe a production of The Blue Room starring Nicole Kidman. Thank goodness. 

Changing your mind about a piece of work is part of the daily lexicon of being a critic. Michael Billington regretted his belligerent review of the late Sarah Kane’s Blasted. He queried how such naive rubbish had passed the Royal Court’s play-selection committee. Years later he suggested that his ‘initial comprehension’ had prevented him from giving an ‘honest assessment of its virtues and faults.’

Anyhow. The critical responses for Lyonesse, were mixed rather than out and out hostile. Times critic Clive Davis awarded it one star [he seemed to enjoy it as much as me]. 

Responding to Scott Thomas this week, Davis says: “Lyonesse may have done good business at the box office but I wonder how many advance tickets were sold before the show opened purely on the basis of Scott Thomas and (Lily) James’s star names? Blaming the patriarchy won’t wash. Bad writing is bad writing.” 

Well, quite. Critic Susannah Clapp observed that while Lyonesse contained “a kernel of interest” in its exploration of whether women feel trapped by systemic patriarchy, “this is not enough to give the play a pulse,” she said.

At the time, I wrote that the cast appeared so contorted by the lame material that they might have preferred the “sweet release of a stun gun rather than endure one more second.”

Furthermore, one cannot rewrite the past. Yet despite the reviews, Lyonesse enjoyed a sold-out run and reportedly broke box office records more than 20 times.

Reappraising the fiasco Lyonesse, though, is not the solution.

Face it, there is an irony here. Some contemporary writers position themselves as champions of inclusivity and enlightenment, yet produce work that feels strikingly one-sided, offering little generosity or nuance toward male characters: they cannot even bring themselves to give a character with a scrotum one decent part or even line. 

Others may call this kind of work bold or an uncompromising feminist truth; in Lyonesse I saw something doomed, heavy-handed and reductive. A shoddy star vehicle.

This strain of half-baked commercial theatre, preoccupied with grievance but short on balance, has become increasingly common in recent decades. Which makes you wonder: if that represents progress, is it at the very least contentious? 

Of course, I mostly agree with Scott Thomas. If critics are predominantly male, then female writers will be disadvantaged. But some of Britain’s best theatre critics are women and they loathed Lyonesse, too. 

Hitherto, the question that now needs asking by everyone is why do female playwrights continue to be offered fewer creative opportunities than men and what can we do about it? 

It does feel like way, way, way past time we found out.

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