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We need to talk about arts education

Theatre is my life. 

I was first in the family to go to university, in receipt of free school meals. Am working class, and I have a learning disability. 

Yet here I am.

Creative subjects seemed to be the only area I thrived on as a learner.

Despite repeated warnings, access to a creative curriculum – music, art and drama  remains out of reach for the vast majority of children from less privileged backgrounds.

Indeed, the country of Shakespeare no longer recognises drama as a key subject.

Here are some comments from a few teachers that I spoke to recently about the creative subjects disappearing by stealth from our state schools: 

‘My college has cut A level dance film music and drama entirely.’

‘Our college has cut BTEC music, a combination of factors of low recruitment and knock on of low uptake GCSE.’

‘My sons homework is only ever marked on spelling, algebra and grammar – not creativity.’

‘They (the government) brought in EBACC – which excludes the arts, which all but eliminates them. The schools struggle to find the time to teach the arts. ’

“I work in a special school and have been pressured to cut drama completely from the classroom – my manager wants evidence of ‘progressive writing and worksheets’ from classes.” 

“My secondary school in Morecambe has no music in KS3 and KS4 and no music teachers employed for the first time in my 30 years teaching in this school. It’s a tragedy.” 

“My secondary school still tries to offer drama GCSE and music but due to pressure students in year 11 and 13 were banned from taking part in school productions.” 

“I’m a secondary teacher, drama lessons have reduced from 50 minutes a week to an hour a fortnight.”

So, what can arts in schools offer children and young people from widening disadvantaged backgrounds?

As Head of Creative Communities at the Dukes, Lancaster; Lancashire’s only producing theatre, I am responsible for participatory work with brilliant diverse communities of all ages and abilities. 

I see on a daily basis the impact that creative learning has on people’s lives. Transferable skills, improved confidence, better health and improved wellbeing. The tangible evidence is abundant.

All of our creative engagement work is affordable, well-resourced, sustainably funded and / or have non-means tested bursaries. It’s a rewarding challenge. 

Politically, the current education secretary – a role that has been held by 10 different people since the Conservatives assumed power in 2010 has also been held by five different people since July last year alone. And the department Culture, Media and Sport is on the eleventh culture secretary in the space of ten years.

This is something that matters a great deal to me and I will not shut up about it.

Since the introduction of the EBacc in 2010, the number of GCSEs taken in arts subjects has declined by 40 per cent. Yet, judged by any rational criteria, removing arts subjects from the national curriculum makes no sense at all.

Yet the people who have been making these policies in government have seen and felt the massive advantages that can bring.

As an example of our “viability”, in tourism surveys, ‘Theatre’ is ranked second only to ‘Heritage’ as the reason quoted for international tourists choosing to visit the UK. Theatre – worth £7 billion to the UK economy – drives inward investment, generates intellectual property that is licensed all over the world, and, as noted by the Chancellor, plays a major role Britain’s soft power.

In fact, during a recent speech, the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, noted that the cultural industries had grown at twice the rate of the UK’s economy over the last decade stating they have made the UK the world’s largest exporter of unscripted TV formats and help give us a top three spot in the Portland Soft Power index.”

Meanwhile, schools are handing out clothing and food to children amid the cost of living crisis, while teachers report deteriorating hygiene among pupils as families cut back on brushing teeth, showering and even flushing the toilet.

The arts isn’t draining subsidy from the state, it is the driver of all national growth, generating tax revenue far greater than the investment it receives in return. What value do we put on that?

This summer 28.4% of GCSE exams were graded 7-9 in London, compared with 18.6% in the North West. A level results showed a similar picture. While in London 30% of A-level grades were A or A* (up from 26.9% in 2019), in the North West it was 24%. It highlights a worrying attainment gap that needs urgently addressing. 

Whatever happened to Levelling Up? 

Needless to say, teacher numbers are plummeting, hours are shrinking, the percentage of uptake from students to take GSCE and A’Level arts courses are down by over a 60% since 2010 and are plummeting further still.

Artists and teachers have long railed against the English baccalaureate, the system introduced without consultation under the former education secretary Michael Gove in 2010. The Ebacc excludes all arts subjects. It is also the bedrock on which a school’s Progress 8 score is based, which determines its place in performance tables. This gives schools an incentive to focus on “core” subjects – English, maths and sciences.

Of course, funding squeezes for schools, combined with the philosophical damage of arts no longer being recognised as a core subject on the secondary school curriculum, as of 2014.
The number of drama teachers in state-funded secondary schools in England has also fallen by 22% since 2011, and there has been a 15% decline in the number of music teachers and a 12% decline in the number of art and design teachers over the same period.

All this is seriously damaging the future of many young people in this country.

In fact, there is a dangerous disparity emerging between the state and the private sector in terms of provision for cultural education.

To paraphrase actor Sir Mark Rylance who used the bio of the programme for the recent West End production of Jerusalem to criticise cuts to arts education: 

“If, in modern day England, an institution like Eton deems drama important enough to have two theatres, why are we allowing our government to cut arts education from the life of the rest of our young people and our hard-pressed teachers,”

The next Sir Mark Rylance or Dame Floella Benjamin are out in Morecambe Bay Primary, I’m sure.

Sadly, young people in the most disadvantaged areas are least likely to be able to access cultural activity through school, reinforcing cycles of exclusion and deprivation.

In a recent report by the Cultural Learning Alliance titled ‘The Arts in Schools: Foundations For The Future’ a re-evaluation of the way arts subjects are assessed in schools is among the recommendations, also recommends every child has access to a minimum of four hours of arts education per week is called for as part of a rethink of the state education sector.

There is something too about time, and the problem with the arts being ‘bell-bound’, as is illustrated by the image below which describes a high-functioning classroom, and the flexibility that the arts require in terms of timetabling. The same length of lesson does not work for every discipline.

Furthermore, it is estimated that 4.3 million children and young people in the UK are growing up in poverty.

The Children’s Society reports that there are approximately 800,000 young carers in the UK, and that 39% have said that nobody in their school is aware of their caring responsibilities. The Sutton Trust has published data on the impact of the cost-of-living crisis on university students now, and there are predictions of a drop out crisis ahead.

In schools, headteachers are reporting that this crisis is resulting in increasing numbers of vulnerable pupils becoming disengaged and being groomed by gangs to run drugs from one city to other parts of the country, with the director of Diversify, a charity based in Rotherham, reporting that with children’s families unable to afford school meals ‘they are outside, hungry and cold. And in the context of schools having to cut back on the number of staff on playground duty due to financial pressures, or struggling to recruit and retain pastoral and support staff, due to low pay, it’s bleak.

I’d also like to clear up a few things. 

Firstly, standstill funding is a real terms cut; it is a corrosive form of zero-sum vandalism.

And second, community engagement work is not a loss leader, it’s an investment in a brighter future where new conversations, new academics, new voices and new audiences can meet. 

Because you can throw money at trying to entice new or different groups to your venue, but why should they come unless they see themselves truly reflected on stage and in every aspect of a theatre’s work? 

My wish is that we wake up to the fact that diversity – in all forms – age, gender, race, class – has real value: it doesn’t just ensure survival, it can genuinely invigorate organisations and be a spur to creativity and new ways of thinking.

What are the unmet needs of our communities and audiences?

It’s only by constantly challenging those assumptions, that we will ever get to a stage when the demographics of the stories that play out on our stages, match the demographics of the country.

These policies are restricting the arts to a privileged few. It’s time for a change.

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Edinburgh Fringe: Gush / Attachment: The Leech Show / Self Raising

There is usually a moment in a Fringe show, often after the first few minutes, when you start to relax. You are sure that you have a grip on it; all fear about making sense of things disappears.

It’s not so in Abby Vicky-Russell’s knotty but moving Gush, a photo of Prince Andrew looms Stage right. Pre-show, – a pulsing soundtrack loops: GUSH – GUSH GUSH – GUSH GUSH.

Then, a figure in a charcoal fluffy body suit and pink bob wig appears. Finally, I thought: showbiz!

Then it all stops.

Vicky-Russell re-enters playing Neil, a plumber from Yorkshire, who has been sent in to fix a leak on the set of the show that we are watching. Her physical comedy is top notch. 

Elsewhere, the resulting part stand up routine, part confessional play within a play gives the character Neil a mundane shimmer, and there are overtones of Victoria Wood in an expertly plotted visual gag involving a quiche and loads of table salt. Chaos. 

But, if anything, that overture understates the level of theatre sorcery going on here: Behind all this nonsense, a real-life, gruesomely compelling story emerges through a confessional monologue about abuse and father-daughter pain.

In any case, Gush, at Assembly packs some emotional punches and is an astonishingly unguarded piece – with a lot of potential – about the cruelties of abuse. 

Elsewhere, at Greenside I caught Attachment: The Leech Show – it’s ostensibly a slapstick piece about influential critic, Bob the Leech.

But only a very few of the gags get their laughs-and when slapstick goes flat, the effect is clunky.

This young company turn the stage into a zestful playground and give it all they have got, though the running gag makes it hard to conjure suspense – are critics really frustrated artists who never like anything? 

Yet in the final few minutes when Bob dies, the company come to the realisation that critics are just as vital to the industry as the artists that they observe.

This timely show strikes me as an enduring cult hit in the making.

Thirteen shows are deaf-led at Fringe this year, and one of those is Jenny Sealey’s lovely Self-Raising at Pleasance Dome.

“Secrets are easier to tell strangers. I work in theatre, that’s what we do.”

Well, quite.

This is an autobiographical play from disability-led company Graeae – alongside her “terp” (sign-language interpreter) where three generations of the Sealey family are unpacked.

Sealey set out to adapt Anne Fine’s book Flour Babies before real life took hold and she changed course. Opportunity and social mobility are underlying themes.

The narration is accompanied by captions, sign language and audio description, along with family pictures, video and voiceovers from Sealey’s son, Jonah. 

This show is beautifully put together, from the cunningly simple design by Anisha Field where three cupboards neatly double as the family kitchen and a darkroom and where family photos – and secrets are developed, to the simple lighting design by Emma Chapman.

There is almost too much here to be squeezed into the brief running time, but director Lee Lyford keeps things motoring.

Sealey and her co-writer Mike Kenny have delivered a charming story that is funny, graceful and fully accessible. Alas, it’s the subject rather than the staging that moves the emotions.

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Edinburgh Fringe: Frankie Thompson and Liv Ello: Body Show / Woodhill / The Boy Out The City

From the sublime to the ridiculous: Frankie Thompson and Liv Ello: Body Show, rip up  snippets of pop culture, lip-sync, clown around, and ultimately craft a rich interrogation of eating disorders and gender dysphoria.

It also happens to be an entertaining hour that is cool, funny, heartwarming and infectiously optimistic too.

Examining the power structures and political intrigue that have shaped man’s world, the duo deliver a dense, ambitious triumph that totally taps into the Barbenheimer zeitgeist.

There are snippets of pop music, flashes of apocalyptic explosions, TVs Come Dine With Me and Bake Off – with the pair miming expertly to the audio and visual segments.

It pincers the audience in a kind of keen, nervous imbalance—it holds our attention by throwing our incredulity at where we are as a society back in our faces.

“It’s great having a break from having a body,” they tell us.

This is a very artfully put together show. Don’t be misled by its bumbling, ditzy qualities.

At Summerhall, LUNG Theatre have created a lyrical and relentless piece of verbatim dance-theatre in Woodhill.

In June 2018, a prison report stated that, “staggeringly”, a total of 20 men had taken their lives in seven years at Woodhill, higher than at any other jail in England and Wales. Disturbingly, there have been more cases since.

Assembled from 70 interviews, Matt Woodhead’s visceral piece focuses on the deaths of three real prisoners deaths –  Stephen Farrar, Chris Carpenter and Kevin Scarlett – in HMP Woodhill in Milton Keynes – and their families’ fight for justice.

One of the best things about Woodhead’s production is that it gets the details so right; not just in the relentless score with composition by Sami El-Enany, or Will Monk’s pulsing single lightbulb design, or the painful thump of the music and testimony, but in the way it interrogates so expertly the subject matter.

It is deeper, edgier, more emotionally dangerous than this groundbreaking company’s earlier work; script, design and lighting, soundtrack and choreography conjoin in one lethal embrace.

Up there with the very best of the Fringe shows that I saw, this is a terrifying and haunting 70 minutes; At times it’s like a hallucination looming out of the dark.

“We spent so long trying to keep the men safe from each other,” says one official voice, “we forgot to keep them safe from themselves.”

Powerful, essential theatre.

Declan Bennett’s rough and ready Boy Out The City at Underbelly, Cowgate, is directed efficiently by Nancy Sullivan.

This confessional piece is inspired by Bennett’s experiences of pandemic isolation in Oxfordshire. At the start he tells us. “This is about gay shame and loneliness, not Covid lockdown”.

Sullivan doesn’t always negotiate the switches in mood or the fact that Bennett throws too many back stories into the mix. But the story is never dull, and he is a relatable and compelling storyteller.

It’s a simple setup, but one freighted with complexities. There’s also flourishes of some genuinely great writing here: “You bring a bit of culture into the village,” locals tell him, “but we think they mean homosexuals.” It is the kind of place “where butter forgets to melt out of the fridge”.

Later, Autumn hits “like discarded brown corduroy”.

Just lovely.

His comic timing is also spot-on, and if the reminders of the storytelling veers dangerously close to being self indulgent, overall, it also feels raw and truthful.

Bennett is quite clearly a man who has learned, sometimes the hard way, that you don’t have to put on a performance all the time.

Frankie Thompson and Liv Ello: Body Show runs at Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 27 August

Woodhill runs at Summerhall, Edinburgh, until 27 August, then Shoreditch Town Hall, London, 20 September-7 October and North Wall Arts Centre, Oxford, 19–20 October.

Boy Out The City runs at Underbelly, Cowgate until 27 August.

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The Other Palace is just another example of the corporate takeover of theatre culture

To London’s Other Palace, a rolling mess. Honestly, the full catalogue of stories would take more than a book to cover.

As you may now have read, a summarily letter was sent to casual front of house workers that had the professionalism of a Bank Holiday sing-a-long matinee of We Will Rock You.

The blanket letter sent from some kind of middle-management bunker began: “Dear Staff Member,” — have these people not heard of mail merge?

“I am writing to give you notice that your current contract with The Other Palace ends on 3rd September 2023. We have some new roles as detailed below available for the new show which starts on 8th September 2023.”

In 5 days? It went on to promise that the new roles with “fixed weekly hours” would mean “more stability within the team on all positions”.

Right you are. Aware that they can do whatever they want, though, the grim letter asks employees to send a brief paragraph for the role they wish to apply for and ‘why we should re-hire you’.

Where do you even start? It’s called fire and rehire – it seems nearly all corporate West End theatre operators are currently cynically exploiting things in this way to drive down casual workers pay and conditions. Join a union, kids. 

However, The Other Palace’s behaviour exposes much more than just low pay and poor terms and conditions; it also highlighted the significant legal imbalance that exists between arts workers and their employers.

But wait! A brazen statement followed: “The Other Palace issued a letter to FOH employees on casual & fixed-term contracts due to end on 3 Sept. We were pleased to let them know that there was the opportunity to continue working with us should they wish to be considered & are delighted by the number who are interested.”

There is simply no moral failing of theirs that would not cause their employees to passionately excuse it or love them more for it. Obviously. 

In a recent profile, fresh from a spin class, Other Palace artistic director Paul Taylor Mills said that he had stopped engaging in conversation on Twitter as an act of self-preservation. “It’s too aggressive for me.”

Fair enough. Bizarrely, a go-to phrase of Mr Taylor Mills is ‘Be Kind’.

Sorry what? Far be it for me to speak for all “real people”, but as a real person I have to say my overall impression is that the only people who are not usually being kind are the people in positions of power who deploy the phrase.

And yet, everything being someone else’s fault is surely not the most appealing strategy. 

Crucially, The Other Palace allegedly has and continues to put its loyal staff under tremendous stress and pressure. Why do we assume that they will do it for love?

In the meantime, key Theatre service staff are surviving on less and less. Where’s the sense and where’s the future in that? Where is SOLT?

Last week, one prominent West End theatre operator terminated FOH contracts with 2 weeks notice – one usher who contacted me said: “We didn’t even get a letter!” 

Of course, the entire theatre industry is facing the impact of a bleak economic reality, with the real challenges of Brexit and the hangover from the pandemic. Nobody disputes that.

But maybe corporate theatres like The Other Palace should think about treating casual workers with some dignity. As the cost of living crisis bites, maybe all theatres – Nimax, LW Theatres, Delftont Mackintosh and ATG should think of the ways that poor decision making, firing and rehiring loyal staff is impacting frontline staff and their wellbeing. And how about a little more transparency from West End Theatre owners around their commitment to paying staff Living Wage – not just Minimum wage.

These small steps may just help shift a theatre culture that currently sees nothing unusual in a cheap, often young drama school students, actors in the casual workforce subsidising its success.

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Here’s Your Definitive Guide To Edinburgh Fringe 2023 (You’re Welcome)

The finest shows at Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Allegedly.

Hello to you,

I’ve been very well thanks for asking.

Anyway, with over 1 million tickets issued so far and thousands of people watching street performances and free shows; the 2023 Fringe is proving as popular as ever. 

I have pulled together a list of very good shows– and others that should be good.

First up: Spooky-but-silly sketch show Party Ghost is hilarious, I hear.

Queue for returns for All Inside by fourth-wall breaking Adrian Bliss– I think he is a surreal superstar – don’t miss him at The Pleasance.

You are in safe hands with Jenny Sealey, artistic director of disabled-led theatre company Graeae, who makes her stage debut in Self-raising, a hilarious true-life story about growing up Deaf.

Cross genre Frankie Thompson and Liv Ello: Body Show is riding high after a slew of five star reviews – snap up a ticket. The Ice Hole: A Cardboard Comedy, at Pleasance Courtyard, is a physical comedy show performed using a thousand pieces of cardboard, of course.

Anyhow. Make sure you catch hilarious Xhloe Rice and Natasha Roland in And Then the Rodeo Burned Down. If you missed Tony! The Tony Blair Rock Opera in London, catch it at the EICC; hour of knockabout fun with a spirited young cast. 

Meanwhile, I hear Dark Noon also at EICC is an extraordinary show co-directed by Denmark’s Tue Biering and South Africa’s Nhlanhla Mahlangu for Fix & Foxy.  Go and see Funeral(Ontroerend Goed does grief) at Zoo Southside.

Over at Traverse, don’t miss Isobel McArthur’s jukebox romcom The Grand Old Opera House Hotel and poignant play Heaven – both come highly recommended.

If you like musicals, God Catcher created by Cassie Muise and Tyler McKinnon, is a re-imagining of the myth of Arachne and is running at Underbelly. 

Fresh from appearing on Broadway in Moulin Rouge! Declan Bennett performs autobiographical show Boy Out in the City at Cowgate.

Magic fans, keep your morning free and catch Mario the Maker Magician at Udderbelly – a feel-good fifty minutes for families.

Elsewhere, one woman/man/plumber character-comedy spectacular GUSH, first seen at Vault Festival, is at Assembly George Square.  Canadian duo Agathe and Adrien of N.Ormes Assembly Roxy have good word of mouth. Stinging bio-drama Lena unpacks the tragedy of Lena Zavaroni.  

And 10 speakers surround the audience in Tomorrow’s Child, an adaptation of a Ray Bradbury short story at Assembly Checkpoint is worth catching.

At enchanting Summerhall, Lung theatre’s Matt Woodhead’s five star verbatim drama Woodhill focuses on the deaths of three prisoners and their families’ battle for justice. Just go! 

Gunter is an atmospheric retelling of a famous witch trial with beautiful music, by Julia Grogan, Rachel Lemon, and Lydia Higman. Startling show, Concerned Others by Alex Bird examines Scotland’s drug deaths with flair.

Also, Lady Dealer, performed by Peckham trailblazer Alexa Davies, stars a rhyming drug dealer. And another show I am intrigued by is Gusla, performed entirely in untranslated Polish. Why not.

Finally, Paines Plough’s pop-up venue Roundabout is hosting Miriam Battye’s lively two-hander Strategic Love Play and fun 2022 Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting winner Bullring Techno Makeout Jamz by Nathan Queeley-Dennis. Both sound promising.

My wildcard show is: Mad Ron: Crime School,think Phil Mitchell doing stand up with some excerpts from his “hard man” memoir. 

So, there you have it, that’s the end of my definitive Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2023 guide. (There’s always the Free Fringe, though, if you are feeling the pinch.)

I hope you have found some use in this guide to what the Fringe world has on offer. 

Bye for now,

Carl x

If you have tips, tweet me: @mrcarl_woodward *thumbs up emoji*.

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Edinburgh Fringe Shouldn’t Exist In A Civilised Society

The 76th Edinburgh Fringe festival has begun but there is concern some parts of the event may be under threat because of the financial climate.
Organisers of the Edinburgh Fringe have declared the situation has reached a “crisis point” and also admitted the event’s long-running financial model is “no longer viable for anyone”.

The boss of one of the Fringe’s biggest venue operators, Assembly Festival has warned the company may not survive another year due to a £1.5m debt and was surviving on a short-term loan.

The Stage Awards and The Total Theatre Awards, both key opportunities where talent is discovered, won’t go ahead this year. Indeed, ministers respond to growing hardship by telling the public to just work more hours.

Meanwhile, Edinburgh International Festival director Nicola Benedetti has cautioned that the city is facing an “identity crisis”

Does it matter? This year marks the second largest programming on record, with 3,535 shows registered in 248 venues, it is the Fringe that dominates the city each year and nothing seems to stand in its way. Furthermore, according to a report from The Scotsman, local business and hotels indicate demand for accommodation suggests that the attendance rates have returned to pre-pandemic levels. 

Business as usual. 

But I would say it does matter for several reasons. My real concern, in viewing the ecology of the Fringe are for performers and audiences from low-income backgrounds – incurring debt and making huge sacrifices to be there – accessing the festival. 

What record breaking tourism ignores is that, in the complex ecology of British theatre, everything is interconnected.

In some ways, the “crisis point’ feels most emblematic of all the current systemic failings and their knock-on costs to ordinary people who simply cannot afford them.

Since right now, civilised long weekend accommodation would set you back £1,300-2,000 for four nights – flats are being listed at around £10,000 for the month – that is before travel, food, and theatre tickets.

In a sobering read, The Guardian ran a piece recently that featured performers considering the financial risks. 

As one act puts it: “If you break even that’s a bonus… It’s not just about bums on seats, the more important thing is using the fringe to generate relationships with people interested in the work. We should end up with tour dates for 2024. That’s why you go. It’s an investment.”

Anyhow. Times critic Clive Davis, meanwhile, summed it up in his column: “For the past couple of days I’ve been staying in a run-down student block near Holyrood. My room is cell-like and the soundproofing so flimsy that I can hear the woman in the next room clearing her throat. Four of us are sharing a shower and toilets; on the first day I was here there was no hot water.”

Oh dear.

If all this wasn’t implausible enough, I can only congratulate a group of performers who travelled from the US staying in a disused Cold War bunker after being quoted £30,000 for accommodation in the city centre of Edinburgh for the month of August.

For that you can blame the greed of Edinburgh City Council who, by disobeying the simple rules of supply and demand, have reduced the market value of the Fringe to the point that, sooner or later, it will inevitably collapse.

Too little too late. Sigh.

Anyway, I will be in Edinburgh for 4 nights (17-21 Aug). If you have show tips, email mrcarlwoodward@gmail.com – I’ll be updating this blog daily. 

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Miss Saigon

Ah, Miss Saigon. You wonder why UK theatre puts itself through the torment of trying to entertain Britain. It has never been harder to produce theatre – let alone big musicals. 

I should start, then, by reminding everyone, including myself, that Miss Saigon first opened in 1989 and ran for “only” 10 years –it later transferred to Broadway and won multiple prizes including two Olivier and three Tony awards.

Following the dreary controversy surrounding Sheffield Theatres’ production of Miss Saigon– (one theatre company dropped the venue from its touring schedule in protest) here is the UK’s first brand-new production of the crowd-pleasing musical, with lyrics “modified in collaboration with the show’s original writers”. Fair enough. 

What’s undeniable, though, is that this bold Miss Saigon isn’t ‘deeply traumatic’ at all, it’s merely embroiled in another front of the 2023 culture war.

Indeed, a couple of the lyrics have been tweaked. Take for instance: “Why was I born of a race that only thinks of rice” becomes, “Why am I stuck in a place where they make you plant rice?” 

Anyhow. Robert Hastie and Anthony Lau, directors of the Crucible’s production of Miss Saigon, said they had taken a “new approach” which they hoped would “shift the perspective” on the show. For me, it did.

Anyway, what is the secret of its new success? Partly the fact that music and words are by the geniuses behind Les Misérables, Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg. 

The score is beautiful and this production packs some impressive punches. 

Making her debut, the role of Kim was Desmonda Cathabel; a ‘Stephen Sondheim Performer of the Year’ winner, who seems a remarkable find. There were moments when she moved me to tears. 

In any case, Chris Maynard gives a powerful performance as her beloved GI Chris, though fails to generate much warmth.

It was an inspired idea to relocate the story of Puccini’s Madam Butterfly to Vietnam just before the fall of Saigon, and the production superbly captures the confusion and terror of war.

In the opera, Pinkerton’s abandonment of Cio-Cio-San strikes one as heartless. But, in this version, the lovers are separated by the enforced American evacuation of Saigon in 1975. 

So much of it works. The genuinely funny and self aware young Vietnamese women working as sex workers for the American GI troops under the watch of a sardonic local pimp called The Engineer – here gender switched and played brilliantly by Joanna Ampil. She is caught between two worlds and dreams of escape to the USA. Ampil gets maximum value from her number The American Dream, the one moment in the show of razzle dazzle. 

Overall, this ‘rigorous reimagining’ leaves one admiring the technical tightrope skill of Lau and Hastie’s production, the combined saturated designs of Ben Stones and Andrezj Goulding, which bring out particularly strikingly the gaudy vulgarity and neon ugliness of Bangkok.

Anyway, for fans of revisionism, untitled f*ck m*ss s**gon play moves to Young Vic in September.

Miss Saigon runs at Crucible Sheffield until 19 August.

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Rufus Norris is stepping down in 2025 as artistic director of the National Theatre

What will his legacy be?

As you may by now have read, The National Theatre’s artistic director, Rufus Norris, announced his departure this week; he had been an associate director at the NT since 2011.

When Norris took over the NT in 2015, it felt like an institution at the height of its powers. It was also the heady days pre-Brexit, social media was not such a cesspool and there was plenty of cash in the reserves.

This week, low-key Norris, who has also served as chief executive of the NT since 2015, described his time in charge as the “greatest privilege” of his career but also “the most challenging in our history”.

Having steered the NT through the pandemic and Brexit, Norris, has been dealing more recently with an £850,000 DCMS budget cut by Arts Council England.

Norris made his feeling known that Levelling-up in the arts should “not be at the expense of London.”

He added: “What London contributes to our economy and creative status in the world is enormous and outweighs the small amount of money we are talking about”.

Point of fact, the six artistic directors in the theatre’s history have all been white men: Sir Laurence Olivier (1963-73), Sir Peter Hall (1973-88), Sir Richard Eyre (1988-97), Sir Trevor Nunn (1997-2003), Sir Nicholas Hytner (2003-15) and Norris.

You wonder, then, if the NT may explore dual leadership, like the recent appointment of Daniel Evans and Tamara Harvey as co-artistic directors at the RSC. Perhaps the first person of colour will take the reins.

Indeed, Norris also made a handful of structural changes that will have a legacy.

First up? Norris has actively championed environmental sustainability (the NTs energy bill has gone up from £800,000 a year to £3.5 million per year) and a green agenda.

During the pandemic and at a time of great uncertainty, Norris appointed brilliant Clint Dyer as deputy artistic director to oversee the theatre’s creative output.

The absolute highlight of Norris’s entire tenure for me, though, saw him oversee The National Theatre Collection, set up in 2019, that is now streamed in 85% of secondary state schools, for free.

Let’s not forget National Theatre at Home, too.

Furthermore, on stage the NT has had success on the increased diversity, and gender equality front.

And over the next 12 months, 19 out of the NT’s 21 productions will be by living writers and 60% of the directors at the NT over the past eight years have made their debut. 

Of course, hits included Small Island, Jack Absolute Flies Again, The Lehman Trilogy, Mosquitoes, and current play The Motive and the Cue.

But did we get a mega hit like War Horse? No, sadly. 

Personally speaking, I found a lot of the artistic commissioning during his tenure indifferent. Norris regularly failed to introduce a basic level of quality control. See: wonder.land, Macbeth, Salomé, Saint George and the Dragon, Manor, Common, Cleansed, When We Have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other, and Kerry Jackson.

In fact, a journalist I was sat next to at a First Night summed up his tenure perfectly: “It’s not that Rufus has bad taste, it’s that he has no taste.”

Recently, he was also accused of “blatant nepotism” by employing his wife Tanya Ronder as book writer on baffling musical Hex. 

Yup, what it needed, of course, was a decent producer to tell him: “Do not remount this (again), or employ your wife at a time when creative freelancers are struggling, you’re ruining Christmas.”

Opinions, I understand, will differ on that one, as they do on nearly all matters in the theatre. It’s a tough gig.

But look, in terms of Norris’s opening mission statement, his mission to make the NT for everyone has served its purpose and more if we judge him by these words: “I think it is very important that we reflect the city and the country we are in. We have to be national in terms of what we are debating, the subjects we are looking at, and particularly the people and stories we are representing.”

Mission accomplished. Mostly.

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The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

a touching musical about a man who ages backwards

Youth is wasted on the young. Maybe.

First seen off West End four years ago, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (The Musical) takes F Scott Fitzgerald’s 1922 short supernatural story and 2008 Brad Pitt film, smashes them both together, and shifts the setting to Cornwall.

Benjamin Button (Jamie Parker) is born, as a 70-year-old, to bemused parents in December 1918. Time marches forward, he ages backwards.

Parker never does the expected, and is never sloppy or over-expressive. The role of Benjamin seems to have released something in him.

There is no overkill in writer-director Jethro Compton’s production that is always self-aware that this is a stage version of a story that most people are familiar with from the film: a man who is old when he is born and an infant when he dies.

The chief pleasure, however, lies in the music and the production. Some of the songs – especially the wistful ‘Matter of Time’ – etches itself on the memory.

Sometimes the evening feels a little underpowered, and while Molly Osborne and the enthusiastic 12-strong actor-musician ensemble deliver, some of the 22 scenes need a touch more definition.

But the whole Benjamin Button cast is blessed with a zest and captivating charm I have rarely seen equalled, and one leaves this ambitious production in a mist of joy and tears.

Yes, there are rough edges that could be chopped, yes, there are occasional scenes that are not powerfully played. Yes, it is too long. But there is so much more that is big and bold, imaginative and great-hearted.

Olivier Award-winning actor Jamie Parker plays the title character who ages in reverse in the actor-muso production at Southwark Playhouse Elephant

Indeed, it’s hard not to compare it to foot-stomping musicals Come From Away and a Once for all its sentiment. Darren Clark’s score is lush; what makes it so special is the ripple of bitterness beneath the surface.

The film was a twee train wreck. This Benjamin Button, however, is a multifaceted gem, chock-full of love, charm and joy, and it fits the Southwark Playhouse Elephant space like a glove.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button runs until 1 July (020 7407 0234, southwarkplayhouse.co.uk)

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Aspects of Love

There is something off in the tone of Aspects of Love right from the start.

The decision to revive Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical – based on David Garnett’s 1955 novella – about a love triangle in 2023 was Michael Ball’s idea.

Ball – who played Alex in the 1989 production – returns to sing Love Changes Everything, (lyrics by Charles Hart and Don Black) this time as uncle George. He does it nobly.

There are 39 random scenes. At some point through Alex (Jamie Bogoyo) shoots former lover Rose (Laura Pitt-Pulford) in the arm. His uncle (Ball) is more concerned about his Matisse wall art. 

The majority of the book and lyrics are stupefying. At the interval I thought my drink had been spiked.

“I only have one life,”‘ drones one character. Only judderingly to add: “Not two.”

In one bit, the chaotic singing collides with the unspeakable: “George used to say you can have more than one emotion at the same time.”

The actual dialogue seems almost an afterthought, and the actors speak their lines without much confidence that they’re worth saying. And so we’re aware of the performers as performers. They’re not all sure what they’re meant to be conveying. And we’re not either.

The other overriding issue with this toe-curling production is that it borders on misogyny. Grooming is overlooked. It’s grim viewing, obviously.

Theatre is an addictively evil thing, though, so once I’d watched act 1 I knew I’d sit through the lot, just to see if something deeply significant actually happened. It didn’t, obviously.

The second half of Jonathan Kent’s production is scattered – as if it had been added to or subtracted from at random. Everything is spelled out. 

Nothing you think could possibly be worth salvaging from this abomination.

The ones who really stand out in this mess, though, are Pitt Pullford and Bogoyo. But their work doesn’t really hold together here, how could it?

They deserve better.

One of the only other things I thought, though, that really elevated the occasion beyond the sum of its parts was the 13-piece band and Tom Kelly’s lush new orchestrations. Other redeeming moments come thanks partly to John Macfarlane’s design and Jon Clark’s lighting. 

But the set, expensive costumes and people seem to be sitting there on stage, waiting for the unifying magic that never happens.

Leaving the Lyric theatre where I saw Aspects of Love, I felt the same way the women must have when uncle George dropped dead: exhausted and relieved.

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