January has always been a tough month for West End theatre with a large clear-out of shows. Schools are back, so family outings are off, Christmas bills must be paid and dry January often means no alcohol and self-imposed lockdown until half term comes round again.
But this year feels different. Of course, seasonal offerings like the famous Palladium panto close this month on schedule, as do fixed-run “events” with big stars like our Old Friends, starring Broadway’s Bernadette Peters, and the extraordinary Sunset Boulevard with Nicole Scherzinger. Producers usually take a break in January to look for the next big thing. However, for many, those big things have arrived early.
In one week before Christmas a slew of new shows opened back-to-back, garlanded with five-star reviews from enthusiastic theatre critics on a scale not seen since they decided to do their bit to help the theatre back on its feet after 18 months of lockdown.
What stands out is the sheer variety on offer — a tiny “binaural” Macbeth at the Donmar, an extraordinary stage version of the popular TV series Stranger Things, a brilliant adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Witches and, to round it off, Sir Sam Mendes’s fabulous production The Motive and the Cue — a bold and extravagant new play the like of which we thought we might not see again. All sold out with queues round the block.
The damage from ruinous lockdowns with misguided social distancing will take years to pay off
At last, the question “is the West End back?” can be answered honestly with a resounding “yes”. The damage from ruinous lockdowns — that started with misguided social distancing in theatres and culminated with the Omicron variant slamming the door days after we had been urged to reopen for Christmas 2021 — will take years to pay off. But it seems there is momentum at last.
Furlough payments aside, the commercial theatres’ plea for government help fell on deaf ears, as relief went to the subsidised building-based sector alone. And then at the 11th hour, the chancellor’s decision to extend and increase emergency theatre tax relief was announced and the results were instantaneous.
It was suddenly an attractive proposition to invest in live theatre again and producers dug out projects that had been sitting out three years of back-to-back pestilence, war and economic chaos. One ex-chancellor told me this tax relief was just a “rounding-up figure for Treasury”. The next government, please take note.
American investors faced with spiralling costs on Broadway, where a large musical starts north of $20 million — Cabaret with Eddie Redmayne was £3 million to put on in London but two years later will cost $25 million when it opens in New York in the autumn — poured money into London, recognising it as the best place to develop new work that, in success, could transfer to the Great White Way at much lower cost.
Hence in the next few months, an unprecedented slate of new productions will open in London featuring big stars like Succession’s Sarah Snook and Brian Cox (separately), another Doctor Who star in Matt Smith in an Ibsen classic reinvented for our times, following David Tennant’s similar treatment of Shakespeare, new musical adaptations of smash-hit movies like The Devil Wears Prada and Mean Girls, and with music for shows from star composers like Sir Elton John and Rufus Wainwright. And to round it off, a long-awaited new play by the all-star team of Sir Sam and Jez “Jerusalem” Butterworth.
I cannot recall a time for New Year optimism in the London theatre like this since the boom decade of the Eighties. While new-built theatres across the country — foolishly constructed with cheap RAAC — have closed and struggled to reopen, the Victorian and Edwardian theatres of London — lovingly restored and nurtured over decades by a handful of private individuals — continue to stand proud. Testament to the creativity, resilience and entrepreneurial ingenuity of a community who three years ago despaired they would ever be allowed to work again.
