Examination of Witness (Questions 40-51)
THE THEATRES
TRUST
25 JANUARY 2005
Q40 Chris Bryant: The stage machinery
at Stratford is still listed. They cannot move it, can they, even
though it is unusable?
Mr Longman: No. I am sorry, that
is not the case. The fact that a building is listed means that
you have to argue and justify the case. I was in Stratford on
Avon the other day. I know the machinery to which you refer and
we gave evidence to your Committee earlier in the case of Stratford.
I suspect that any scheme involving Stratford is going to involve
the total removal of that stage machinery. There are other examples
of its type around the country. If a decent case is made, there
is no way, in my understanding, that English Heritage or the local
council would be likely to stand in the way of those sorts of
alterations. What is needed is the money. Stratford is fortunate
because it has the commitment in principle of £50 million
from the Arts Council England Lottery. It is also getting a sensitive
architect who will look at the building, do a proper conservation
plan, work out what is important, what is not important and which
bits are sensitive.
Q41 Chairman: One of the problems in
trying to go to the theatre in London is that the person who wants
to book a seat and to attend is treated too often as some kind
of nuisance. If you want to book by phone, you have to pay a charge.
I do not know why. The people are employed in the box office anyhow
and that is part of the system but you have to pay a substantial
charge on top of the price of the seat. That is if you can get
through to the box office and that is if, when you speak to the
box office, they are listening to what you say. I rang last week
wanting to book for a matinee performance of something. I was
given a whole list of seats. I said, "Have you got anything
better?" and she said, "We do have things better for
the matinee" for which I had asked originally. I was then
told I could have an obstructed view seat. What on earth are theatres
doing having obstructed view seats? This is not only the kind
of historic theatres that Chris was talking about. When the Donmar
was reconfigured, it was reconfigured in a way in which you could
only be sure of having an unobstructed view if you were sitting
in the front row. I know because I have sat in other rows and
it is maddening to have a head, even if it is the head of the
Lord Chancellor, in front of you. The Cottisloe reconfigures its
seating systems and they have obstructed views too. For those
of us who are really keen to go to the theatre, we often find
it is an obstacle race and there is nothing more maddening—I
hope you will agree—than to have psyched yourself up to
something you are really hoping you will enjoy and then you have
a bloody head in front of you for the whole of the performance.
End of Ancient Mariner's oration.
Mr Rhymes: I am delighted I am
not in my former job of running the trade association for theatre
managers and producers. I am simply the chairman of The Theatres
Trust. I would simply defer most of your questions and comments
to when you have the Society here.
Q42 Chairman: You must have a view.
Mr Rhymes: I personally have a
view and I certainly have a view having been at one stage in my
career in a box office. The only thing I would say is at least
we have progressed from your having that much view of the clerk
who is attempting to sell you tickets to that much view, something
that we started at the National Theatre. Sir Laurence's comment
at that time was, "At least you can smile at them when you
cannot sell them the ticket for one of my performances."
The whole question of the telephone charges on top of the price
of going to see the show is part of the economics of the theatre
management, the bricks and mortar and the producing management.
Personally, I find it undesirable that there should be an addition
to the price that is listed for going to see a show.
Q43 Mr Hawkins: I wanted first of all
to congratulate you on Act Now, your report, and the work
that you have done. I was personally involved some years ago with
working with the Grand Theatre in Blackpool and I know how much
your organisation has helped with that and all over the rest of
the country. Your evidence reinforces that. In your report and
in your submissions to us, you are obviously raising submissions
about potential other sources of funding. You make the point that
clearly a West End theatre is a huge boost to British tourism.
To what extent do you feel that perhaps this has not been recognised
enough in government?
Mr Longman: I think it has been
recognised in government. When we presented the report initially,
there was a session with the Secretary of State and no one has
come back and seriously queried any of the findings. The report
has been looked at by people. It is one thing to say that; it
is another thing to produce statistics like we did when we launched
the report to say there were over £200 million of tax revenues
for the government. The VAT taken by the Chancellor on ticket
sales in the West End alone is £48 million a year, or was
at that time. If you compare that with the £17 million we
are looking at, I am sure I could make all sorts of cases to a
Chancellor of the Exchequer but you may have more luck than we
do. The report was never a clarion call to government saying,
"Here is a problem; give us the money." These are commercially
owned buildings. They have no desire to go into the Arts Council
system and be revenue funded. We are not asking for that. In operational
terms, they could make do. What we are arguing is that there is
a commercial case for the government, for UK plc, to help with
the buildings and the one-off costs of that. What the Society
is coming up with, if you like, is a partnership from theatre
owners to commercial schemes like the one which has been outlined
for backstage at the Palladium, and hopefully money from other
public sources, which I do not think is likely to exclude the
Lottery. One could then make up an overall package, but you have
to look at each theatre differently and individually to see what
is needed, what can realistically be achieved. There is a case
in our evidence that Arts Council England, which by and large
stopped making buildings a priority after about five or six years
of Lottery funding, really should reopen its doors to Lottery
money for buildings. If you compare what the Arts Council Lottery
is putting into arts buildings of all sorts with what the Heritage
Lottery is putting into museums and galleries, which in a sense
is a comparable job, ten years ago I came to this job from the
Museums and Galleries Commission which I had run. We had a reckoning
as to what needed to be done to put the UK's museums and galleries
into order. The Heritage Lottery fund has been doing that pretty
regularly, among its many other tasks, over the last 10 years.
The last figures I saw showed that the Heritage Lottery was putting
in an average of about £91 million a year into museum and
gallery buildings. The Arts Council, over 10 years overall, has
been putting in about £35 million a year for theatre buildings,
far less, which is why we still have this backlog in many parts
of the country. Regardless of ownership, there are huge amounts
still to be done.
Q44 Mr Hawkins: It is the case, is it
not, that all the surveys that are done of visitors to London,
whether American, from Europe or from anywhere in the world, tend
to cite the ability to go and see top quality plays at West End
theatres as one of the main drivers of their choice to come to
London?
Mr Rhymes: Yes, that is absolutely
true. In answer to the first point of your previous question,
you could spend some time with my former employers, the Society,
and go into the Wyndham Report because this, for the first time,
spelled out the economic impact. That was followed up by Chris
Smith when Secretary of State, looking into the creative industries
export work. We refer in our submission to you to the fact that
one of the things that is perhaps not widely recognised is the
amount of expertise of British theatre architects and consultants
that is used around the world.
Mr Longman: On the economic impact,
£1.5 billion was the latest figure for the economic impact
over all the West End. The recently published Arts Council report
adds a further 1.1 billion for other theatres outside London.
That is £2.5 billion in economic impact.
Q45 Mr Hawkins: Finally, to what extent
are you as an organisation concerned about the impact of Lord
Lloyd Webber's recent announcements about the difficulties in
his Really Useful Group in terms of the knock-on effect on the
theatre buildings that you and we are concerned about?
Mr Longman: Can I declare an interest?
Some of you may know that The Theatres Trust is itself set up
by Parliament with all-party support and we own three West End
theatres. We are the freeholders. The Lyceum is let on a very
long lease to Clear Channel. We are the freeholders of the Garrick
Theatre which is one of those smaller playhouses. The reason the
freehold came into public ownership in the first place through
the old GLC was because it was in the way of a road scheme and
in danger of being knocked down. The Lyric Theatre on Shaftesbury
Avenue we own except for the stage. Really Useful, who are our
tenants, own the rest. We have owned them since the demise of
the GLC. Those two playhouses have changed ownership two or three
times so it will not be a surprise again to see a further change.
The main thing that surprised me with the Evening Standard
piece when this news first broke three or four days ago was that
they thought it was worth putting an entire front page to it.
Everybody has known for quite a while that the playhouses in particular
are not the main core part of their business. He bought all the
theatres together some while ago. The important thing to hope
is that anybody else now buying those will have the same commitment
and interest that he does and that Cameron Mackintosh does and
the owners of Clear Channel and also the owners of Ambassador
Theatre Group do. These theatre buildings in the West End are
owned for the first time ever by people whose ultimate business
interest is theatre. Twenty years ago one could have gone down
a list of 40 theatres and shown that a significant number were
ultimately owned by businesses that had no interest in theatre
at all and were waiting for the chance to offload them, knock
them down, and make a profit from use for something else.
Q46 Mr Flook: May I first declare a couple
of points of interest. One is I used to do a little bit of work
in a number of ways for Apollo Theatres which now of course is
Clear Channel in Central London. The other is that Stephen Waley-Cohen's
mother is one of my most favourite constituents! Whenever I have
been sent The Theatres Trust's booklets and annual reports I have
always been drawn to them. I think they are extremely well presented.
You will appreciate that Members of Parliament get a foot of bumph
nearly every week, if not more than that, and for some reason
these always come out as worth reading. Up and down the country
you find fantastic examples of the work you are doing. I commend
every Member of Parliament who does not to read these reports,
particularly those of us on the Committee, and I think those who
have read them are much the wiser for all of these reports. This
is an extremely interesting report particularly in what it says
about tourism and the way in which the commercial London theatres
attract people to our principal city. I think on that basis alone
you make a very compelling point, but probably not until the very
end and it could be further forward. The amount of money that
is given to the Exchequer directly attributable to the West End
theatre (figures which are seven or eight years old) is between
£200 and £230 million, which is an extraordinary amount
and puts into context I think the £125 million that the Department
is thinking of allowing the West End theatres to have. I am also
told that 38% of those people who visit the West End theatres
come from outside London. So I am wondering what arguments you
are putting out into the public arena to get people to accept
and acknowledge that you are deserving of that £125 million,
where it should come from, and how you are going to make comparisons
with the amount of money that soccer seems to have had over the
last few years through the Football Trust?
Mr Rhymes: While the Director
is thinking about the best way of answering the football feature
in your question and previously, can I thank you for your comments
about our publications. I shall take great delight in conveying
those to fellow trustees who give up a great deal of time and
their expertise, so it is good to know that it is actually read
when we put documents out. Peter?
Mr Longman: I think somewhere
there is a statistic that says more people go to theatres than
go to football matches. Maybe I am wrong or out-of-date.
Mr Rhymes: I was being careful
but can I quote from Wyndham Report which is now a little out
of date because it was done in my time: nearly 12 million seats
are sold each year compared for example with about four million
for Greater London's 13 League Football teams.
Q47 Mr Flook: That is fair enough but
I suppose if you looked at the national soccer figures they would
blow you to pieces because just Liverpool and Manchester alone
would probably fill every other week nudging 150,000 to 200,000
seats and they only play for 90 minutes. Sorry?
Mr Longman: I think in a civilised
world we have football, we have libraries, we have swimming pools,
we have all sorts of different ways of spending leisure time,
and the theatre is one of them. You can talk to the Society, which
I think was quoting 12 million likely visitors this year for the
theatre which is not a decline on previous years. I think the
important thing is that the nature of theatre and the sort of
productions one goes to changes. These days there is a much greater
emphasis on less formality and certainly some of the old buildings
give that feeling of formality. I remember Fiona Shaw, a distinguished
actress, was one of our trustees and when she first appeared in
the West End in a starring role her father from County Cork came
over and asked whether he had to wear a bow tie or whether he
could wear his sports jacket. I think one of the nice things about
a lot of the new theatre buildings, places like Keswick or one
of my favourites the Landmark at Ilfracombe, is that they are
much less formal as buildings, they are friendlier, and they are easier
to get into. The Landmark down in Ilfracombe has a lovely café
area which anybody can walk into at any time of the day or night.
You can hire it for conferences and there is the tourist information
centre on the same site so you are bringing people in the whole
way through the day even though, as Rupert Rhymes implied, the
actual auditorium itself may be in use for rehearsals and technical
things and not able to be looked at. I remember going up to the
new theatre at Keswick in the Lake District where again there
had been a long-standing need. The Arts Council gave it one of
the earlier Lottery grants. I think it was a lesser-known Brecht
play, a cold night in January, and I walked up to that theatre
and I could see from the outside into big windows and there were
children and young people in there thoroughly enjoying themselves.
It was a good place in the town to hang out where you could go
to the bar and have a drink. There were exhibitions and it was
a social centre as well as a cultural centre. The Theatres Trust
is not a preservation body. If I hark back to 100 years ago if
we could have those economics today you would be rebuilding those
theatres when they burned down and able to afford to rebuild them
in modern mode. It is interesting to see Cameron Mackintosh's
investment of £8 million at the Prince of Wales theatre.
He is never going to get that money back in commercial terms,
the balance sheet value of the building has not gone up, but there
are people there now who turn up extra early to have a nice drink
there and they stay on afterwards. The bar takings have gone up
and they are talking about using that building now outside of
normal hours for other sorts of activities. So you can improve
these buildings and make them more intensively used.
Q48 Mr Flook: Can you throw some light
on this point, thinking more specifically in this case of London;
although attitudes and social ways have changes quite considerably
(and shopping was mentioned by Mr James as a pastime and it is
true, so is eating out) theatres all seem to start at exactly
the same time, they all finish quite late, right in the middle
of what is most people's eating period. Is there any reason why
all the theatres in London seem to the start at quarter to eight?
Mr Rhymes: Again, it is probably
a question for the Society but my—
Q49 Mr Flook: —your observations
from your years?
Mr Rhymes: —my observation
would be that all of the surveys that we have conducted with regard
to what time do people prefer inevitably came back to this period
between about 7.15 and eight o'clock. It depends upon the length
of the production, it depends upon what is happening to your last
transport home and whether that runs. You do not really want to
catch the night bus if you have been to the theatre. And as far
as the start time and the gap between when you left work, it is
very often a matter of much more interest in getting some kind
of refreshment in a pleasant atmosphere rather than rushing straight
from the office, collecting one's partner, and going into the
auditorium.
Chairman: In New York everything is eight
including the Met Opera. You go for a three and a half hour or
four hour opera and it is all the same, eight o'clock.
Alan Keen: I, too, would like to congratulate
you on your report and what you do. This is not so much a question
as just an illustration. It is ironic that David James mentioned
Ann Keen who chairs the All-Party Theatre Group because she was
at the theatre with a friend this last weekend. The tickets were
extremely cheap because they were restricted view and she had
to stand up and watch it, whereas I was at a football match where
I used to like to stand up and now I have to sit down! I am delighted
that Adrian has been converted to football.
Mr Flook: Not football, I am the rugby
sort.
Q50 Alan Keen: It is absolutely true
that despite your efforts there are still a lot of changes that
need to be made to the structures and the pricing and the way
that people talk because I know when Ann was told the seats were
restricted view she did not realise she would not be able to see
anything at all and would have to stand up to watch it. There
is something needed in the dialogue between the people dealing
with this.
Mr Rhymes: On this question of
restricted view and obscured view, I am not quite sure what your
point is. Is it that those seats should be removed and not sold
or is it the fact that they somehow still exist and are being
sold?
Q51 Alan Keen: I was just recounting
that story to illustrate that there are problems. I did not ask
any further questions. She did not realise how bad the seat was.
Mr Rhymes: The experience I have
had is that if you have a very good show that is selling out,
the public will actually resent it if you do not sell them a seat
even if it is inferior. I have not run buildings for some while
but certainly in my experience if you had Goodall's Ring
at The Coliseum or Olivier's Othello at the National Theatre
at the Old Vic people would have strung you up if you did not
sell them a seat that existed even if they could only sit down
for a quarter of the time.
Chairman: Chacun à son goût.
Thank you very much indeed. Most interesting and we shall ask
the questions in the appropriate departments to which you have
directed us.
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