Examination of Witnesses (Questions 160-179)
SOLT, TMA
1 FEBRUARY 2005
Q160 Michael Fabricant: In your discussions
with the Lottery, or maybe you have not had discussions yet, and
presumably not the Heritage Lottery Fund, but possibly the Arts
Council for England, have they said, "We would like to apply
conditions, if we were to give you money, as to the sort of production
that would be put on", and how would that balance with the
fact that at the end of the day you are commercial theatre?
Mr Pulford: They have not so far
raised that issue with us and, for the reasons Sir Stephen has
given, I think there would be very real difficulties if they did.
Could I just point out that the West End is not comprised of buildings
which interchange between musicals and plays. There are 21 playhouses
in the West End and they are all full.
Q161 Michael Fabricant: And how many
are putting on modern plays at the moment, new plays?
Mr Pulford: I would need to do
a count and let you know. I think I might also just mention, just
picking up on the reference made by Nicholas Hytner earlier on,
the forgotten, older play. I think Journeys End is a very
good case in point of a play which was, to many people, a surprise,
as it were, which was brought out of retirement and has done exceptionally
well, running in the West End for a year which is almost unheard
of.
Sir Stephen Waley-Cohen: I would
like, having no connection to Journeys End, to say that
I understand that more than half its audience throughout its long
run has been school pupils and other young people, and I think
that that does happen from time to time. It is a play which has
great relevance to the fact that most history studies include
the First and Second Wars and the period in between and I think
it is terrific that so many young people have been to see that.
I have to say that, by contrast with the lady who spoke throughout,
certainly, and twice I have seen it, their behaviour was impeccable.
Q162 Michael Fabricant: Do you think
there is scope, just following on from that answer, for more productions
in the morning or an afternoon, and it may not be technically
easy to do, but maybe a different production from that being shown
in the evening, to appeal to schoolchildren and those taking exams?
Sir Stephen Waley-Cohen: Not all
productions have the physical possibility of having a different
production also presented at a different time of day. In one of
the theatres for which I am responsible we have done that in the
past where a production for very young children, I suppose about
seven to 10, that sort of age group, was presented with minimal
set really in front of the existing production where I think we
had 10 and 12 o'clock performances and all school groups. That
went very well, but it takes quite an innovative theatre producer
to come up with that concept and market it successfully.
Q163 Mr Doran: In the case for public
funding, because we have to see the Lottery as public funding,
of the refurbishment of the West End theatres, I can understand
the broad economics of it, that the theatre attracts business
and people into the country, tourists spend money, et cetera,
but when you look at it crudely, and I was thinking about this
recently when we saw the news items about Sir Andrew Lloyd-Webber's
theatres possibly coming on to the market, there does not seem
to be any shortage of potential buyers. If we are talking about
a true marketplace, that then suggests that there are people out
there willing to invest in theatres, so why do you need public
money?
Sir Stephen Waley-Cohen: Experience
shows that they are willing to invest in the theatre, but they
then find that the economics of bringing them truly into the 21st
Century as opposed to just refurbishing, and a lick of paint—
Q164 Mr Doran: What about caveat emptor?
Sir Stephen Waley-Cohen: It is
a fair point, but I think we also have to look at the broader
interests that if we do not bring our theatres up to modern audience
expectations, what we will see over a number of years, and it
may be a number of decades, will be a very serious decline in
the provision of theatrical entertainment in London. I think that
we would be the poorer for it economically and spiritually if
that did happen, if it declined to non-existence.
Q165 Mr Doran: Some of my colleagues
have already raised the issue, but if there is to be public investment,
what is the return for the public—obviously improved fabric
of the building and perhaps improved attraction, particularly
to London? If you look or if you contrast, for example, the National
Theatre, which is heavily publicly subsidised, with the rest of
the London theatres, there are some quite distinct gaps in the
levels of provision, and access is one which was raised earlier
by Michael Fabricant, for example. In your negotiations with the
various bodies you have referred to, have you proposals to improve
access to the London theatres as part of this programme?
Sir Stephen Waley-Cohen: When
you say "access", do you mean—
Q166 Mr Doran: Commercial theatres seem
only to be available, open and accessible when plays are being
shown, whereas I can walk across the National at any time, get
a cup of coffee and wander around the bookshops.
Sir Stephen Waley-Cohen: A number
of West End theatres have tried, though I am not sure if anyone
is doing it at the moment, opening their bars and adding food
provision during the day as well as earlier in the evening before
the show, but given where they physically are located, quite apart
from the physical constraints of the buildings themselves, there
is a huge amount of competition immediately adjacent. About 10
years ago we tried to do that in a beautiful old theatre. We ran
a lunchtime wine bar in one of the bars and we were very unsuccessful,
probably we were not very good at it, but the fact is also that
there were within a quarter of a mile over 1,000 competitors.
That does not apply to the National Theatre. The space in those
West End theatres does not make it very easy to offer decent facilities.
Q167 Mr Doran: So that is unlikely to
be on the table?
Sir Stephen Waley-Cohen: That
is not likely to be on the table because the funds will be to
make sure that these work for the long term as theatres.
Q168 Mr Doran: What about pricing? You
heard about Nicholas Hytner's strategy and philosophy behind that.
That seems to be easily applied to other commercial areas.
Sir Stephen Waley-Cohen: He was
good enough to say that it was not easily applied in the West
End, which is much more complex, as he said, than where they control
the building, the pricing and the box office and where they are
also the producers. If you want to see a play in the West End
or a musical in the West End when it is new, then you probably
have to pay the full price. There are lots of tickets in the West
End available through all kinds of pricing schemes for all, but
the smash hit new shows, and The Producers was mentioned,
The Producers will be available much more cheaply in a
year or two years, just as in its tenth year Cats, which
had been a very expensive new show, now 25 years ago, you could
buy tickets extremely cheaply for Cats in the last year
or two before it came to an end. There are lots of cheap tickets.
Our own Society of London Theatre's TKTS, half-price ticket booth
in Leicester Square, sells half a million tickets a year at half
price.
Q169 Mr Doran: Are these last-minute
deals?
Sir Stephen Waley-Cohen: On the
day. There are other, not on the day, half-price ticket schemes
that producers of shows who need the business are offering and
because they go on offering, I think we could reasonably assume
that, just as for the National, they do increase the overall take
beyond what it would be if it was not so. I do not have the figures
with me, but if we look at our annual figures for the industry,
whilst the top price for a play may be £36 or £40 and
the top price for a musical £45 or £50, the average
price paid for tickets across the year is a long way below that,
and that reflects both the provision of cheaper seats further
back in the auditorium and the discounts on the more expensive
seats as well.
Mr Pulford: Can I say that I am
sorry to disagree with Mr Hytner, but he suggested that people
think if they are getting a ticket cheap in the West End that
there is something wrong with the show or it has gone wrong in
some way. I have to say, in my experience, the West End theatre
audiences are actually fairly sophisticated about this. They know
perfectly well that on Mondays and Tuesdays there are going to
be more seats available than there are on Fridays and Saturdays
in any theatre for any show even fairly near the beginning of
its run and they make use of the half-price ticket period on those
occasions. They know perfectly well too that at this particular
time of year the theatre is, by tradition, going through a lull
in terms of attendances and that is why at this time of year we
have a promotion which we run jointly with Mayor Livingstone,
Get Into London Theatre, where tickets for a whole range of shows,
some of which have not been on that long, are available at half
price and sometimes even less, so I think the audience is fairly
sophisticated and it is by no means the case that a cheap ticket
means a show that has been on too long and has lost its legs.
Q170 Mr Doran: Nicholas Hytner mentioned
accountability if you do receive public funds. What would you
accept as proper accountability from the commercial theatres if
public money were provided?
Sir Stephen Waley-Cohen: We are
suggesting in the discussions we are having with DCMS, and through
them with the three possible funding bodies, that all the money
should go through a specially created charity whose board would
have representatives of those funding bodies. We are suggesting
that a significant part of the total cost—
Q171 Mr Doran: —Sorry, how would
that operate; there would be sort of trust fund, a charity set
up and commercial theatres would make bids to the charity?
Sir Stephen Waley-Cohen: Yes,
exactly so. As the industry is expected to provide half the money
they are expecting to have a reasonable representation on that
charity but so are the other providers of funds, and I think they
would ensure accountability not in terms of what shows are put
on but in terms of the proper use of that money.
Q172 Mr Doran: Certainly I took from
what Nicholas said as not just accountability about the money
(we are talking about public money so we would expect that anyway)
but in the service which would subsequently be provided by the
improved theatres to the public. For example, when I was talking
to Nicholas we talked about the National's outreach and education
work. Are you thinking in these sorts of territories?
Mr Pulford: This is something
of course we would be prepared to consider if that is what the
people who are providing the funds want us to look at. I just
want to make one very important point. The reason why the National
Theatre is in a position, like all subsidised theatres, to mount
an extensive outreach programme and does so with enthusiasm and
enormous success is because they are funded over a consistent
period. If you look at the people who put on West End shows, the
individual producers, some of them are literally a one-man band
and they spend all their time and effort in trying to get a show
on. They may have next to no staff during that period. One of
most prolific producers in the West End, Michael Codron, has been
a producer for 50 years, and in terms of his production activities
routinely has two staff in his office. So the context for developing
community outreach work and educational work is much more complex
in the commercial theatre. That is not, as it were, an excuse.
Some of the shows which have been running a long time where there
is a build-up of resources have benefited very consistently from
education programmes and other kinds of outreach programme. Sir
Stephen is closely associated with the Mousetrap Foundation which
provides a range of opportunities for young people from all over
London and beyond to come to the theatre at reduced prices. There
are initiatives but at the same time there are necessary limits
on what individual producers with limited resources can achieve.
But insofar as the Society can bring together the total resources
of the industry and look and see what it can do by way of developing
audiences (in the most positive sense of that word) for theatre,
of course we are very happy to look at it.
Mr Nicholls: I am not here to
speak for West End theatre as President of the Theatrical Management
Association; I am here representing theatres that are not in the
West End. However, I work for an organisation called the Ambassador
Theatre Group which is a major West End theatre owner and manager
and indeed producer at a rather different end of the scale from
Michael Codron to whom Richard has referred there, and Ambassador
Theatre Group, although operating completely as a commercial company,
has an education department with an education manager and regularly
mounts education activities in connection with the shows that
it either produces or presents in the West End, and Journey's
End would be an example.
Q173 Ms Shipley: That leads nicely on
to what I want to put to you. If you were here earlier you would
have got an inkling that I think going to many theatres is a tedious
experience. I am not discussing the actual production but actually
going to the theatre is a tedious experience and one that I think
seriously has to be changed. If you attract public money I would
like to suggest some ways that maybe the two can be linked. I
would attach a condition to production so that what you choose
to produce is what you produce but I would like to attach a condition
of community relationships, and by that I do not mean outreach;
I am going to invent something new called "inreach".
I want to see that theatre space fully utilised and developed
for the community. I appreciate the stage is difficult but you
yourself have said minimal set productions are possible. I would
like to see minimal set productions, the building up of a relationship
with particular amateur theatre groups for example, or small theatre
companies for example with whom you have a working relationship,
who advocate health and safety regulations and they know what
they are, where they can put on minimal set productions in front
of the actual productions, maybe taking up the morning space,
maybe then attracting schools in. So inreach—bringing them
in. When you say you tried food provision and bars and there is
huge competition, you had the wrong product. That is not the thing
you should be putting on there. You should be putting on smaller
scale entertainment, book readings, poetry readings, stilt walking,
juggling, puppetry and the food and bar around it so people are
not coming to the food and bar; they are coming to the entertainment
opportunties and they drink and they eat in your space. So an
inreach programme. You say that the little bits you have done
are innovative and marketing is crucial. Do you have completely
rubbish marketing people that they could not do that? I put it
to you if you have they ought to be got rid of because it is so
easy to market the sort of thing I have just suggested. There
is a great big desire for it. What we do not want is a boring
going to the theatre experience. Would anybody like to comment?
Mr Nicholls: I would like to agree
with you heartily and say that the successful theatres certainly
in the regions—and I am talking from a regional standpoint
here—are the ones that have embraced that kind of philosophy
and there is a great deal of success around the country. Do you
know West Yorkshire Playhouse for example, where you will find
a theatre that effectively is built on its community roots. The
theatre I run is in Bromley which is in North Kent, as you will
know, and you might like to know that had you come to the opening
weekend of our pantomime you could have had story telling in the
foyer.
Q174 Ms Shipley: Had you invited me!
Mr Nicholls: I did not at that
point know of your interest. You could have done belly dancing
in the foyer. This was all in connection with the pantomime Aladdin
and thus the eastern theme. Many of us are doing the kind of thing
you are talking about and in many ways I would say in terms of
buildings embracing this in the regions the most successful are
the ones that have indeed embraced that philosophy.
Q175 Ms Shipley: Would you say it was
a reasonable conditionality that I would set for public money
that that sort of thing has to develop, not just the education
and going to schools and sending out somebody but that whole theatrical
package around the building?
Mr Nicholls: Again speaking from
a regional perspective, where the theatres are in receipt of subsidy
they will almost certainly be involved in to a greater or lesser
extent activities of that kind as an obligation of grant aid,
but again the physical constraints sometimes work against you
because not all of the theatres have been built with the imagination
of the National Theatre nor indeed of the West Yorkshire Playhouse
which I mentioned.
Q176 Ms Shipley: I have not yet been
into a theatre where it is not possible. Perhaps you would like
the opportunity to answer as well.
Mr Pulford: I admire but I am
not sure I entirely share your optimism about the audience for
this kind of thing. We are talking in London, after all, of 40
theatres that are very close physically and competing with one
another. That is the first thing to be said about it. I used to
run the South Bank Centre and we had a very extensive programme
of literary events, as I am pleased to say they still do. Very,
very, very few of those events—and there was little competition
when that facility opened in London—attracted an audience
of more than 20 people. I think one has to be realistic about
that.
Q177 Ms Shipley: I am being totally realistic.
When I think of the Festival Hall—absolutely packed for
its foyer entertainment, the shop packed, the bookshop packed,
the café packed, the exhibition space well frequented,
really exciting, with lots and lots and lots of parents out there
who are wanting to take their children and young people to do
something in the morning up to lunch time.
Mr Pulford: Please do not misunderstand.
I am very, very familiar with the Festival Hall and I know what
comes out and indeed at what cost. You were asking a question
earlier about the cost of doing this and it is a fairly high cost.
If you go to the Comedy Theatre, to be quite honest, it is all
you can do to get into the door off the street and one has to
understand that there are very, very potent physical constraints
on the great majority of West End theatres which were never constructed
with this in mind. Unless you do something wholly to reconfigure
the interiors it is very difficult.
Q178 Ms Shipley: You can put on set productions,
readings.
Sir Stephen Waley-Cohen: While
we did achieve it for a few weeks two or three years ago it is
not always possible. Not every main production makes it possible.
You also have to remember that while it may look as if theatres
have nothing going on in them except for the four hours of the
evening performance, in fact the building and the show and the
set does need a certain amount of maintenance. There are understudy
rehearsals that need to take place quite frequently. There is
a lot goes on that is invisible because it is behind closed doors
and it is behind closed doors because it is not fit to have people
in while it is going on. These are all good ideas but, as the
National Theatre said just before us, it does cost them quite
a lot of money to do it. We have not been asking for any money
to put on such things and I suspect that it would be quite costly
to provide those entertainments that you have described.
Q179 Ms Shipley: To sum up I must say
I am not surprised that you have failed when you have tried these
innovations because you have no enthusiasm or intention to make
them really seriously happen. I would put on record that I find
it hard to understand why you should get public money if you cannot
be innovative in bringing in a wider section of the public.
Sir Stephen Waley-Cohen: I would
reject that statement. When we attempted the things we did attempt
we started them with enormous enthusiasm, with tremendous optimism,
and we were unfortunate to be proved wrong. It cost us, and I
am sure others, significant sums of money in failing to achieve
it. We did not do it because we thought it was a social obligation;
we did it because we thought we could attract people. We failed
to attract people. We did use what we thought were very good marketing
people. They were not our own employees but engaged for the purpose;
we were not successful. It is not as easy as you suggest and if
it was we would all be doing it. I would also like to say that
I think that for you to be opposed to the provision of public
financial support for the modernisation of theatre buildings so
that they can present theatres to audiences in conditions which
meet those audiences' expectations for theatre and to tie that
to the provision of quite different what you rather eloquently
described as inreach activities—
| 
