Laurel’s 2024 Season Launch

With Live’s year ahead now covered, it’s now time for the other press launch I was invited to. Laurel’s (a subtle rebranding that is now named after one particular Mr. Laurel rather than two) has had an excellent 2022 and 2023, with a transfer of their megahit Gerry and Sewell to Live Theatre last November, and now an upcoming project in partnership with the National Theatre. That particular project is a long-term thing, and is not part of the upcoming season. Instead, there’s a heavy crossover with the Richard Jenkinson commission.

First, a catch-up on the Richard Jenkinson Commission. I was planning to cover this separately from the season launch – Live Theatre might have had its playwriting competition and season launch at the same event, but so far, the two things are running independently of each other. By contrast, in spite of the two things being announced separately, the Richard Jenkinson Commission has become virtually inseparable from Laurel’s artistic programme. And one thing that has influenced this is how this worked.

In theory, both contests worked by the same principle: you could submit a script, but you didn’t have to. In Live’s case, the “detailed treatment” was viewed as an alternative to spending a lot of time writing a script now – it’s not clear how many people took up this offer in how they fared, but the finalist I know of did scripts. The Richard Jenkinson Commission, however, was a lot more geared towards to submitted an “idea”. It was mentioned that a straight script submission was fine, but I am told the ideas generally did a lot better than the scripts.

What the two did have in common, however, was that they both did a much better job of providing opportunities to those who need it than the big national competitions, with most or all of the shortlisted entrants not needing the extensive list of credits that almost all Bruntwood and Verity Bargate finalists how. One small but important clarification: unlike the North East Playwriting award, the Richard Jenkinson Commission wasn’t actually restricted to the north east. Laurel’s is best known to the north east and it was predominantly publicised in the north-east, and most of the names I recognise are north-east names. One notable exception, though, is Dave Bibby of Baby Dinosaur fame. One upcoming dilemma if this is done again – and mood is it will – one would expect work to get round of how good an opportunity it is to get work on stage, which is turn could be more uptake from outside the north-east. There means more good ideas to choose from – but also heavier competition against aspiring north-east artists. Should you stick with open to all, or restrict it to the north-east? That will be an interesting choice.

Anyway, what was originally intended to provide one entry to the 2024 programme has gone on to dominate the season. A second commission was offered during the ceremony, and now we have three. The ideas that have made it to production are: Subterranea, a post-dystopian society where the underlings were forced to shelter in the Metro after a nuclear attack, were never allowed to leave, and now have their own society; Doomgate, a three-writer collaboration of horror stories set on a single street; and most cryptic of all is the commission winner Seagulls & Sad Sad Stories which features three down-on-luck sixteen-year-olds putting their trust in the fortune-telling of an Zoltar in South Shields.

One thing that is notable is that in the two years Laurel’s has been running, it’s grown from a two-man operation to a bigger team – and now, a board of trustees with the power to overrule the artistic director. Anyway, we have Steve Robertson and John Hickman, arguably the numbers 2 and 3 at Laurel’s, doing their own play Stake Out at Halloween. Should the people who work in theatres get preferential treatment in their own work being programmed? My view is a strong yes. Running a venue is hard work, most of which goes into enabling other people to put on their shows, and if you get modest pay for your efforts your are very lucky. I firmly believe that giving your hardest workers their turn on the stage is the least you can do in return – and people who watch other productions take the the stage day in day out tend to know what they’re doing. So I’m looking forward to this comedy-horror set in the worst dives of Newcastle nightlife.

And one final thing that grabs my attention in the Christmas Production of Winnie the Pooh. Except this is the treatment all famous literary works get once they’re out of copyright. John Dole plays a take-no-crap the lovable bear vowing vengeance of the bastard property developers who’ve ruined the Hundred Acre Wood. Not clear if this is for children, and definitely not for literary purists. But if you like rewrite everything out of copyright to have ninjas (come on, who doesn’t want to see Peter Rabbit and the Ninjas), this is for you. (Oh, and … pssst, technically Winnie the Pooh doesn’t go out of copyright in the UK until 2027. You might want to call it a parody to be on the safe side.)

And there’s plenty more stuff as well. None of these I’m recommending over any others at the moment – I’ve seen hardly anyone in this programme before, so it’s all to play for. One seemingly unintended side-effect of the programme process is that the Laurel’s season is actually quite sparse until July, and then chocka from August. But the experience of pretty much every start-up arts org is that you always spend the first few years making up the rules as you go along.

But compared to even even twelve months ago, Laurel’s has come on leaps and bounds. Expect to be hearing a lot more of Laurels in the second half of this year.

What about the Exchange?

There is one other thing from last year’s launch that I haven’t forgotten, which is what was going on with The Exchange. This venue in North Shields had been built up in North Shields, and then, out of the blue, the news broke that they’d lost the lease of the building, with it going instead to Stonebanks Investments. Given Jamie Eastlake’s own experience with being ejected from premises, Laurel’s very much took the side of the ejected Exchange team now.

North Tyneside Borough Council, however, argued that The Exchange wasn’t closing – it was part of their “Cultural Quarter” scheme for North Shields. This attracted some suspicion, because until now, this so-called “Cultural Quarter” scheme only really entailed doing up some streets. And, let’s face it, if you’re trying to seek the confidence of the local people that’s you’re an arts-savvy organisation, “Stonebanks investment” is about the least cultured name you could have. It also didn’t instil much confidence that all the new management – including the theatre manager – had zero background in arts organisations. And, I have to say, the new catchphrase “Built in 1856, Reborn in 2023” did sound a bit twattish to me, the insinuation being that everything the old management did prior to 2023 didn’t count.

Coupled with sycophantic news coverage which was obviously a rehash of press releases setting off every marketing bullshit alarm known to man, I could help but speculate that they weren’t really interested in running a theatre space: just the cafe and bar which is where their previous experience lay.

But … let’s give credit where it is due: the theatre is running again, with a reasonable meaningful programme. A lot of it does seem to be last-minute. At the time of writing, there’s roughly one booking every 3-4 day, but later in the year it’s more like once a month. And there’s an awful lot more tribute acts than theatre. There again, that situation’s not unique to Exchange 1856 – Sunderland Old Fire Station is also a very theatre-lite theatre. I don’t the programme is as varied as The Exchange was under the old management, but maybe it will take time to rebuild a list of returning acts.

The reason I have been able to check this out is that Blowin’ a Hooley did their short play night at The Exchange – indeed, this was officially a co-production between themselves, Exchange 1856 and The Gala in Durham. It is not clear whether Exchange 1856’s involvement is wholehearted, or simply done out of obligation to North Tyneside Council, but either way, they do seem to be making progress. And it certainly looks like they know how to run a theatre bar. And, let’s be realistic, that’s how theatre’s make a lot of their money these days. Without a lucrative bar, you can expect a lot less theatre.

However, on balance, it still does seem like theatre has taken a step backward against what there would have been had The Exchange remained in charge. The daft thing is that there was no need for it to be this messy. Why oh why was a change of leaseholder left so late that programme acts had to be cancelled? And, more to the point – why didn’t The Exchange and Stonebank Investments just work together. Even in their new-found enthusiasm for performing arts is genuine, Stonebank were never going to be as cut out to run a theatre as their predecessors. Stonebank, however, are well placed to do a better job of the bar. Why not let The Exchange programme and run the theatre, and have Stonebank do the bar, giving both parties a role doing what they do best?

In summary, what’s happened at the Exchange isn’t as bad as we feared – and this pales into insignificance compared to the shenanigans around the Vault Festival. But it was handled badly, and quite needlessly. And it does little to bring back trust in landlords. My position for arts orgs remains unchanged: never trust your landlord. They can turn on you without warning – always be ready for this.

Live Theatre’s 2024 season launch

Firstly apologies for this article being late. I do appreciate being invited to season launches and aim to give coverage as swiftly as possible, but the unfortunate news about the Vault Festival took precedence. But now there is time to catch up.

Just a reminder before we start that this is not a comprehensive guide to everything covered at the launch – I leave that up to other media outlets. My interest is more with what grabs my attention. Much of this comes down to whims; something the doesn’t get my attention can turn out to be a gem – and very occasionally, something I was convinced was a surefire hit is a let-down. My final of what’s worth watching is always after this has come and gone.

That caveat established, let’s go. There are aspects of all three main plays that grab my attention, then I’ll move on to some other highlights. One unusual observation: after a crowded autumn/winter 2023, there’s a big gap in main stage productions until May 2024, with the three main plays scheduled between then and March 2025. I’m a bit surprised they’ve picked May over March, because the conventional wisdom’s always been that the colder months (except January) tend to sell better than warmer months. Not reading anything into that: just a curiosity.

Now, out of the three main plays, my hot bet is Champion by Ishy Din. He is one of the writers I have the most respect for, and in my opinion, his previous Live play Approaching Empty was very under-rated. Although he predominantly writes characters of Asian descent, the themes are almost always universal and could just as easily be anybody’s story. I was particularly impressed with the characterisation. In a story where everybody uses and betrays those closest to them, you always – with the exception of one character who’s a hardened criminal – understand why each of them felt they were doing the right thing. I also credit him with giving some of the best advice to aspiring writers: in particular, he has spoken a lot of sense about the “big breakthrough” myth which far too much of the new writing ecosystem still subscribes do. Anyway, the subject of the new play? The visit of Mohammed Ali in 1977 to South Shields, although there’s hints that the real subject of the play is a mixed-race family living in South Shields at the time.

The end of Vault Festival: what went wrong?

It is never nice to hear a much-loved arts events is closing for good – but it’s less nice still when it comes out of the blue. There was the bombshell news last year that the owners of the space underneath Waterloo station didn’t want them back again, and the immediate worry was over money. Then the concerns of money grew quieter and focus turned to finding the right replacement venue. A replacement was found. The Vault Festival took on new branding, #SaveVault became #BuildVault, and a big relauch gala was supposed to take place at the end of this month. Surely this was proof more than anything that Vault Festival was home and dry?

But Vault Festival was not home and dry after all. It turned out the original issue of money was their final downfall after all. We don’t know the details, but based on their statement, it looks like it came down one particular funding application that they’d assumed they were going to get. Unfortunately, all of the other funding they were counting on was dependent on this one, and without that, the whole plan fell apart. All relaunch activities are cancelled, the newly-secured space isn’t going ahead, and most of all of the year-round staff are being made redundant. Reading between the lines in this article, it seems that they maybe hadn’t exhausted all options, but they’d run out of energy and are giving up. It’s not completely the end of the enterprise – the year-round space The Glitch that they ran next to the main space is still going ahead, but that’s all. If somebody does managed to rebuild the Vault Festival or something like it, it will have to be good as starting from scratch.

The return of Ella Grey

Apart from an unresolved puzzle over who or what Orpheus is, Pilot Theatre’s decision to focus A Song for Ella Grey on a group of close-knit friends does justice to David Almond’s book that his own solo play script never could.

It’s time for Ella Grey at Northern Stage. Or, for those of us with long enough memories, Ella Grey round two. For those of us with long enough memories, this is in fact the second time Northern Stage has produced an adaptation of David Almond’s young adult novel for the stage. Seven years ago they did a solo play, written by David Almond himself and directed by then artistic director Lorne Campbell. That came hot off the heels of the publication and acclaim of the original book (not to mention a successful adaptation of another David Almond story over at Live Theatre), but wasn’t one of the most memorable ones. In retrospect, I think this vision was what I call “over-conceptualised” – an abstract staging of what’s already an abstract story, which ended up confusing everybody.

But … Pilot Theatre aren’t giving up that easily, and now they’re having a go. And if anyone’s going to do this right, it’s Pilot Theatre, who’s discovered they’re very good at doing adaptations of young adult novels. This time, it’s Zoe Cooper doing the adaptation – her biggest success to date is probably Jess and Joe Forever. The most obvious change from the original play? It’s gone from a solo play to an ensemble of five. This, I think, goes a long way to addressing two weaknesses of the original play.

Odds and sods: February 2024

Blimey. It’s a news-heavy month this Feburary. Better get right to it because I run out of March to write this up in.

Stuff that happened in February

Oh, my aching hands. Here’s what you’ve kept me busy writing up:

More woes at Brighton Fringe

It turns out I wasn’t connected to all the Brighton Fringe rumour mills. I’d known for some time Caravanserai wasn’t coming back, probably because Brighton Fringe couldn’t run a venue without letting costs go out of control. Now it’s gone public that Spiegeltent and Sweet aren’t being part of Brighton Fringe either. They are still running at the same time in May and June, but they are not registering with Brighton Fringe. (I admit, I did hear rumours of Spiegeltent doing this, but I’ve heard things like this touted so many times I didn’t pay much attention. I’d assumed that with Caravanserai being the focus of so many grievances, the main source of aggro was now resolved. But apparently not.)

This means that Brighton Fringe 2024 is going to be very messy. At close of registrations for programme launch, we have 556 Brighton Fringe registrations. That’s low. This could be an artificially low number, because with no paper programme to meet a deadline for, it’s not such a big deal to register late, but it would have to a big last-moment surge to turn things round. At the time of writing, Spiegeltent have launched their own not-Fringe programme, but I haven’t had time to analyse this yet. I will be analysing this a lot more as Brighton Fringe coverage ramps up, because the implications are too complex to go ito here.

A lot of this is going to ride on how the fringe media chooses to cover a fragmented Brighton Fringe. Will Sweet and Spiegeltent still get the coverage, or will they be sidelined? For my part, my own decision is that, for now, I will treat Spiegeltent and Sweet the same way as if they’d been part of Brighton Fringe proper (a bit like I did with Warren Outdoors in 2020, albeit under different circumstances). However, after this, I expect all parties to make reasonable efforts to resolve their differences. I’m not interested in blaming the other side as an excuse to not make a reason effort yourself – I want to know what you are doing. But we can start having that debate in July onwards. For now, I expect a truce. Get through this, don’t get in each other’s way, and any blame games can wait.

Should we really be worried about AI in the arts?

Credit: Paul Brake, DeviantArt

COMMENT: AI in the arts can never do as good as job as a human, and is only likely to be viable for formulaic and uncreative activities. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of people don’t have a problem with any of those things.

Panic! The Terminators are coming! And the Cybermen! And the killer robot dogs from that Black Mirror episode. They’re going to start a nuclear apocalypse and hunt the survivors and go “Exterminate Exterminate” and put you into dystopian computer simulations … but even worse – they’ll take your jobs as artists! It’s even in the next Matrix movie. As the Sentinels gather round Neo’s broken and bleeding body, Agent Smith gloats: “Before I assimilate you, know this, Mr. Anderson: it was I who ruined your career as a screenwriter. I generated the spec script that was chosen instead of yours! I saw to it you abandoned your dreams to work in a call centre. Bwuahahahaha! Bwuahahahahaha! Bwuahahahahahahahahaha!” [Jarring chords. Lightning flashes in background.]

That, at least, was the reaction of half the world last year, whilst the other half were marvelling at a new golden age and/or seeing an opportunity to be the next Elon Musk. But reality is swiftly catching up with last year’s hype. There have been some remarkable technological advances: the fact that computers can now understand requests written in English instead of a programme language is impressive enough – the fact that it can create plausible images, text or music in response is incredible. But compared to what a human can do, it’s not that good. At its best, it looks good to people who haven’t wised up its predictability. At its worst, it’s waffle, plagiarism, or both.

Nevertheless, there are some areas where AI output, if not better than human output, is cheaper and easier. For reasons I will go into shortly, it’s been over-hyped, and the technological advances are no more or less dramatic that previous technological advances. Artists adapt and make use of them, and there’s no reason to believe jobs are under threat – not unless we we’re happy to remove all talent and creativity from the artistic process.

Unfortunately, that’s a pretty major caveat. I will explain why shortly. To start with, however, here’s why we shouldn’t need to worry about AI – in theory

The Nutcracker: a tough nut cracked

It was an unusual decision for the New Vic’s Christmas production to emulate a ballet story close to the original ballet. But a couple of audacious decisions makes The Nutcracker one of their most successful Christmas productions.

One sign that the New Vic does something right with its Christmas production: there’s so much demand it runs to the end of January. That’s also convenient for me because it’s something on my calendar in an otherwise empty month. Catching The Nutcracker at the end of its run, I was hearing a lot of praise, but there was a difference with Theresa Heskins’s latest winter play. Usually there’s a substantially different angle on the source material clear from the outset. This time, it’s not so obvious. There’s still ballet – in fact, in order to have an ensemble who can do the a ballet needed it’s almost entirely a new cast. The original music by Tchaikovsky has been kept. Is this not just a repeat of the famous ballet piece?

Not really. This piece can perhaps be described as how The Nutcracker would have been written as a theatre piece with ballet in, as opposed to a pure ballet production. Most ballet productions have plenty of set pieces dances, with the greatest ones having legendary music. But as far as the storyline is concerned … it doesn’t half go on a bit. We all love the tunes of the Arabian Dance, Russian Dance, Chinese Dance, Dance of the Reed Flutes and Waltz of the Flowers, but it’s a guaranteed fail of the “get on with it test”. And some bits of the story in act one are just … weird. Including, for some reason, a battle between gingerbread men and the terrible evil mouse queen. Theresa Heskins respond to these two challenges with two audacious decisions – and they pay off.

Firstly, the weird mouse battle. The easy and safe solution is to just cut it. Heskins not only keeps it, but ups its prominence in the story. You might think that nobody’s going to buy into a story where the villain is a mouse, but we’re in land where everything in made of confectionery. Remember, those little buggers eat everything. The first mention of the mouse queen is in the real-world opening scene, where Uncle Drosselmeyer tells the tall tale of the mouse queen’s threat to the sugar plum fairy. The setting is now an unsettled family forced to relocate by war (a nod to Ukraine families currently in Stoke), and Marie has an older sister who died, but other than that, the Act I story is reasonably faithful to the Act I of the ballet.

Interview with Deborah McAndrew and Conrad Nelson on Claybody Theatre

And now, a post I’m very excited to share with you. Following on from my review of The Card and my subsequent award as Best Production 2023, Deborah McAndrew from Claybody Theatre got in touch we me and asked me if I would like to take a look at their new space. Until now, Claybody Theatre has been doing a series of performances in ad-hoc venues (co-production with the New Vic excepted), but they are now leasing the Dipping House in Stoke for a year.

As I live in Durham rather than Stoke, this had to wait until January when I was next travelling to Stoke anyway (for The Nutcracker – good review coming), but once I was there I was delighted to take the opportunity to ask Conrad Nelson and Deborah McAndrew all about their plans – and also how they got here.

The background of Claybody Theatre is truly an extraordinary one. The husband-and-wife team of director Conrad Nelson and writer Deborah McAndrew for many years practically operated as a theatre company in its own right within Northern Broadsides, and when artistic director Barrie Rutter announced his retirement, it seems a foregone conclusion that they would take over the company. But instead, after a year as caretaker leadership, the astonished the theatre world by announcing they were leaving completely to instead focus on their side-project Claybody Theatre, dedicated to a hyper-local target audience of Stoke-on-Trent. It seemed like a crazy gamble, but last year’s outstanding production of The Card – on every bit the grand scale of their Northern Broadsides days – vindicates that decision.

So how did they rise through the ranks of Northern Broadsides. What made them surprise us all by switching to a new company. And how do they plan to use their success for the future. For fifty-five minutes, I had the chance to hear all about it.

What’s great about this place is the “found space” thing, which was a lot to do with the early doors of Northern Broadsides, finding somewhere to play. So there’s a familiar tale in finding ex-industrial spaces, they’ve got a real magic to them when you come in.

Odds and sods: January 2024

Right, it was really embarassing how late the last one was, so I’m going to get a move on with this. This time, it’s one of the slowest news months around, so I should be able to do this quickly.

Stuff that happened in January

Unfortunately, most of the news I have is bad news. There is some news coming from Edinburgh that might be better, but that news has only just broken, so I’m going to leave that till the next odds and sods when we might know more about how this went.

Apart from that, here’s what’s been happening, and it’s not great.

Caravanserai not come to Brighton

This isn’t actually January news as such. Nothing has been announced in public yet. I’ve known about this unofficially for some time – however, it is also possible to work this out from publicly accessible information. So anyone who has an active event on Eventotron will notice one notable omission: Caravanserai is not available as a venue. Caravanserai was also not mentioned at the registration launch in spite of it getting lots of coverage last year. It therefore seem very likely that the rumour mill is correct and Caravanserai is not coming to Brighton Fringe 2024.

Oh dear, what went wrong there? Caravanserai was supposed to be the answer to Brighton Fringe’s cash flow worries. We are increasingly moving to a situation where the major fringe venues make most of their money not from performances but from ancilliary income on the bars and food outlets. This is why I didn’t join in the complaints of food/drink prices there – I’d rather they made the money from something you didn’t have to buy from something that you did. Anyway, they did a lot of business and it seemed that it’s money-making objective was working. But it seems I spoke too soon. Even if you have excellent income, you can still make a loss if you lose control of expenses. That was part of the reason for The Warren’s downfall, it’s happened elsewhere, and now it seems it’s happened here. Ouch.

The most obvious effect for fringe performances is that they won’t have Caravanserai to flyer at. Luckily, Brighton City Council has been persuaded to relax rules on city centre flyering, so it shouldn’t be too much of an issue as long as you’re organised (although I have my doubts on the value of flyering outside of fringe venues). As of yet, it’s not clear what’s happening to Fringe City. Hopefully this could move back to New Road or Jubilee Street, but I’d be a lot happier if this was confirmed as sorted. What I’m concerned about more is money. Was the income from Caravanserai needed or not? Because if it is, we’re going to have to find a different plan very quickly. Last year there was grumblings that Caravanserai was going to take over Brighton Fringe. I hope I’m wrong, but that could turn out to be the least of the problems.

What’s worth watching: winter/spring 2024

Skip to: Oh What a Lovely War, The 39 Steps, A Song for Ella Grey, Limelight, Behold Ye Ramblers, Jarman, Thresholds, The Importance of Being … Earnest?, Morgan and West, The Mystery of Dracula, Dune the Musical, Disco Pigs, Modern Times

January is mostly a quiet month for theatre, but with February almost upon is it’s time to have a look at what’s coming up. Might be worth a reminder at this point that this is not a comprehensive guide to the best things coming up in the north east – much of this is steered by what I’ve seen before, and that largely comes down to luck. If you want to see the full rules, you can check out my Recommendations policy.

Before we begin, one small but notable absence from this list is a production from Live Theatre. For some reason, they’re not doing a mainstream production until May. I’m not sure what decide how many productions an NPO Theatre can support in a year, but what’s unusual is choosing May over March. The conventional wisdom is that you wind down theatre in the summer months, as business drops and more attention goes to the fringe season, and put your big productions in the colder months where you get more sales. Live Theatre, however, seems to think otherwise. Make of that what you will.

But apart from that curiosity, here’s what’s caught my eye.

Safe choice:

The top category. Nothing in my list is recommended for everyone – even the best play in the world appeals to a target audience. But if this sounds like your sort of thing, I’m confident you’ll enjoy this.Most are plays I’ve seen before, all of them have wide appeal. We have:

Oh What a Lovely War!

I don’t normally send a play straight to Safe Choice without me having seen it before, but Blackeyed Theatre gets a bye to the top spot because the standard of their back catalogue is excellent. Previous hits have included Dracula and Frankenstein with all sound done acoustic and on-stage, a series of adaptation by Nick Lane including the outstanding Jekyll and Hyde writing in a new female character (and making it look like she was part of the story all along), and straightforward productions of classic scripts including their touring version of Teechers not far behind those from John Godber himself. The writers and directors vary, but the one thing that ties these all together is Victoria Spearing, whose set designs over most of the plays gives Blackeyed Productions their own stamp.

This musical is set at the time of World War One – and in case you haven’t already guessed, the title is being sarcastic. No wars are particularly reputed for loveliness, but the war particularly so. However, unlike most World War One plays going straight into a trenches-based gloomfest, this is set in a music hall with a cast in Pierrot costimes. Such a concept would normally put this straight in the Bold Choice list, but with this musical having endured for decades combined with Blackeyed’s flawless track record it’s much more of a safe bet. It tours nationally, with the local stops being the Stephen Joseph Theatre on the 6th – 9th March, Leeds Playhouse on the 26th & 27th March and – most notably – Darlington Hippodrome on the 28th & 30th March. Big milestone for Blackeyed Theatre to have taken to one of the biggest theatres in the region.