Who's Quibbling about The Stage's Movers & Shakers???

We at Whatsonstage.com take some solace in knowing that we're not alone in receiving grief for distributing plaudits. While voting enters the final fortnight in our annual Theatregoers' Choice Awards, industry newspaper The Stage has been defending its annual selection of the industry's top 100 most significant people. The 2003 Stage 100 broke with tradition by omitting anyone involved in marketing or public relations and opting instead to include only those "directly involved in putting on a show". Since publication of the list earlier this month, the newspaper has received multiple complaints and not just from those disgruntled marketing masses. A leader in today's Stage bemoans the fact that though "no one admits to being bothered about being included in it....an awful lot of people seem to think they deserved better coverage than they received." Amongst those with little cause for complaint is Andrew Lloyd Webber, who topped the list for the third year running. The rest of the Top 20 comprised mainly impresarios and owners as well as London's myriad incoming and outgoing artistic directors (Trevor Nunn, Sam Mendes, Michael Grandage, Adrian Noble, Jonathan Kent, Ian McDiarmid and Nicholas Hytner), freelance directors Stephen Daldry, Richard Eyre and Peter Hall and, in a new entry, A Number author Caryl Churchill. So who are the quibblers? The Stage is too discreet to name names, but a certain West End producer employed by an international company and the "artistic director of a highly regarded London producing theatre" are implicated.

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