Seasonal Awards & Rewards

Richard Eyre said that the right people often win awards for the wrong reason, and while there’s no great controversy over the list of medal-winners at the Lebedev Evening Standard old soldiers’ parade and passing-out ceremony, you can’t help feeling that an opportunity to recognise the great richness and diversity of London’s theatre went missing.

My favourite category was the Milton Shulman award for outstanding newcomer: You Me Bum Bum Train, which old Milt himself would have deemed the most tiresome and pretentious load of old cobblers in the entire history of the fringe.

I would have thought some sort of nod towards the Young Vic’s 40th anniversary season might have been appropriate. Or the Bush and the Arcola, both moving on to new venues and maintaining fierce standards. 
 
The special award to Michael Gambon seems a bit mistimed, too, after he pulled out of the new Alan Bennett play and made a terrible old meal of Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape. And Peter Hall’s contribution to “world theatre” was marked in a week when The Rivals proved that good, scrupulous work on the classics can also be as dull as ditchwater.

The Arcola revival of The Cradle Will Rock brought back memories of John Houseman telling the story of the chaotic first night in 1937 when he brought his latest production of the Brechtian song-fest to the Old Vic in 1985.

Each performance was prefaced by Houseman, then a sprightly octogenarian, taking the stage and evoking a political uproar that the subsequent show, despitye the contribition of Patti LuPone,  did little to justify.

The show had been banned during a time of industrial unrest, but the actors infiltrated the auditorium of another theatre and sang their contributions from the stalls, goaded into action by the director, none other than a new shooting star called Orson Welles.

It’s a great tribute to the Arcola that Mehmet Ergen’s revival somehow reawakens the fighting spirit of the piece, as well as celebrating the richness and unusualness of Marc Blitzstein’s score.

I just hope that when the Arcola moves down the road they take the kebab place opposite with them. There’s nothing quite like pushing into the cramped little restaurant in advance of a new Arcola production and dealing with a perfect lamb kebab or two around the fiery furnace of the grilling area.

It was good to see Irving Wardle, venerable ex-critic of The Times, in the first night crowd, too: his son, Alex, who has long been a member of the Kneehigh Company, did the lighting.

I really must overcome my aversion to shows about Judy Garland to go and see Tracie Bennett at the Trafalgar Studios: everyone says it’s the performance of a lifetime. But then Christmas is crowding in already, with the Young Vic leading the way today with David Almond’s My Dad’s A Birdman at lunchtime, music by the Pet Shop Boys.

I love pantomime and I think a works’ outing is called for to the magnificent Birmingham Hippodrome, where the cast for Dick Whittington includes Joan Collins, Julian Clary — whose first breakthrough in stand-up was as the Joan Collins Fan Club — Nigel Havers and Keith Harris — with Orville and Cuddles.

But my schedule this year will also include Clive Rowe at Hackney, an overdue return to the Theatre Royal, Stratford East (the perfect panto venue), for Red Riding Hood, and the revival of Matthew Bourne’s Blitz-time Cinderella (using Prokofiev’s marvellous music) at Sadler’s Wells. And I suppose tomorrow I’ll have to start writing Christmas cards…they’re already playing carols in the WOS offices.