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No one doubts that musicals are a cause for celebration – but they also give pause for concern. The first International Festival of Musical Theatre, currently taking place in Cardiff, covers both these extremes. The event is looking at balancing revivals of the great musicals of the past with more recent shows from Broadway and Europe unseen here, while showcasing future musicals as well. But has Cardiff bitten off more than it can chew? There were certainly ambitious plans – a festival of more than 100 events, across three weeks, utilising every possible venue in the Welsh capital and a programme that eclectically included a revival of a 1987 Glyndebourne opera, The Electrification of the Soviet Union and an original Czech musical, Joan of Arc. It is not making it easy for itself. "About a year ago I was tearing my hair out thinking of how to try to please everybody," says festival chief executive Joanne Benjamin when we meet before the festival. "Then a very well-respected producer sat me down and said, 'You can't please everybody. The most important thing is that you have to justify this programme to the world, so do what you believe in.'" Her attempts to embrace the new along with the old are laudable, with the latter focusing on the Richard Rodgers centenary, hence Babes in Arms and concert productions of Oklahoma! and Carousel. The West End's older musical hits have been dying at an alarming rate. This year alone we have lost Buddy, Starlight Express and Cats. Though trawling through pop's back catalogue is yielding some replacements – like Queen's We Will Rock You and the opening this week of Madness musical Our House – it does beg the question of where the other original homegrown writers are to take over where Andrew Lloyd Webber so profitably left off. As Benjamin points out: "Musical theatre provides the Treasury with a huge amount of money. We conservatively estimate that they get £50 million a year just in VAT on theatre tickets and through the National Insurance contributions of the people who work in theatre alone and we need to continue to provide that product. "The only way to do so is to support and develop the new writers, otherwise we will end up with just revivals. There is nothing wrong with good ones but we also need to be helping new writers. The problem at the moment is that there is no real link between them sitting writing a musical and doing a showcase and a £10 million West End production." Hence a key part of the festival is the Global Search for New Musicals Sony Showcase later this week, in which nine new musicals have been selected for 45-minute showcase presentations from some 165 entries submitted for consideration. Erik Haagensen is an American writer who has come to Cardiff to showcase Summer, a new musical he has written the book and lyrics for. He agrees that the festival is "a very ambitious undertaking", adding "but ambition is not a sin". "You don't achieve anything unless you are ambitious," he says. "They care very deeply about what they are doing and the future of musical theatre. I have been given a wonderful cast and I have nothing but admiration for them. Though I am perhaps prejudiced, they deserve to be commended. "Although this activity is more than Cardiff can sustain full houses for, the quality of the work I'm seeing is very high. What matters is what they are putting out there." But on the other hand, critic Michael Coveney has written in the Daily Mail that there is "no festival focus and no real get up and go, even for those brave spirits who got up and went". Moreover, box office prices are not exactly cheap - tickets for the opening gala were as much as £65, while those for Babes in Arms went up to £28 and the concert productions to £30. This could have acted as a deterrent to local audiences, let alone those travelling from further afield. When you know the impetus for the festival, plus a large chunk of the £1.8 million funding, came from BBC Wales and Cardiff council – which is making a bid for City of Culture status in 2008 – it explains why Cardiff is hosting the event. But the support of its citizens has been far from guaranteed. In fact, no one could predict to what extent local support could be counted on. Benjamin had been frank, saying she did not know (a) how much the people of Cardiff could afford to go to five or six events in the space of three weeks and (b) how many people would come from outside. Looking at the box office statements with a month to go, she added ominously: "I had expected there to be a much bigger local percentage than there is at this point – but the locals may book later." Without a stronger local audience to support it – or the population to draw on in the first place – commercially, she may be fighting a losing battle, whatever the artistic success of the event. It may be that an event of this scale and ambition really needs to be in the epicentre of musical theatre in Britain and therefore in a place such as the Barbican, which could consolidate all its events under one roof, with several performing, exhibition and meeting spaces available. But if London has the perfect venue and the potential audience, it also needs the funding imagination that this festival has found in Wales to underwrite it too. |
| The Stage web site: www.musicalshows.me.uk/archives/features/failingtoscore.htm |
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Sunday, November 17, 2002 |
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