Betty Blue Eyes was a critical smash, but the final curtain comes down early this weekend. Why are original British musicals being squeezed out of the West End?
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On the last weekend before Christmas, I take a group of family and friends to the most enjoyable play or musical I've seen as a critic in the previous 12 months. This year, I added an emergency summer outing on the basis that the triumphant National theatre comedy One Man, Two Guvnors was unlikely still to be running in December, a prediction that turned out to be wrong. But that was fine, because Betty Blue Eyes ? in my view, the most brilliant new musical of recent years ? would be the tinsel trip.
This assumption also turned out to be wrong. Despite four- and five-star reviews, George Stiles and Anthony Drewe's musicalisation of Alan Bennett and Malcolm Mowbray's film A Private Function will close this weekend after a six-month run in which it played to an average of only half-full houses, leaving unexpected gaps in the diaries of stars Sarah Lancashire and Reece Shearsmith, director Richard Eyre and the lead: an expensive animatronic porker, voiced by Kylie Minogue, who snorts, eye-flutters and sings, as she fights to avoid ending up as black-market rashers on the plates of northerners seeking a way around the government's meat laws.
The need to rethink my end-of-year diary is the least of it. What alarms me about Betty's passing is that ? with Andrew Lloyd Webber's Love Never Dies also closing early ? Billy Elliot, now six years old, is the single British-made musical of recent vintage with a completely original score. The other written-from-scratch shows to have started in London ? Blood Brothers and The Phantom of the Opera ? opened decades ago, in 1983 and 1986 respectively. Even the two most recent technically new musicals ? Shrek and Ghost ? have stand-out songs (I'm A Believer and Unchained Melody) that were not written by the shows' composers. Everything else ? Mamma Mia,! Jersey Boys, The Lion King, We Will Rock You ? is either a "jukebox musical" (animating a familiar song catalogue) or a transplant from cinema.
So, in the most pessimistic interpretation, the death of Betty marks the failure to save the bacon of the home-grown, genuinely fresh British musical. And it turns out that I am not alone in my extreme reaction to this show's closure. The producer of Betty Blue Eyes, Cameron Mackintosh, who has been in the business for four decades, tells me: "Something has happened on this show that has never happened in my whole career. Some newspapers have been giving us free ads for the last few weeks because they were so sad that it was coming off." As owner of the Novello theatre, he waived his right to weekly rental fees and, knowing of cases of struggling shows that suddenly flourished through strong word-of-mouth, he kept running through the summer. But the musical, which cost �4m in initial investments, has ended up losing "several hundred thousand more".
The outcome surprised him: "Every show I know of with reviews like we had has ended up having a considerable run." As you would expect, he has analysed what happened. "We had fantastic actors, but we didn't have a movie superstar. And the writers were not well known. What I think is that it's increasingly difficult [?] to launch cold in the West End, and make completely new material an event with the public." He had explored the possibility of starting the piece at the National, or the West Yorkshire Playhouse, but was eventually convinced to risk everything on West End economics.
In fact, Betty Blue Eyes did have one connection with what theatre producers call a "pre-sale name". Alan Bennett, after the long runs of The History Boys, is probably the most box-office responsive playwright in commercial theatre. Charles Spencer, theatre critic of the Daily Telegraph, has questioned why the words "Alan Bennett" were not emblazoned on the posters and the recognisable cinematic title, A Private Function, retained.
A resting place for robot Betty
The explanation seems to be that, though Bennett approved of and admired the musical, he is a shy and modest man, and so resisted too much attribution to a project in which he had no direct involvement. Such self-effacement is a character strength, but may have become a marketing weakness. As for the title, Mackintosh simply never liked the film name: "[It] always seemed vaguely lavatorial."
The producer refuses to categorise Betty Blue Eyes as a flop. "Look, there are numerous examples of huge shows that didn't work first time round." He points out that Chicago, West Side Story and Sweeney Todd had disappointing initial runs in London.
With another of his less successful musicals, Boublil and Schoenberg's Martin Guerre, Mackintosh has kept bringing the show back, in the hope of convincing audiuences. Will he do the same with Betty Blue Eyes? "With Martin Guerre, I kept redoing it to get the show right. With Betty, I can't do a better production than we did, so it will be for someone else to say one day: hey, that was a great show, why don't we have another look at it?"
Does Betty's death mark the triumph of the jukebox and movie-musical? "The public has a right to go to see whatever it wants. As a theatre-owner, I'm very happy to have two great jukebox musicals: Mamma Mia! and Jersey Boys. What I have to think about is the best way of launching new material." He questions whether the hit plays Enron and Jerusalem would have succeeded if staged new and naked in Shaftesbury Avenue, rather than playing in the subsidised bubble of the Royal Court.
The new musicals due in London over the next few months do suggest that we are unlikely to see another show with a completely new score receiving a commercial West End premiere. Opening later this month is Rock of Ages, the latest hit-song project, with a plot constructed around such 80s classics as Don't Stop Believin', a song made famous again by the TV series Glee (a franchise which itself feels like an inevitable West End and Broadway long-runner). Revivals of Crazy for You and Singin' in the Rain are in preparation, and Chicago is about to return to the Garrick. The only new piece is Matilda, the Roald Dahl show that was extensively road-tested by a subsidised company (the RSC), in the way that Mackintosh wishes he had been able to do with Betty Blue Eyes.
Actually, there is one new musical ? and it's by Stiles and Drewe, Betty's creators. Their latest work, Soho Cinders, a modern version of Cinderella, will open on 9 October at the Novello, the former home of Betty Blue Eyes, with a cast including Hannah Waddingham and Sandi Toksvig. It will close the same night, although the brevity of the run is intended: it's a one-off charity performance for the Teenage Cancer Trust.
The cause is impeccable, but it's tempting to see this limited exposure as symbolic of the future of the newly written musical. Al Gore, after losing the contested 2000 US election to a split-decision by the Supreme Court, famously joked: "Well, you win some, you lose some ? and then there's this little-explored third category." And so in theatre, there are hits and flops and then this bitterly sad third list, to which Betty Blue Eyes now belongs ? the show that had everything it needed to be a super-hit, except an audience.
Will its animatronic star be locked in a cupboard, or given place of honour at Mackintosh's Scottish estate? "I have real Bettys in Scotland," he says. "But our theatrical Betty will be extremely well cared-for, and available to anyone who wants to do this show again."
? Betty Blue Eyes closes at the Novello, London on 24 September. The performance of Soho Cinders in aid of the Teenage Cancer Trust is on 9 October. Details: sohocinders.com
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2011/sep/21/betty-blue-eyes-closure-interview
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