It’s Saturday night at the Park Theatre, in north London, and the main auditorium is packed. Two hundred people sit, entranced, as Maureen Lipman delivers Martin Sherman’s Rose, a monologue recounting an archetypal Jewish survivor’s life through the tumult of the 20th century.
Lipman’s tour de force exemplifies, in an understated British way, what makes the Park, near Finsbury Park tube station, special. It not only fosters new talent and ideas, but attracts household names drawn by its intimacy and its locality. And thanks to its regenerative influence, the surrounding streets have smartened up, with new restaurants picking up theatre-related trade.
Yet we should be alarmed by the situation that the Park, and venues like it – that stratum referred to as London’s “off-West End” – face. A unique combination of factors has created fears for the future: not just reduced theatre-going post-Covid and rising costs, but now also the meddlesome priorities of Arts Council England, poised to shift £16 million in subsidy out of the capital per year (then rising to £24 million) to fulfil the Government’s “levelling-up” agenda.
There’s no easy definition for the off-West End. It numbers around 30 venues that serve as a halfway house between the West End itself and the fringe. They might be world-famous (the Donmar Warehouse); they might be more for the cognoscenti and local community (Battersea Arts Centre). They might get a cushion of subsidy, such as the Young Vic, supported by £1.7 million per annum, or they might not get a penny: the Park has to raise around £400,000 every year to uphold its ambitious programme of work. As Jez Bond, its artistic director, observes, even modest productions aren’t cheap: “A show with a five-week run and five actors – that’s £120,000.”
Yet these theatres contribute to the world-class status of British theatre, both as a training ground for young talent, and a launchpad for shows with commercial viability. Whether it’s the Almeida, about to unveil Tammy Faye, a new musical by Elton John, or the New Diorama, which fostered another musical with commercial potential, Operation Mincemeat, Emma Bentley, Southwark Playhouse’s general manager, puts it well: “The West End couldn’t exist as it does without theatres like ours.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/theatre/what-to-see/why-levelling-up-obsession-could-doom-britains-theatre-scene/
