Critics can only celebrate UK regional theatre if they actually see it

This year’s UK Theatre Awards, held in the baronial splendour of London’s Guildhall, brought the assorted administrators, marketing and press departments of UK’s regional theatres, plus the writers, actors, directors, designers and producers who work in them, to the City of London for a celebration of the last year’s theatre in UK Theatre (formerly TMA) member theatres (including a few in London, like the Menier Chocolate Factory).

It’s an event I’m very proud to be a part of — I’m one of a judging panel for the theatre awards that also includes fellow critics Clare Brennan of The Observer, Dominic Cavendish of the Daily Telegraph, Sam Marlowe of The Times, Mark Fisher of The Guardian for Scotland and and Grainia McFadden of the Belfast Telegraph.

I have to freely admit that Clare, Dom and Sam routinely cover more English and Welsh regional theatre and Mark and Grainia more of Scottish and Irish theatre than I do, though I try to see as much as I can, particularly in the field of musicals. Between us we hopefully cover a big swathe of the shows that have played across the UK across the year, and though any awards ceremony is inevitably an imprecise science when it comes to definitively honouring the year’s all-round best, I think that this is as good and honest a way of spreading the net as wide as we can that its possible for six people to do.

We each bring our particular passions and interests to the table. I was particularly pleased this year to be able to strongly advocate for Brass, Benjamin Till’s wonderful First World War musical that I saw at City Varieties in Leeds in August where it was produced by the National Youth Music Theatre, to be shortlisted for Best Musical Production, and was even more pleased when it won. (I wrote about it here after I saw it).

But here’s an important thing: I had seen it at the personal invitation of Jeremy Walker, who runs the National Youth Music Theatre, and who paid my train fare to see it in Leeds, as he had done the year before when I saw the company’s stunning West Side Story in Manchester.

The plain and simple facts are that there are many, many out of town trips I simply could not afford to take if they were not being subsidised for me to write about, or paid for by The Stage. But this publication has an extensive network of regional contributors already, so I’m not often sent beyond London to review, unless it is sufficiently high profile to warrant a trip.

In last week’s issue of The Stage, Honour Bayes wondered if ACE might be able to institute some kind of central travel fund to enable critics to get to theatres outside of London. As she wrote:

During 2013/14 I’ve personally spent nearly £400 getting to regional theatres. Just last month, the Evening Standard’s critic Fiona Mountford and I paid £79 each on return tickets to Manchester to see Maxine Peake’s Hamlet. Earlier in the year, we spent more than £70 each getting to Liverpool to see the new Everyman Theatre.

These were presumably on private visits, rather than reviewing ones; and of course critics shouldn’t necessarily be in a privileged box when we want to pursue our private interests. (Normal theatregoers can’t apply for subsidised travel, let alone free theatre tickets, as I assume Fiona and Honour were able to arrange.)

But I can absolutely see the merits of Honour’s idea that regional theatres that want to get onto the radar of national theatre journalists need to be able to encourage us more actively to visit. A number of regional theatres already offer to pay train fares themselves, from their meagre marketing and press budgets; I’ve even had regional theatres occasionally pay for my accommodation.

Honour also raises the point:

While on the surface it seems to make sense, the issue of compromised objectivity inevitably rears its head. It’s impossible to be truly honest about a show if its makers have in some way paid for your assessment of it, an opinion shared by Sarah Frankcom, artistic director of Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre.

That’s presumably why Frankcom once invited me to meet her for a breakfast coffee and croissant at the Young Vic, and only paid for her own, not mine. And yet, on the occasions I have been to the Royal Exchange, we are always offered free interval drinks, so if that’s the case, surely our assessments are being lubricated by that?

As it is, critics routinely accept not just free drinks but also free meals at the Menier Chocolate Factory, and (it goes without saying) free theatre tickets, usually in pairs of the best seats in the house.

[pullquote]Sometimes the hospitality runs out[/pullquote]

But sometimes the hospitality runs out in surprising ways, too. At Chichester, for example, where the station is about a 15 minute walk away, a taxi back to the station is more or less an essential after the show if you’re going to try to make the 10.11pm return train after a first night (last week’s Gypsy opening came down at 9.54, which would have made a walk more of a sprint). Yet though the cab fare only stretches to about £5.50, the theatre never offers to pay for it, let alone the train once we get there. (On that occasion, I wasn’t reviewing for The Stage, so had to pay my own way entirely, door to door, which included a £33 return train ticket.)

Yet come awards time, as with the UK Theatre Awards, I am now able to add Gypsy to the mix of shows that I will be able to consider for next year’s awards. The truth of course is that I’d have wanted to see Gypsy come hell or high water – and Southern’s late night train service back via Three Bridges can often be a kind of purgatory, as you wonder whether you’ll make the very fast change there. (We arrived last week at 11.11, with the London Bridge train due to depart – from a different platform entirely, down an underpass and up a separate stairwell – at 11.12). So the train ticket was a comparatively small price to pay.

[pullquote]There are times when it’s simply easier for me to tube it to Stratford East rather than take a train to Stratford, or walk to the Old Vic rather than go to the Bristol Old Vic[/pullquote]

But there are other times when it’s simply easier for me to take the Tube to Stratford East rather than take a train to Stratford, or walk to the Old Vic rather than go to the Bristol Old Vic. At the same time, I’ll readily go to Leicester, because it’s a theatre that specialises in musicals and it does try-outs for shows I want to collect, like Finding Neverland and Water Babies, or more recently the launch of the UK tour of Barnum, much improved from its premiere at Chichester the summer before last.

I feel like I’ve been going to Leicester for years – my first-ever trip there was to see a Mike Ockrent-directed version of The Pajama Game in the mid-80s – so it was appropriate, too, that this year’s UK Theatre Awards honoured the long reign of Paul Kerryson as artistic director there, where he signs off after 23 years at the helm this year. He duly received The Stage award for outstanding contribution to British theatre. I also interviewed him for The Stage, and he’s been the biggest reason why Leicester has so regularly featured in my theatregoing life. I’m sure that Nikolai Foster, who takes over, will ensure that I keep going back there. I have, after all, travelled everywhere from Newcastle and Norwich to Mold to see shows he has directed, too.

Sometimes critics follow the artists as much as we follow the theatres.

 Read more columns from Mark Shenton