Mark Shenton: The Stage 100 reflects a changing theatrical landscape

The volatility of theatrical politics and its impact on larger public conversations came to the fore in 2017 as never before.

This was particularly the case after the allegations of sexual abuse and harassment that surfaced in the entertainment world, first with Harvey Weinstein and then Kevin Spacey. The latter’s decade-long tenure at the helm of London’s Old Vic earned him an honorary knighthood in 2015 for services to British theatre and international culture.

Weinstein, meanwhile, launched his first major Broadway show, Finding Neverland, at Leicester’s Curve in 2012 (though he entirely overhauled the show, sacking its entire original creative team, including its writers, before he then took it on to New York).

It is no wonder then that Vicky Featherstone’s active engagement with these issues has seen her rise to the top of The Stage 100 list (of which I was one of the judges) after seizing the initiative for a public discussion to take place at London’s Royal Court.

The Court itself was not immune to historic charges of abuse that were revealed when former artistic director Max Stafford-Clark emerged as one of the first directors to be accused of sexually harassing behaviour that led him to be ousted from Out of Joint, the company he had himself founded after leaving the Court.

But, as this publication’s reviews editor Natasha Tripney commented: “2017 was a pretty dispiriting year all round, but it was a particularly dismaying one for women. But the Royal Court’s Vicky Featherstone has seemed intent on using it as an opportunity to create lasting change.”

Actually, it was a dismaying one for men, too, as Spacey’s serial accusers at the Old Vic and elsewhere will attest. Victims of abuse are not just women.

But if this is a conversation that is long overdue, so is the rise at last of Kwame Kwei-Armah to become the first black Briton to feature in the top 20 of The Stage 100 in its 22-year history. He has entered the list at number 20; I’m sure his position will rise as his first season takes shape (his predecessor David Lan was listed at number eight last year, and is at 12th position this year).

In 2005, I interviewed the actor-turned-director Clint Dyer about the musical The Big Life that transferred from Theatre Royal Stratford East to the West End. He was the first black British director to direct a musical in the West End. As he told me ruefully: “The wonderful thing about being black in this country is that you have an amazing opportunity to be the first at a lot of things.”

Kwei-Armah had, earlier in that same year, become the first British-born, black writer to have a play open in the commercial West End when his play Elmina’s Kitchen transferred from the National to the Garrick.

Elsewhere on the list there’s quite a lot of jockeying for position. Sonia Friedman slips down a couple of places after topping the list last year, with second place going to Cameron Mackintosh, whose position as the eminence grise of the West End is confirmed by his spectacular refurbishment of the Victoria Palace Theatre and his role in helping to transfer Hamilton there from Broadway. Hamilton’s creator Lin-Manuel Miranda also makes it into the list, at number nine.

James Graham makes the most meteoric rise, up from 76th to 10th, after finding himself represented by two plays side-by-side on St Martin’s Lane last year with Ink and Labour of Love, and a third earlier in the year – This House. He is also set to reappear at the Coward Theatre this year when Chichester’s Quiz transfers there.

Nicks Hytner and Starr, who last year were listed at 59th position, shot back up the list to re-enter the top 10 at number seven, after the opening of their Bridge Theatre in October.

But The Stage list is also interesting for revealing the emergence of future movers and shakers such as the Yard’s Jay Miller, who enters the list at 100, or Joseph Houston and William Whelton, whose founding of the Hope Mill Theatre in Manchester sees them share 99th position with producer Katy Lipson, as well as 29-year-old producer Jamie Wilson, who enters the list at 92nd.