ghost light 

With theatres large and small, professional and amateur all dark, something for the first time in London, at least, since plague wreaked havoc in the 16th and 17th centuries, reviews are a retreating memory so we are musing on thoughts theatrical until curtains rise again.

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Empty stage, empty seats and empty tills at theatres such as Birmingham Hippodrome

£1.57bn life support for the Arts

Behind The Arras steers away from politics in normal times. We are a theatrical website, we deal with reviews, with news of coming shows, interviews with stars – the vagaries of politics, of funding and the like are left to others, the trade papers and trade bodies.

But these are not normal times and the theatres, actors, orchestras, ballet and opera companies, front of house, the people we write about, many our friends, are under threat as never before. To the man in the street, the apocryphal man on the Clapham omnibus, £1.57 billion is a lot of money, many lifetimes of lottery wins but in terms of the Arts, welcome as it is, it is only a start.

There are at least 1100 theatres and a minimum of 800 music venues in the country, add in concert halls, orchestras, string quartets, musicians, opera singers, opera companies, dance companies, theatre companies, circuses, set makers, lighting and sound technicians and companies, transporters, artists, heritage sites . . . the list goes on and on - all with no income since March and no prospect of working again in the foreseeable future - suddenly £1.57 billion does not seem so enormous.

The theatre industry has calculated it needs £330 million each quarter to survive, we are in the second quarter already and by Christmas it will be a third – that’s a somewhat unfestive £990 million.

Add to that the 80 per cent furlough scheme falls to 60 per cent in August with employers required to pick up to 20 per cent slack. The result of that will mean furloughed theatre staff will become either an unwelcome, extra cost . . . or they will, sadly, become former staff, swelling the ranks of the unemployed. The whole scheme is then set to end in October when up to 300,000 or so jobs in the Arts will be at risk.

These are workers in industries that cannot start-up again, industries that have no choice but to remain closed, with no income and the light, when it can eventually be seen, at the end of what seems to be a very long tunnel, so it seems now is hardly the time to give with one hand and take away with the other. Support surely needs to continue for people employed in industries forced to remain closed.

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Curtain down at Birmingham's deserted Alexandra Theatre with no inkling of when it will rise again

The announcement of £1.57bn is welcome, of course, and gives the arts sector some breathing space but with no timetable, no road map, no end in sight, no one can even estimate how much will be needed to keep the arts sector on what has now become life support.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak describes it as a world-leading rescue package – it’s not. Other countries are doing as much or more. You would think after our world beating track and trace app debacle that world leading/beating/best etc would have been quietly dropped as a prefix to every Government announcement, but it seems not.

The package is a solid start, albeit a late one. Theatres, cinemas, circuses and so on closed in March and at least one theatre has already gone to the wall, but at least the funding shows the Government is now listening.

Part of the funding, quite rightly, goes to the devolved administrations of Scotland (£97m), Wales (£59m) and Northern Ireland (£33).

After money to restart construction on cultural infrastructure and for heritage construction projects in England (£120m) and cash for national cultural institutions in England and the English Heritage Trust (£100m) comes £270m in loans on “favourable terms”.

One would expect these to be soft loans with extended repayment periods and below market rate interest rates available to commercial theatres and operations.

That leaves £880m in grants – remember the theatre’s £330m a quarter figure? – for the rest of the arts sector including galleries, independent cinemas, music venues, theatres and so on all applying for a slice of the cake . . . so, pens at the ready, on your marks, let the bun fight begin  . . .

The government said: “Decisions on awards will be made working alongside expert independent figures from the sector including the Arts Council England and other specialist bodies such as Historic England, National Lottery Heritage Fund and the British Film Institute.”

The culture secretary Oliver Dowden said the two broad aims of the package were to preserve "crown jewel" venues such as the Royal Albert Hall and national galleries, while also helping local institutions across the UK, which will raise concerns outside London about how widely the cash will be distributed, with the capital already receiving around a third of Arts Council funding before lockdown.

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Wolverhampton's Grand Theatre which has already had to put back it's panto to Christmas 2021

Mr Dowden added that institutions would have to apply through industry bodies and would be asked to prove how they contributed to wider economic growth, which perhaps misses the point of what culture and the Arts is about.

Performances or exhibitions might boost takings for nearby bars, cafes and restaurants, increase revenue for car parks and public transport and certainly provide work for ancillary industries from printers to ballet shoe makers – but their real value is not measured in economics but in emotions, and that doesn’t show on a balance sheet.

The Arts bring joy, pleasure, happiness and wonder with the power to move, to lift spirits, to surprise, to excite, laugh, cry, cheer and even hiss and boo come panto season. No committee can ever put a price or economic value on that.

The price of doing nothing would have left a cultural desert, a bonfire of the arts as we have said before, so this is a welcome start – but with a stark warning.

Mr Dowden said the government was confident the emergency package would protect the majority of jobs in the culture sector - but not all.

The same might well apply to theatres, orchestras and all the other cultural institutions which are the guardians of our heritage. It is unlikely all will survive in the dark times still ahead.

Roger Clarke

07-07-20

Equity Charitable Trust (supporting performers experiencing hardship)

The Theatrical Guild (supporting front of house and backstage workers)

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don
Tyrone Singleton and Céline Gittens in Birmingham Royal Ballet's Don Quixote which was to have opened at Birmingham Hippodrome this week. Picture: Bella Kotak
 A looming bonfire of the arts

The news that 62 staff at Birmingham Hippodrome, almost half the 130 full timers, have been told their jobs are at risk should not come as a surprise.

It will not be alone. Theatre, indeed, the arts in general, is an industry in crisis. Staff in other theatres face the same future. This is not the standard action of corporate Britain to shed staff for a short term profit boost - this is a cull to survive an impending disaster - a bonfire of the arts.

More than half the theatres outside London, including the Hippodrome, are charities or charitable trusts. There is no striving for ever increasing dividends to keep shareholders happy, no profit targets and, in many cases, no Arts Council funding. They stand . . . or fall on their own two feet.

For some theatres survival itself will be in question. West End theatres are said to be looking at a New Year re-opening at the earliest but if theatres are dark until the end of 2020, many will never see the light again.

Not only will they have lost almost 10 months income, they will have lost the panto season which, for some theatres, provides up to 30 per cent of their annual box office takings with the added valuable income boost of sales of ice cream, soft drinks and programmes as mums and dads, grans and grandpas indulge children with a festive treat. The Christmas season is the life blood of many a theatre . . . oh yes its is!

As it is theatres have no income, cash reserves, if they exist, are being depleted by months of ticket refunds while money has to be found for maintenance of buildings which are often old and costly to run, insurance and bills for standing charges for utilities.

Then there are wages - not all staff are furloughed, many are still employed. Theatres are haemorrhaging cash, there is no end in sight and without help the future for the arts is bleak.

Top producer Sonia Friedman says it costs £30,000 a week to keep a West End theatre closed and she fears for the future of some big names.

She said: “One by one, our arts and cultural organisations will have to spend their reserves until there is nothing left. They will have no alternative but to enter administration: the Young Vic in November, Shakespeare’s Globe and the Old Vic shortly after. Southampton has already lost its producing theatre, the Nuffield. Others could soon follow: Bristol, Edinburgh, Leeds, Sheffield. Unless there is intervention, we’ll watch the Royal Shakespeare Company close down, the Royal Opera House and Sadler’s Wells, even the National Theatre itself: all will be gone by December. All West End theatres will be mothballed. Dark. We cannot let this happen.”

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Emma Lucia and Daniel Healy in the UK tour of Once which should have opened at the Alexandra Theatre this month. Picture: Mark Senior

No indication of a date to reopen, or even a mention, has been included in the hazy and ever changing road map out of lockdown, and even when theatres are allowed to open again social distancing will reduce capacity to about 20 per cent when to be viable somewhere between 60 and 80 per cent is break even.

And it is not just theatres, music venues from small clubs to concert halls face the same problems and theatres and halls are merely the venues, the places where we see singers, actors, plays, musicals, ballets, operas, concerts – anything from rappers to Romeo and Juliet – and with venues closed, performers, front of house and back stage staff and technicians are all suffering.

Horace Trubridge, the general secretary of the Musicians’ Union, told a virtual meeting of the Commons culture select committee that some 40 per cent of his members didn’t qualify for either the furlough scheme or the income support scheme for the self-employed.

Many had had no income since mid-March while many music venues were to be found occupying valuable city centre sites and if the rents could not be paid then landlords could well start to look for alternative uses.

To give an idea of the scale the Music Venue Trust, which supports grassroots music venues, has 800 members, 800 venues, large and small, with bills to pay and no income.

As for theatres Julian Bird, chief executive of both UK Theatre and Society of London Theatre, told the committee there were around 1,100 theatre buildings in Britain. He said: “Our latest survey told us 70 per cent of theatres or production companies will run out of cash, go out of business, by the end of this year. Unless there is a change in some of the government support you will see more and more theatres like Birmingham Hippodrome make difficult decisions about their workforce in order to preserve themselves.”

Both men called on the Government to give more support to the arts giving as one example the aid given by the German government of a €1bn cultural fund, which is around £890m.

Even with one metre social distancing audience numbers would still not make productions viable while there are the added problems, cited by Peter Gelb, the New York Metropolitan Opera’s general manager in the New York Times.

The Met has cancelled its autumn season but hopes to have a New Year’s Eve concert and Mr Gelb said: “It’s transparently obvious that social distancing and grand opera cannot go together.

“It’s not just the audience; it’s the health of the company. You cannot put a symphony orchestra inside a pit, and performers and a chorus in intimate proximity on the stage of the Met.”

As for the audience and social distancing? “How do you get them in and how do your get them out?”.

Both opera and ballet at Birmingham Hippodrome are performed with a full symphony orchestra, Welsh National Opera orchestra and the Royal Ballet Sinfonia  and one German study suggested, for example, a three metre space in front of a trumpet player and two metres to either side – spacing that would leave Paul Murphy conducting the Sinfonia from somewhere around the box office.

 every Jamie

Everybody's Talking About Jamie - which should have been the topic of conversation at Wolverhampton Grand next week

As for performances Private Eye had suggestions for new look plays as theatres reopen, such as One Man No Gov’nors while Les Misérable would become Le Misérable.

The current crisis comes as the latest blow for the industry since the financial crash 12 years ago. The National Campaign for the Arts’ Arts Index survey, in association with the Creative Industries Federation (CIF) and King’s College London, shows public funding for the arts measured by head of the population has fallen 35 per cent while local authority funding has dropped 43 per cent since 2008.

The survey also found that sponsorship by business and the great and the good had fallen by 39 per cent since 2013.

The response of the arts was to change their business models to rely less on grants, sponsorship and patronage and to increase income from audiences through box office, refreshments, and so on as well as room and venue hire – which has resulted in an increase of  self-generated income of some 47 per cent since 2008.

In one of life’s little ironies though, solving one problem has exacerbated another. To combat the loss of tens of millions of pounds worth of public and corporate finance theatres were generating and relying on more and more of their own income – and that dried up overnight.

To an extent, theatres and the arts suffer from not having a voice loud enough to be heard above the crowd. Individual actors, directors, singers will always be newsworthy – we are a celebrity obsessed culture – but although there are trade bodies and trade unions from Equity and the Broadcasting, Entertainment, Communications and Theatre Union to the Society of London Theatres and UK Theatre, they don’t have the political clout of the likes of the CBI or Institute of Directors, or big unions such as Unite or the GMB. Eloquence and a just cause is no substitute for raw power.

Perhaps theatre also suffers from not being seen so much as an industry by the public as individual theatres. Cars, for example, are seen as Ford, Nissan, Peugeot and so on, all part of the same motor industry, with showrooms everywhere. but theatres seem to be seen as much more localised; Coventry has its Belgrade, Wolverhampton its Grand, even Birmingham’s half dozen theatres are seen as individual venues rather than as showrooms for an industry.

Perhaps there is also even a misconception about earnings. We see pop stars regularly in The Sunday Times Rich List and read of actors earning millions to appear in a film or being paid Premier League footballer’s wages to appear on TV.

But in reality the profession is a bit like the National Lottery. The fact someone hits the jackpot does not make every player a millionaire.

Musicians under contract to orchestras, such as the CBSO, earn around £30,000 a year according to the Musician’s Union, hardly a fortune these days, especially when an instrument suitable for a professional such as a violin or cello can cost more, in some cases, much more than a car.

But many classical musicians and session musicians are freelance - if they don’t play there is no pay.

Equally precarious is acting where the old joke about an actor’s most uttered line being: “Do you want fries with that?” has more than a ring of truth about it – especially at a time when two of the standby professions for “resting” actors, bar work and food outlets are closed.

Research by Queen Mary University of London in Bethnal Green referenced surveys which showed just two per cent of actors make a living purely from acting while some 90 per cent are unemployed on any day in normal times.

A 2018 survey showed 63 per cent of actors, musicians and dancers earned less than £5,000 in the previous year, 60 per cent had second or even third jobs; twenty per cent had not had any work in the entertainment industry in the previous six months and only 13 per cent had managed to earn £20,000 or more from performing.

It is a precarious profession at best and with no performances, no casual work and for many performers no income nor access to Government help, the situation is desperate.

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Six should have been bringing  magic to history at Coventry Belgrade this month

Even amateur theatres, where there are no salaries to pay, have not escaped unscathed. The costs and losses are far smaller but can still be substantial.

For those who hire rehearsal space and halls for productions, costs are little more than a loss of momentum, but for those with theatres to maintain there are bills to pay.

Fixed costs at Hall Green Little Theatre in Acocks Green, for example, standing charges, gas, water, electricity, rates, insurance and the like run at around £600 or more a month.

Highbury, with a larger building, has monthly costs of around £800 but is luckier than most in that it has historical income from residential property it owns.

Sutton Arts has monthly bills of around £500. For other amateur companies with their own theatres costs will be similar although here, unlike professional theatre, the Government has given help with the Small Business Grant of £10,000 which is enough to keep amateur theatres afloat well into next year.

Amateur companies have another concern though – audiences. Will people be prepared to return, even with social distancing, if coronavirus, or, perhaps more important, fear of coronavirus is still around. A concern that surely cannot have escaped the attention of professional theatre.

The arts and culture sector is worth £112 billion to the economy and pays £2.8billion in taxation, creating more than 360,000 jobs, but if theatres and music venues close, companies go out of business, orchestras fold  - we are in danger of losing much more than a substantial chunk of tax.

In 2018 theatres sold 34.3 million tickets, some 20 million more than attendance at Premier League football matches, and some 40 per cent of households attend the theatre at least once a year, but even for those who never go to the theatre, the scale of potential closures of theatres will have a knock-on effect on film in both cinemas and the likes of Amazon and Netflix as well as on TV, all of which rely on theatre for a steady stream of new talent. Less theatres, less shows, less talent.

Much more than that though if we lose theatres, orchestras, companies, we lose part of our culture, part of our heritage, part of who we are. Without Government intervention, as we said at the beginning, we will see nothing less than a bonfire of the arts. Perhaps it is time to remind your MP of that.

Roger Clarke

16-05-20 

Wolverhampton Grand receives Arts Council grant to assist community work

Equity Charitable Trust (supporting performers experiencing hardship)

The Theatrical Guild (supporting front of house and backstage workers)

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macbeth and banquo
Macbeth and Banquo encounter the witches for the first time in a painting by Théodore Chassériau in Paris’s wonderful Musée d'Orsay. Most of the costume budget seems to have gone on horses in this production.

Superstitions, Dos and Don’ts

When it comes to superstitions The Scottish Play leaves the rest in its wake. Perhaps safest not to name it in case that brings the world wide web crashing down, but it rhymes with Black Death . . . and how spooky is that!!

The legend started early, at the world premiere apparently, when the actor playing Mrs M back in 1606 is said to have shuffled off his mortal coil somewhat suddenly and had to be replaced at the last minute.

Then, if that was not enough, it was claimed that Shakespeare had included real spells in his text for his three witches, which angered the national union of real witches and warlocks who cursed the play for all time – and you think critics are bad if they don’t like a play?

And Big Mac has enhanced his own legend along the way with an actor supposedly dying when a stage dagger was accidentally replaced with a real one, which made the actor’s death as realistic as you are ever likely to get, and plenty of other tales of death, accidents, injuries – most apocryphal but some are even documented - and no doubt somewhere in the world someone once told a friend they were off to see . . . the play . . . saying it’s real name moments before they were mown down by a bus or struck by lightning or trampled by a rampaging stampede of wildebeast.

Then there have been riots, theatres burning down, suicides and even Verdi’s eponymous opera has come in for its share of catastrophe, including a suicide during a televised performance in New York.

But, sadly for fans of the paranormal, the fact remains that more actors have died during productions of Hamlet than Mr M’s tale. Mind you, Hamlet in full flow, at 4,000 lines and four hours plus,  is about twice the running time of the play we dare not name. and is also Will’s most performed play, so there is both more opportunity and more time for any actor with a penchant for the dramatic to take their final bow.

Tales of terrible tragedy, deaths and the like have given the play a kudos of impending calamity, but the more likely explanation for Macbeth (there, I've said it - don precautionary tin hats!) being a portender of doom is much more serious than mere legend – the threat of penury, starvation and unemployment tending to concentrate the mind on thoughts of impending doom.

In the days before computers, tablets, video games, internet, Sky, Netflix, telly, radio . . . the days when social media was the sawdust-floored inn, there was theatre. Every town had at least one, my home town of Oldham had 12, we also had 365 pubs (February 29 must have been a problem for pub crawls) along with the first Yate’s Wine Lodge and first fish and chip shop – we knew how to live up t’north.

There were in house repertory companies as well as actor/managers touring the land living on ticket sales – Ronald Harwood’s The Dresser tells of one such of what was a dying breed by the time of the Second World War.

Now Macbeth with its battle scene, trio of old crone witches casting spells and 12 violent deaths – blood and gore in almost every scene - was a popular play, a real crowd pleaser, a sure way to put bums on seats.

The only problem was that all too often if a company was struggling, a switch to Macbeth was the last throw of the dice to stay afloat, often the harbinger of bankruptcy which meant actors unpaid and out of a job. Even a mere mention of the play was enough to send shivers down the spine of a struggling actor in a struggling company. The word held terror all right, terror of starvation and being thrown out of lodgings for unpaid bills.

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That old Mac magic: The middle witch appears to be passing her own opinion of Mr M in this detail from an engraving by Robert Thew of a painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds in the Wellcome Collection

That didn’t stop a whole range of antidotes to the curse that probably never was. There was going out of the room, turning three times, swearing or, in some rituals, saying a quote from another Shakespeare play, then asking to be allowed back in. Some antidotes had actors going outside and walking around the theatre building three times – quite a trek at the Hippodrome, Grand or Rep – and you would probably need to take sandwiches for the journey at Derby.

Then we come on to all the other superstitions, such as it being bad luck to use real money, real jewellery and real mirrors on stage. It might of course have something to do with real mirrors reflecting spotlights into actor’ eyes, or destroying carefully designed lighting plots, while real money and real jewellery . . . not so much superstition as temptation.

And while we are on props, how about peacock feathers. In Greek mythology Argus Panoptes was a giant said to have had 100 eyes, He was appointed by the Goddess Hera to protect her priestess Io, but Hermes tricked Argus and killed him. Hera then transferred his eyes to the tail of a peacock. It’s all a bit more complicated than that with Zeus involved and Io turned into a cow but that was the peacock bit. For some reason, that meant peacock feathers came to represent the evil eye on stage – not that there is a lot of call for peacock feathers these days.

Then we have break a leg. In my modest performing days I once wished a female lead good luck in the time honoured theatrical tradition of telling her to break a leg as we headed out of the dressing rooms for the dress rehearsal, whereupon she promptly fell down a short flight of steps, knackered her ankle and had to perform the run in a surgical boot . . . good luck might have been safer, methinks.

But where did the tradition arise? The Americans claim it relates to the actor turned assassin John Wilkes Booth who fatally shot Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s Theatre in 1865 then leapt from the box to the stage to escape and some accounts, largely disputed, had him breaking his leg in the process. Broken or not he escaped on horseback to be shot dead 12 days later.

All right, it involves a theatre, a stage and an unlikely broken leg, but I suspect the more astute of you might question as to how all this relates to wishing someone good luck, but as it was some 60 or so years later before the phrase was first recorded in the US then either Americans think at a glacial pace or that is probably not the origin.

One theory is it comes from the leg line the invisible or sometimes chalk line between performing area and backstage, so to break a leg was to enter the stage, which meant, in times gone by, an actor or performer had the good fortune of getting paid. No appearance, no pay.

Some say it relates to Elizabethan times when an actor would bow, that is break a leg, after a good performance, even kneeling to pick up coins thrown in appreciation. Others suggest it is to confuse evil spirits who will mischievously cause the opposite of what is asked. Whatever . . . if you want to wish someone good luck, tell them to break a leg . . . and then hope they don’t.

Hardyleg

Not so common these days is the superstition of not wearing blue on stage, which is from the same origin as Macbeth (tin hats again, please!). Blue was an expensive dye, so struggling companies would pop in blue costumes to give the impression they were financially in a better state than they really were. For actors blue once more brought the spectre of impending unemployment. Wealthy companies dispelled the myth by using real silver items to show their wealth was more than costume deep.

Some superstitions hang around such as a bad dress means a good show despite the fact a bad dress can also be because it just happens to be a bad show.

The idea stems from the fact that if the dress is error strewn it is a reality check for cast and crew who will pull all the stops out to be ready for opening night. A good dress could encourage complacency and a less than inspired opening.

Not that a dress should ever be fully completed of course. There is the old belief that the final line of a play should never be said until it is performed, nor should a bow be taken in an empty theatre or the production is doomed, and how about the idea of sleeping with the script under your pillow as it will somehow allow the words to slowly seep into your brain as you sleep helping you to remember your part – something science has not yet found the time to prove.

While we are at it, never go on stage where there are three candles, The actor nearest the last to be lit, or the shortest, or the dimmest flame, depending upon which version of doom you believe, will either end up getting married or dead. If you are married already I suppose it puts the current spouse on notice and in some plays the latter could well be a welcome relief.

Flowers have their own supersitions. Never give a bouquet before a performance or it will be a dreary, jaded affair that night and, a real bizarre one, on the final night of a show the leading lady or director should be presented with flowers stolen from a graveyard. What the leading lady is going to do with a load of carnations that spell GRANDMA has never been fully explained..

This is apparently to mark the symbolic death of the show and is said to stem from the days when penniless actors wanted to show appreciation to leading lady or director but couldn’t afford a posh bouquet, so nicked a bunch.

There are many more, some local to individual theatres, or single countries, but whatever you are seeing and wherever you are seeing it there is as much drama back stage as in the spotlight – but, that being said, just remember next time you go to the theatre . . . sometime this year hopefully . . . if you open a bag of annoyingly noisy sweets or crisps, especially if done slowly in a quiet bit, stand up and before you sit down again turn round three times, open and close your seat twice, mutter a quote from Hamlet and scratch your right ear then you put your left arm in, your left arm out, in, out, in out and shake it all about.

Probably nothing will happen if you don’t . . . but we can always hope.

Roger Clarke

09-04-20  

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Things that go bump in the . . . spotlight

When it comes to superstitions, theatres can probably manage almost one for every seat in the house. For a start any self-respecting theatre has to have at least one ghost; if they are lucky an actor was murdered there or was fatally wounded in a sword fight that didn’t go quite as rehearsed.

Even an actor keeling over on stage would get him the coveted eternity gig, failing that there is always some dastardly deed, murder most foul, terrible accident or, if necessary, some documents, or, if all else fails, an undocumented legend of tragedy on the site where the theatre now stands, or within a reasonable haunting distance.

Many theatres uphold the tradition of ghost lights, a single lamp, centre stage, as a courtesy to allow the theatrical ghosts to perform on the empty stage in the empty theatre.

It also means that the stage crew are not going to break their necks when they leave or arrive in the blackness to switch on the lights, including house lights, back stage – a small point which is surely merely a bonus, almost a gift from the ghosts.

Tradition also dictates that theatrical ghosts are given a night alone in the theatre out of respect which is why theatres are rarely open on Sundays. All right, it also coincides with the get-out and get-in for touring shows, but even on long runs theatres are still dark on Sundays - a night given over to the spectres of the stage . . . or just a night off for those actors with breaths and bows still to take.

Mind you, some say theatres should traditionally be closed on Monday - many play safe and  close both - as the day when Thespis can perform, apparently he is none too chuffed at sharing his moment in the ghost light with . . . well, ghosts. He was the first actor to speak lines as an individual around 6BC and is the reason actors are called Thespians.

The Theatre Royal Drury Lane is said to be the most haunted theatre in Britain with the ghosts of Joseph Grimaldi (1778-1837), the white faced clown who virtually invented pantomime, still in residence along with the clog dancing Dan Leno (1860-1904) a renowned pantomime dame.

But it is the Man in Grey who is the most famous, having been seen many times, usually crossing the upper circle and melting into the wall. Who he is no one knows, except during renovations in the 1870s workmen found a hidden room behind the wall where the ghost vanished. Inside was the skeleton of a young man in grey rags with a dagger stuck in his rib cage.

He was supposedly a young man who had fallen for an actress in the reign of Queen Anne and her actor lover had murdered him and hidden the body. Whoever he is, he is a welcome whenever he visits, only appearing at the start of what will subsequently turn out to be a successful run. If he doesn’t appear . . . the show is in trouble!

The Palace Theatre in the West End boasted two ghosts, one a ballerina who does the odd twirl across the stage, and Ivor Novello who apparently watches shows from the dress circle. Two seats were left bolted open and permanently empty for the ghosts to enjoy shows whenever they wanted . . . until the sell out Harry Potter came along, that is, and the ghosts lost their freebie seats and had to take their place in line to pay like everyone else. Money trumps tradition.

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Is it a phantom . . . or just Photoshop at The Alexandra Theatre?

Theatre Royal Haymarket has former manager, writer and director from the 1800s John Baldwin Buckstone in attendance. He apparently prefers comedies, while the Adelphi has Shakespearean actor William Terriss in residence. He was murdered at the stage door in 1897, always a good career move for immortality, His killer was former friend, former not surprising in the circumstances, and fellow actor Richard Archer Prince. Poor Bill died in the arms of his lover and leading lady vowing to visit her after his death. He still pops in to knock on her door 120 years on . . . now that’s real love for you.

Closer to home the former Alexandra Theatre manager Derek Salberg, who died in his office in 1997, kept in touch from the ethereal back stage with strange knocking often heard on the door and things being knocked over in The Salberg Suite, his old office, not that you are safe in the auditorium where the ghost of a cleaning lady is often seen in the circle or wandering up and down stairs.

Leon Salberg, another of the legendary theatre family also died in his office, in 1937, and his ghost is still around as is former stage manager Mr Turner, renowned for jangling his keys, which can still be heard as his footsteps cross an empty stage, and there are a couple of other ghosts who pop in from time to time. Hate to cast aspersions, but in these troubled times, when it comes to ghosts, the Alex seems to be hoarding them!

The Grand Theatre in Wolverhampton has Percy J Purdey, a manager there in the early 20th century, who wanders around and pops in the bar for a whisky each night - hope he gets a staff discount! They also have a Grey Lady, or the Lavender Lady after the scent she leaves behind. She is said to be an audience member who fell to her death from one of the boxes.

The Royal Shakespeare Company has two in-house ghosts, the Perfumed Lady, who leaves a scented trail as she passes by, and the Grey Lady, who haunts the Swan, switching on lights every night. You could almost believe Perfumed Ladies and Grey Ladies is a franchise job in the ghost community . . .

Birmingham Town Hall can boast the most celebrated ghost in the city in Charles Dickens, who read A Christmas Carol there in 1853, and apparently his ghost is still seen sitting in the hall or wandering the corridors, while the Town Hall also has two stonemasons, killed when a block of stone fell and crushed them during construction in 1833. They can still be heard, apparently, chiselling away.

Even the amateur stage is not exempt with Hall Green Little Theatre having its own apparition, Jimmy. Jimmy, it seems, like musicals, which is unfortunate as HGLT don’t actually do them these days and he hates ghost stories.

HGLT stalwart Roy Palmer has personal experience of Jimmy. He said: “I was told I would have to learn to play drums for a play and they brought in a drummer to teach me.”

The teaching was somewhat successful, so much so that Roy bought a drum kit and was practising alone in the empty theatre. “When you are on your own you give it some stick don’t you and I was drumming away, enjoying myself and suddenly there was a voice in my left ear which said ‘can you be quiet now’. I looked round and there was no one there.”

The last play at HGLT before all theatres went dark was the ghost story Edith in the Dark, which Jimmy did not like one little bit. Roy was the director and he and the cast and crew would arrive for rehearsals and find things had been moved, sound and lighting cues and settings changed, and with no one admitting responsibility that only left one suspect – and he was well known to dislike ghost stories.

Who Jimmy is, or rather was, no one knows, but the theatre, in Pemberley Road, Acocks Green, was built in 1950 on what had become a rubbish dump on a site that contained water tanks left over from the Second World War.

Roy said: “Our lowest cellar here used to be a water tank and some of the tank still remains, and the theory is that Jimmy drowned in there.”

Whatever, he is another in the cast of ghostly characters who tread the boards . . . softly.

Roger Clarke

To come: Superstitions, Dos and Don’ts. 

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The Prince of Darkness

I have had the good fortune to spend, what is now, many years being a part of theatre, either in its production or as a reviewer. As a producer I have also staged many live events of awards conferences and presentations. Starting from a technical background of sound, vision and light, I have always, when review space permitted or applicable, tried to include the technical aspects of a production. This is especially so with lighting, and always when their effects contribute creatively, beyond that of simple illumination. Light has always intrigued me and been a part of my working in Film and Television and photography, for without it we are left alone with what my crew always called The Prince of Darkness.

So with the virus closing our theatre doors and running wild across the world in our political, economic and health arenas, I thought I would talk about the way light in the theatre and in our lives in general, is such a crucial element. There is a tradition in any theatre when it’s empty, to leave on stage what is known as a Ghost Light. This often is just a single illuminated bulb on a stand and caged for safety reasons. The original reason for this light is said to be one of safety, as before modern front of house control rooms, lighting would be controlled off stage. Navigating a blacked out space is an issue and with a possible 15 foot fall into an open orchestra pit, you can see the sense in a permanently lit lamp.

Like with so many other theatrical superstitions, the inclusion and possible name of the Ghost Light has been commandeered over the years, to mean things like a light that allows the Ghosts of many a haunted theatre, to take centre stage in the otherwise blackness. The term `going dark’ is also a warning to onstage performers that their safety is about to be impaired by a lighting tech extinguishing the lights.

Lighting can often be the making of an event but I have also seen a few less than entertaining productions where I had wished the lighting had failed during the play and it had `gone dark’ during the actual performance.  Such an event nearly happened on one of my own productions.

I had been commissioned to produce a national awards ceremony at the Savoy Hotel for the cabinet office. It was a pretty highbrow affair and tense as the Prime Minister, Tony Blair’s wife, known professionally still as Cherie Booth, was going to be making the awards onstage. She at the time was heavily pregnant, so press interest was high, and the event was attended by a herd of 20 or so, over eager press photographers. We had rigged and rehearsed the day before and all was well.

Next day the show was due to begin at 11.30 a.m.   At 7.30 in the morning we powered everything up in the control area and my lighting engineer set about some last minute focussing of lamps. Police with dogs and other security were scanning the place at the same time, so things were buzzing. By 8.00 the cabinet suits and office officials were all over the stage panicking about everything from the number of glasses for the water, to the temperature of the room and the general politics of the day. The staging looked great and we were all set. Then unannounced he arrived, the unwelcome Prince of Darkness.

 ghost

A ghost light keeps the heart of theatre alive at Highbury Theatre Centre

With the stage `going dark’ except for the ambient room lights, the officials were all wondering what had happened. I assured them it was all in hand and of course lied, saying it was intentional. Reassured they carried on adding to their increasing levels of anxiety. My engineer was expectedly perplexed and after messing with the lighting desk he pronounced that is was ` Booked’ or a word that sounded very similar to it.

It is at those kinds of moments that a professional crew goes into overdrive. Everyone began to explore the possibilities and eventualities of either a replacement desk or failing that, the possible explanation and solution, to having no lights at all on the stage. I set off into the hotel to see what they could do, while the crew began calling local companies for a hire replacement. By 8.40 we had found a replacement desk, but it was an hour’s drive away and facing the London rush hour it was expected to get to us by 10.15 at the best.

The cabinet office team were now at fever pitch, but fortunately the debate about photos being taken of award recipients after each award or at the end, had entered a testosterone fuelled frenzy, with juniors being snappily asked to walk and rehearse the acceptance path in order to calculate the show timings.

The lighting desk didn’t arrive till 10 .25 and was hurriedly unpacked ready to install. By now a fair proportion of the audience were seated at their designated round tables, tucking into their extortionate £10 per round, Savoy bacon butties.

Cherie was due to arrive at 11.00 and so I was requested to assist her arrival. Although I was just a token body, and way down the pecking order amongst the ministerial hangers on, they each were all eager to extract her, and her soon to be delivered baby, from the rear of the Bentley she arrived in. I still had no idea if we had light but was quietly confident we would have. 

For a minute I forgot our issues as when the car arrived, I remember her getting awkwardly out of the rear seat and feeling quite sorry for her. She looked like she was wearing an old potato sack and overall she was clearly in need of a good ironing. The press blitzed her with flashlight. The entourage headed indoors and I followed on, fingers crossed that we had light. It was now 11.10 and with the full audience now present, I re-joined the crew at the rear of the room, just in time for the lights to appear on the stage to the relief of us all.

Unfortunately the unexpected failure of the lighting desk had put us all on edge for the day and none of us could enjoy the show in any way, each of us waiting for the Prince of Darkness to return. Thankfully he didn’t and no one ever knew about our technical failure.

So who knows when the doors of about every theatre and performing venue will open again, for us to enjoy the safety of their fresh air and their inevitable deep clean? I think it could be a while, but when you do, think about the power of stage lighting, for without it you will be seeing nothing.

Hopefully, while we are all absent, the Ghost Light will do its job and keep the virus and The Prince of Darkness well away. 

Jeff Grant   

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