Interesting essay on the state of the London theatre

I don't agree with him on everything, but Toby Young is a workig theatre critic who is thinking about the decline of the West End. What he has to say has implications for American theatre as well.

The Spectator.co.ukWriters such as Noël Coward, J.B. Priestley and Terence Rattigan were much derided by their successors for placing too much emphasis on such ‘middlebrow’ devices as plotting and suspense, but the fact that they had mastered the art of storytelling meant they could rely on a loyal audience. The mistake that most contemporary British playwrights make is to assume that if a play is well constructed, if it connects with the mass audience, it’s incapable of transmitting any new ideas. No such inextricable link between form and content exists. A set of storytelling techniques doesn’t have to be discarded simply because they were used by the previous generation. Constructing a play is a little like building a boat: if it’s put together properly it can carry any cargo, however unorthodox.

The rot began with Samuel Beckett. He, more than any other playwright, was responsible for the idea that in order to be considered ‘art’, a play has to be difficult and inaccessible. Never mind that Shakespeare constantly threw in bits of business designed to appeal to the groundlings, or that Ibsen and Chekhov knew everything there is to know about keeping an audience on its toes, Beckett was applauded for refusing to compromise, for being resolutely non-commercial. After Beckett, any concession to the popular audience was regarded as ‘selling out’.