Caveats and conditions: what to expect this autumn as UK theatres reopen
It is late July, and Beverley Knight is about to sing her heart out on the London Palladium stage. Everyone in the audience wears masks and, around them, rows of empty seats are marked with an X. This is the first time a London theatre has opened its doors since March and it’s all a little surreal. Theatre-going won’t look or feel the same post-Covid-19 but, then again, what will? After months of catastrophic closures, it’s just a relief to see UK theatres tentatively opening their (heavily sanitised) doors to the public once again.
This autumn sees a small cluster of theatrical openings across the country, and each comes laden with caveats and conditions in order to meet the government’s ever-shifting guidelines. All venues will play at a much-reduced capacity, group bookings are only permitted within social “bubbles”, and in many theatres Perspex screens have been dotted throughout the stalls. Oh, and the number of available toilet stalls is being reduced, which – given the chronic lack of toilets in London’s theatres – should be, well, interesting.
One of the first indoor shows to open will be a musical adaptation of Sleepless in Seattle at London’s Troubadour Wembley Park Theatre. The press surrounding Sleepless: A Musical Romance has been largely focused on the show’s strict health and safety measures. Cast and crew members are being tested every day in the foyer-turned-testing-centre, one-way routes have been established throughout the building, and mask-wearing audience members will have their temperatures checked on entering the auditorium. No news yet on whether ice-creams will still be sold at the interval but, seeing as many venues are scrapping intervals altogether (too much mingling!), it doesn’t look hopeful.
Thankfully, there’s a bunch of tempting new shows to lure theatre-lovers back into the stalls – ice-cream or otherwise. In London, the National Theatre is leading the way with a fierce new monologue, Death of England: Delroy, by Clint Dyer and Roy Williams and starring Hamilton’s Giles Terera. Across the river, Nicholas Hytner’s Bridge Theatre has announced a season of monologues, including a live version of the recent star-studded TV revival of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads, as well as work from Inua Ellams, Yolanda Mercy and Zodwa Nyoni. And in October, Southwark Playhouse launches a four-week, pared-back run of their inspired staging of Jason Robert Brown’s song cycle The Last Five Years.
In Bristol, Wise Children will screen a live full-scale performance of kooky romcom Romantics Anonymous, and at Scarborough’s Stephen Joseph Theatre, artistic director Paul Robinson has just announced a sparky season of drama, thrillers and comedy. A little later in the autumn, the world’s longest-running play, The Mousetrap, reopens in the West End. If that isn’t a sign of the theatre world finding its feet again, I don’t know what is.
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On top of traditional offerings, autumn will also see a flurry of open-air shows, escape room experiences, sound installations and – thanks to a burst of interest during lockdown – various online adventures. There’s also a growing sense that a lot of theatre companies are realigning their priorities. Slung Low theatre company in Leeds, Storyhouse in Chester, Bush Theatre and BAC in London, and young adults collective Company Three have all worked hard to find ways to support their local communities, practically and artistically, throughout lockdown. The Albany in Deptford and ARC in Stockton recently announced a new model, Artists of Change, which emphasises a focus on community engagement.
It isn’t just the theatre buildings that have restructured themselves thanks to Covid-19. The whole theatrical ecology is beginning to shift, with a renewed resolve to serve not just the customers but the communities in which theatres and theatre-makers sit.
