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Article: 'West End theatre: It's like sitting in an Anderson shelter as part of the Blitz experience' The seats are too expensive, the programmes are pathetic and when the play is bad it can be 'head-burningly, ball-breakingly bad'. Yet Sir Richard Eyre (right), who was artistic director of the National Theatre for nine years, sees a way forward
- Article from:
- The Evening Standard (London, England)
- Article date:
- March 2, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 2001 Evening Standard - London. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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LAST year I gave a public lecture on the state of British theatre,
presented a television series and published a book about it, and out
of that cataract of opinion, that avalanche of rhetoric, one quote
survived to haunt me; it's this: "Theatre is often regarded in
Britain as the cricket of the performing arts - meaning archaic,
quaint, thinly attended, and not done as well as it used to be."
The other remark that has dogged my tracks is that I said that the
theatre can sometimes be bad. But let's face it, it sometimes is:
head-burningly, ball-breakingly, bowel-churningly bad. And since
being part of a theatre audience demands a sort of commitment that
obliges to bring something to the ...