Two of this autumn’s most anticipated UK theatre shows opened last Wednesday – and promptly closed that night. A revival of the classic musical Rent at Manchester’s Hope Mill and a sequel to the hit play Death of England at the National Theatre in London were scuppered by the introduction of a second lockdown in England on 5 November. Their sold-out runs ended after a handful of previews and a press night.
This month was supposed to find England’s theatres welcoming back audiences, albeit at reduced capacity, and plotting a path through the turmoil wrought by coronavirus. Perhaps they would even learn of the long awaited date for stage five of culture secretary Oliver Dowden’s roadmap to fully reopen venues. Instead, productions around the country have been cancelled, postponed or streamed for an online audience instead.
Hope Mill’s artistic director, Joseph Houston, and National Theatre boss Rufus Norris are relieved they were able to open their shows at all, and that they had time to film the productions for future release. Rent will be back on stage, says Houston, but not this year. Death of England: Delroy will also have a further life in the theatre. Closing early has been frustrating and further affected their theatres’ finances during straitened times, but Norris and Houston say it has been valuable to bring socially distanced audiences into their newly reconfigured spaces. Going into this lockdown, they at least know how to operate a Covid-secure theatre environment when they are once more permitted.
Before the coronavirus outbreak, Rent had been scheduled to open in July. When the pandemic closed theatres in March, it was postponed until October. “We were being optimistic that lockdown would be a month or two at the most,” says Houston. As opening night approached, the tension was compounded by Manchester mayor Andy Burnham’s standoff with Westminster over Greater Manchester entering tier 3 restrictions. “We didn’t know what tier 3 would mean for us,” says Houston, who was already feeling “the stress and anxiety of welcoming back an audience in a Covid world – you want to make sure everyone’s comfortable and happy”.
Rent opened on 30 October, amid a leak of an imminent national lockdown, confirmed the following night in a government briefing. The Rent cast heard the news just before going on stage. “It was very emotional,” says Houston. “We knew the show would be closing soon.” The four-week lockdown covers almost the entirety of Rent’s planned run. Did they think about resuming next month and continuing through December? “I don’t think it’s realistic right now,” says Houston. “I love that people are being very optimistic about December and things going back to normal but that’s a massive gamble. Is everything going to open up on 3 December? Are we going back to the tier system?”
These are questions that all businesses are asking, with no one able to predict what future restrictions may look like. “I can’t imagine what pressure Rishi Sunak and Johnson and co are under, so it’s not for me to make judgment calls on how they’re reaching their decisions,” says Norris. “But what is for sure is that we can’t rely on having any foreknowledge of what those decisions are going to be because they happen very quickly and without warning. So we just have to take agency of what we can … That realisation of your own agency is, in its own way, empowering.”
Advance notice of a reopening date would be invaluable, says Norris. “There’s the amount of time it takes to get a production up and running, to rehearse it, but more than anything to actually sell it. There’s no point opening a show if you don’t have an audience.” Producer Nica Burns agrees that advance notice, and government-backed insurance, would hugely benefit the industry. While some audiences will gift the price of the ticket back to the theatre, or exchange it for a later date, others prefer a refund if a production is postponed. “You’ve just got to take that hit because there’s no insurance,” acknowledges Norris. Closing early has exacerbated the financial burden of Hope Mill producing Rent in-house, although they will raise revenue from streaming the show online.
For most theatres, operating at a heavily reduced capacity makes productions financially unviable – the shows resuming their runs at Burns’s Nimax venues aren’t opening to make a profit but to provide opportunities to the workforce and bring audiences back into the West End, boosting the local economy. Covid restrictions affect more than box-office sales, too. Hope Mill has relied heavily on bar income and preshow dining in the past. But during Rent’s run, alcohol could only be served with a meal, which meant interval drinks sales were down. As the show ended at 10pm, the new mandatory closing time for bars in England, there was no postshow bar income either.
Hope Mill has received a grant from the government’s culture recovery fund which should see them through to the spring. The National applied for a loan from the fund and is waiting to hear the outcome. Norris is aware that the National is in “a much more fortunate position than almost any other theatre. We’ve got a great support system – a lot of our income is raised through philanthropy. We keep those people close. They’re very supportive of our decision to put activity first and foremost.” It is crucial, says Norris, that the National continues to create work through the lockdown. Without rehearsals and theatre-makers at work in the venue, “there’s no fresh air coming through. The purpose goes. It’s just a concrete building if there aren’t any artists here.”
Many freelance artists have fallen between the cracks in the government’s self-employment income support schemes this year and the precarious living for many in the arts was laid bare in March. Actor Misha Duncan-Barry says that the first lockdown was frightening: “I didn’t know if I’d ever work again.” Like many performers, she has a second job that has helped provide some stability, but she still felt “like everything was being pulled away” in her theatrical career.
But as theatres began to reopen, she was cast in a tour of a new play, My Voice Was Heard But It Was Ignored, written by Nana-Kofi Kufuor and produced by Red Ladder. Duncan-Barry had been involved in an R&D of the play at the beginning of the year. “It was exciting knowing that we’d be getting back in a room with creatives and exploring such a fantastic piece,” she says. But the announcement of the second lockdown came just before they began rehearsals. Most of the tour, which was to begin with three nights at Leeds Playhouse, has been postponed; two shows in December are still on sale. At the time of Johnson’s briefing, the company weren’t sure if rehearsals would still be able to go ahead. Gradually, the picture became clearer and they are now rehearsing in a Covid-secure environment. There’s a silver lining of sorts, she says: “It gives us a bit more breathing room to explore it.” She credits Red Ladder with being “so open and communicative that it’s put me at ease”.
Duncan-Barry recognises the scale of the government’s £1.57bn emergency arts fund but says “it took so long for them to start sharing that out”. The package was announced in July; two-thirds of applicants to the first round were awarded funding in October. Meanwhile, anxiety has soared throughout the industry, she says, as people ask “if and when things are going to change”.
With rehearsals under way and a considerable number of productions still planned for December, theatres are steeped in uncertainty. The extension of the furlough scheme to spring was welcomed but many fear it also suggests an extension to the current lockdown period. Nevertheless audiences remain hungry for live performance – Houston says that Rent tickets sold out in 48 hours (“seeing that demand for live theatre was incredible”) and Burns points out that the majority of those who booked for a now-postponed Nimax show exchanged tickets for a different date rather than requesting a refund. Audiences and theatre’s vast workforce are poised to return when they can. Not performing has been disheartening, says Duncan-Barry. “For a lot of us, this is what we’ve wanted to do since we were children.”
