Curtains for Many London Plays

Britain’s West End theater is having a shaky season marked by a string of flops, a reliance on American productions and little on the horizon to whet the appetite.

“There’s a feeling there has been a dip,” said Peter Wilkins, deputy managing director of Triumph Proscenium Productions, one of the West End’s busiest production companies.

That’s British understatement for “things have been bad.”

A revival of Pirandello’s “Henry IV,” which earned rave reviews for its star, Richard Harris, earned no money for its backers and closed Sept. 22.

Nov. 3 brought the premature demise of August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Fences,” starring American actor Yaphet Kotto. The play had its London debut Sept. 24 to generally fine notices but poor houses, reflecting the customary British apathy toward commercial productions of all-black plays.

Another American import, A. R. Gurney’s “Love Letters,” closed Nov. 17 after a scant eight weeks. Although the show started strongly, its policy of rotating casts backfired. The producers found they had no one to replace the current leads, George Peppard and Elaine Stritch.

Above this turmoil, the big musical blockbusters--”The Phantom of the Opera,” “Cats,” “Miss Saigon,” “Les Miserables”--run serenely on. Agatha Christie’s “The Mousetrap” is in its 38th year, and sex farces such as “Run for Your Wife” also seem to run and run, as the British put it.

The emphasis on American drama illustrates what’s missing: top-drawer British plays and revivals. The season’s most acclaimed home-grown plays, David Hare’s “Racing Demon” and Peter Flannery’s “Singer,” opened at least six months ago.

“Singer” ended Nov. 3 as the Royal Shakespeare Company shut its doors in London for four months to save money. That greatly diminishes the range of work available, since the RSC always has five or six shows in repertory.

The best-reviewed play so far this autumn, “Dancing at Lughnasa,” by Irish dramatist Brian Friel, has played to middling but not great business since its Oct. 15 bow at the Royal National Theater’s Lyttelton auditorium.

With the economy burdened by 10.9% inflation and interest rates three points higher than that, British audiences have become more selective--and, inevitably, smaller.

“To be truthful, people are more choosy about what they will go and see,” said Wilkins. “If money’s tight, they want to be pretty sure they’re spending their money wisely.”

Nor do stars ensure hits, as Richard Harris and Yaphet Kotto have shown.

“The pulling power of stars has to be stronger. We have to have marquee names with a stronger appeal,” Wilkins said.

One such actor is Tony Award winner Derek Jacobi, whose showy turn in the title role of Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Kean” has attracted more than 90% capacity at the Old Vic Theater since its opening Aug. 7.

The show transfers to Broadway in February or March, Wilkins said.

Another draw was American actor John Malkovich (“Dangerous Liaisons,” “Empire of the Sun”). He turned Lanford Wilson’s “Burn This” into a West End sell-out this summer.

The future promises little in the way of star wattage, save for back-to-back family affairs. On Dec. 5, Laurence Olivier’s widow, Joan Plowright, and their two daughters open in J. B. Priestley’s “Time and the Conways” at the Old Vic Theater. Son Richard Olivier directs.

This week, brings the West End bow of Vanessa and Lynn Redgrave and niece Jemma in Anton Chekhov’s “Three Sisters,” at the Queen’s Theater.

Otherwise, the lineup is full of TV spinoffs such as “Bread,” inspired by the popular British TV sitcom, and “Heaven’s Up,” a family musical starring something called Captain Beaky and His Band.

One show that bucks the down-market trend is a commercial transfer of Jean Anouilh’s “The Rehearsal,” which opened Nov. 14 at the Garrick. The play launches producer Biddy Hayward’s Theater Division company after 17 years working for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful Company.

A tragicomedy tale of sexual depravity, “The Rehearsal” was a hit earlier this fall at the “fringe” Almeida Theater. So does it seem risky on the West End?

“Everything in life is risky,” Hayward said.

The risk for the tourists is that the plays they came to see may have already closed. On the other hand, with all those empty seats in town, the chances of getting a half-price ticket at the booth in Leicester Square are the best in a long time.