Fifty years of British theatre

Contemporary Review, August, 2002 by Tom Phillips

Paradoxically, we are also living in a time when most people would rather watch Eastenders on television or the latest episode of Star Wars in the cinema than go to the theatre, when the West End is in crisis over falling ticket sales (largely because, it would seem, tickets are much too expensive), the RSC is without an artistic director and when a random sample of what's on in London shows that commercial theatre is in almost the same state as it was in the 1950s. Lightweight farces, obscure revivals and big budget musicals still outnumber new plays or new productions of established classics. Some things, it seems, never change. One play which opened in 1952 is still running today: Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap, a whodunnit of monumental dullness which, despite all the innovation, all the crises which have gone on around it, still manages to scrape a living at the St Martin's Theatre. On one level, this scarcely believable feat suggests continuity and durability. On another, it seems rather pathetic.

Tom Phillips is theatre editor for Venue magazine in Bristol. He also writes about theatre for Plays International.