Cameron’s Hairy Politics
Published on Monday 23rd November, 2.14pm, Written by Carrie Dunn
Avenue Q producer Cameron Mackintosh and his troops are very excited. The reason: they are bringing the entire Tony-winning cast of Hair over from Broadway to us lucky theatregoers in London next year – yep, Gavin Creel and all.
This particular tribe has had rave reviews, and musical aficionados have been praying nightly – to the deity Julie Andrews – that the production would transfer.
So why has the announcement been met with muted enthusiasm? First off, they’re getting rather animated over the fact that this is the first time “in recent memory” a whole Broadway cast has transferred to the West End. Assuming that the whole caboodle of them do come over (and the word is that contracts haven’t been signed yet), many theatregoers are reminiscing over all-American casts they saw in shows like Bob Fosse’s Dancin’ in 1983.
Secondly, the point that British Equity are quite rightly making – with a huge all-American cast, that’s a West End theatre offering no work at all to UK performers. And fabulous though this cast may be, how many of them are names that will attract the crowds? Gavin Creel is known here for his spell in Mary Poppins; other than that, I don’t think any of them are famous enough on this side of the Atlantic to sell tickets on reputation alone.
And that brings me to my third point – the ticket sales. Or to be more precise, the ticket costs. With a cast that big all relocating for the opening run, the production costs will be high. We get that. But it’s a burning, seething, fiery irony that the most famous hippy, anti-capitalist show ever written is charging punters around £65 (plus booking fee) for the stalls at the Gielgud Theatre. Can’t afford that? Well, you can always climb the stairs two floors up to the Grand Circle where you might be able to get hold of a seat for anything between £19.50 and £41.25 (plus booking fee), depending on where you purchase from.
I appreciate that theatre producers aren’t philanthropists. However, if Hair crashes and burns in the West End, I hope nobody will attempt to apportion the blame to the “global economic crisis”. People want to watch musicals and they’ll buy reasonably-priced tickets – London’s record-breaking sales figures over the last few years prove this. But though we may be dedicated followers of theatre, we’re not stupid.
