Playwrights and Plays that are rarely performed

[Jon]

Spinning this thread from discussions in the Almeida 2020 thread. While there are playwrights and plays that seem to come around every couple of years like Arthur Miller, Noel Coward, Shakespeare etc there are others that don't get the same treatments. I wonder why that is, is it to do with the rights holders or simply that some playwrights or plays simply fall out of favour for a time. 

[Jan]

Oct 31, 2019 21:08:16 GMT Jon said:

Spinning this thread from discussions in the Almeida 2020 thread. While there are playwrights and plays that seem to come around every couple of years like Arthur Miller, Noel Coward, Shakespeare etc there are others that don't get the same treatments. I wonder why that is, is it to do with the rights holders or simply that some playwrights or plays simply fall out of favour for a time. 

Fashion plays a big part, there were a couple of decades at least where there were no major productions of any Terence Rattigan plays, but then there were several. He was very popular in his day but then was seen as old fashioned when the next wave of new playwrights emerged (John Osborne etc.) and then had to wait to be "re-assessed". Arthur Miller followed a similar trajectory in USA actually, he was absent from Broadway for years. 

You can see the same cycle with many writers, Osborne himself, Arnold Wesker, J.B.Priestley, Peter Shaffer - there are very few who remain continuously popular but the good ones always come back again. 

[barrowside]

Quite strangely Brian Friel's great plays are getting major productions in London much more than in Dublin nowadays.

[talkingheads]

There are a lot of vintage Alan Bennett plays I'd love to see in the West End. Also I've only seen an excerpt on the National 50 Years On Stage but Peter Nichols The National Health and Hare/Brenton's Pravda are two I really want to see at some stage.

[oxfordsimon]

Fashions - as in all art and culture forms - do come and go.

We very rarely hear of performances of plays by William Douglas Home these days - but he was incredibly popular in his time.

Rattigan was out of fashion for a long, long time and then had a revival.

I suspect we are going to get an explosion of some of the rarer Shaw plays once he drops out of copyright.

With the change in the way the exam texts for GCSE and A levels were chosen, that saw a drop off in performances of set plays when the choices open to schools were opened up. Now with the more recent reintroduction of a more limited range, the number of key texts that get performed because of the ready availability of school groups who need to see a given play live has increased.

Some classic plays will never go from the active repertoire - because they are too good and too popular. The way they get done will change - but the core repertoire is there because of quality and audience appeal. Thankfully there are producers and artistic directors who actively seek out the rare and unusual - which then prompt a revival in fortunes elsewhere because people spot a long-forgotten writer and mount more of their work.

Rodney Ackland was a case in point. He was all but forgotten but when The Orange Tree and then the National revived Absolute Hell (not the most recent version), that saw an uptick in exploration of the rest of his work.

A good play will more than likely remain a good play - it is just a matter of finding them and championing them.

[learfan]

Im hoping for some Shaw next year and beyond and not just at the Orange Tree! He's always been popular at Chichester for instance.

[Jon]

In terms of playwrights who are done often but some plays are done more than others, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard is done quite a fair bit as is The Real Thing but some of his plays like The Invention of Love, The Coast of Utopia etc have yet to receive a revival the latter though I suspect it's because it's three plays and costly to put on.

[NorthernAlien]

Sometimes a script that was deemed 'amazing' just turns out not to be very good! The Finborough makes a great fuss around 'this play hasn't been produced for {x} years' - and having seen some of those shows, to be frank, its easy to see why.

With newer scripts, I feel that they often get a run and then disappear because they've been rushed to a public performance too soon - part of this is because of the way much theatre gets made in this country now - theatre-makers with no cash who can't get project funding from ACE bang stuff out and it's just not ready, but they don't have the money to be able to develop it more, and commercial producers who might be inclined to punt a bit of cash at developing something can't possibly see every show, and frankly there's a huge element of both luck, and knowing the right people.

'Six' started off as a Cambridge Footlights show - the sort of student drama soc that again has more resources than most, which meant it could go to Edinburgh where Kenny Wax (or one of his people) did see it and picked it up. 'Come from Away' spent about 5 years in development before it opened on Broadway, and had the good fortune to cross paths with a renowned development theatre in North America as it was being written - which again brought it into the orbit of commercial producers. From what I read today, '& Juliet' has been in workshops etc for about 4 years, and they've been tweaking it during the Manchester run (as many posters on this board noted at the time). Of these, I've only seen Come From Away, and I really loved it - but will it still be loved in 20 years time, or will something have happened to change the currently overwhelming positive responses to it?

[lynette]

Plays can ‘date’. I don’t think the political rants of today will be much performed in the future but funnily enough some plays which are pinned into their time can actually improve with age. I’m thinking of the Pinter season we had recently with it’s painful evocation of poor tented accommodation and sparse meals. It is about the quality of the writing. Some of Ben Jonson has ‘died’ because of the contemporary satire we no longer understand whereas Shakespeare’s contemporary references get through to us despite the centuries. With a bit of homework. 🤪
I’d like to see some of the stuff David Garrick performed and produced.

[learfan]

Nov 1, 2019 18:22:33 GMT Jon said:

In terms of playwrights who are done often but some plays are done more than others, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard is done quite a fair bit as is The Real Thing but some of his plays like The Invention of Love, The Coast of Utopia etc have yet to receive a revival the latter though I suspect it's because it's three plays and costly to put on.

Jumpers (almost 20 years since the last revival) and Night and Day, never revived as far as i know despite a successful WE run and Broadway transfer. Doubt Utopia will get a revival, good as it was, its just too massive.

[Polly1]

Nov 2, 2019 5:55:40 GMT learfan said:

Nov 1, 2019 18:22:33 GMT Jon said:

In terms of playwrights who are done often but some plays are done more than others, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard is done quite a fair bit as is The Real Thing but some of his plays like The Invention of Love, The Coast of Utopia etc have yet to receive a revival the latter though I suspect it's because it's three plays and costly to put on.

Jumpers (almost 20 years since the last revival) and Night and Day, never revived as far as i know despite a successful WE run and Broadway transfer. Doubt Utopia will get a revival, good as it was, its just too massive.

Has Indian Ink ever been revived? That's one I would like to see.

[duncan]

Maybe its run in Edinburgh wasn't a success but with the current political shenanigans I'm surprised the West End hasn't picked up 1940s play Cockpit.

www.theguardian.com/stage/2017/oct/09/europe-cockpit-bridget-boland-wils-wilson-royal-lyceum-edinburgh

It'll always come down to money though.

[learfan]

Nov 2, 2019 8:25:15 GMT Polly1 said:

Nov 2, 2019 5:55:40 GMT learfan said:

Jumpers (almost 20 years since the last revival) and Night and Day, never revived as far as i know despite a successful WE run and Broadway transfer. Doubt Utopia will get a revival, good as it was, its just too massive.

Has Indian Ink ever been revived? That's one I would like to see.

Dont think so, it had a reasonable run in the WE.

[oxfordsimon]

Nov 2, 2019 8:55:55 GMT duncan said:

Maybe its run in Edinburgh wasn't a success but with the current political shenanigans I'm surprised the West End hasn't picked up 1940s play Cockpit.

www.theguardian.com/stage/2017/oct/09/europe-cockpit-bridget-boland-wils-wilson-royal-lyceum-edinburgh

It'll always come down to money though.

Cockpit does sound fascinating

I shall track down a script 

[joem]

Very little Middleton or Ben Jonson. Or John Shirley.

Eliot's last two plays are never revived, except maybe in fringe productions. Christopher Fry?

Very little classical Spanish or French drama.

Absurdists such as Adamov, Frisch, Vian are never performed

What's the last time Nobel Prize winner Peter Handke had anything done in London?

Auden and Isherwood? I can only remember one recent production, of The Dog Beneath the Skin at the Jermyn Street Theatre.

[Jan]

Feydeau farces, Aldwych farces, Whitehall farces. All too entertaining for our Puritan times.

[learfan]

Nov 3, 2019 0:45:35 GMT joem said:

Very little Middleton or Ben Jonson. Or John Shirley.

Eliot's last two plays are never revived, except maybe in fringe productions. Christopher Fry?

Very little classical Spanish or French drama.

Absurdists such as Adamov, Frisch, Vian are never performed

What's the last time Nobel Prize winner Peter Handke had anything done in London?

Auden and Isherwood? I can only remember one recent production, of The Dog Beneath the Skin at the Jermyn Street Theatre.

Actually Middleton is done fairly often, Women Beware Women is on at the Sam Wanamaker this winter. The Italian Revengers Tragedy is on at the Barbican next Spring. The RSC have done a few of his recently. However Jonson a much better known writer only survives due to Volpone and Alchemist revivals. His other work barely gets a look in.

[joem]

I hear you, but out of the thirty odd plays attributed to Middleton I believe only a handful have been performed in living memory. Tends to be the same 4 or 5 revived.

[learfan]

Forgot to mention Jonson's Silent Woman is being dome by Edward's Boys at King Edward's School in Stratford next spring.

[Polly1]

There was a production of Frisch's The Arsonists (Fireraisers) at the Court in 2007 (with Benedict Cumberbatch no less) but I agree that seems to be the only one of his plays still done.

[Jan]

Nov 3, 2019 8:28:43 GMT learfan said:

Nov 3, 2019 0:45:35 GMT joem said:

Very little Middleton or Ben Jonson. Or John Shirley.

Eliot's last two plays are never revived, except maybe in fringe productions. Christopher Fry?

Very little classical Spanish or French drama.

Absurdists such as Adamov, Frisch, Vian are never performed

What's the last time Nobel Prize winner Peter Handke had anything done in London?

Auden and Isherwood? I can only remember one recent production, of The Dog Beneath the Skin at the Jermyn Street Theatre.

Actually Middleton is done fairly often, Women Beware Women is on at the Sam Wanamaker this winter. The Italian Revengers Tragedy is on at the Barbican next Spring. The RSC have done a few of his recently. However Jonson a much better known writer only survives due to Volpone and Alchemist revivals. His other work barely gets a look in.

I’ve seen nine different plays by Ben Jonson so he’s not that rare. However I’ve only seen one by Marivaux (and that quite recently) even though he wrote loads. Same with Corneille.

[Deleted]

Nov 3, 2019 12:58:41 GMT Jan said:

Nov 3, 2019 8:28:43 GMT learfan said:

Actually Middleton is done fairly often, Women Beware Women is on at the Sam Wanamaker this winter. The Italian Revengers Tragedy is on at the Barbican next Spring. The RSC have done a few of his recently. However Jonson a much better known writer only survives due to Volpone and Alchemist revivals. His other work barely gets a look in.

I’ve seen nine different plays by Ben Jonson so he’s not that rare. However I’ve only seen one by Marivaux (and that quite recently) even though he wrote loads. Same with Corneille.

I’ve seen a few Marivaux plays here, infinitely preferable to Moliere in my opinion - The Dispute, Game of Love and Chance, The False Servant, maybe one or two more.

On Middleton it’s only recently that attribution of The Revenger’s Tragedy has bumped up his numbers. 

One relatively recent playwright, starting in the early seventies, who I’ve mentioned as disappearing from theatre as he moved to the small screen, is Poliakoff. Arden and Wesker and, from the USA, Saroyan and Odets. Plenty have fallen by the wayside for various reasons.

[oxfordsimon]

One of the most frequently performed current US writers is Lauren Gunderson - who has had very few UK professional productions. I and You at the Hampstead (with Maisie Williams) being the highest profile one that I am aware of.

Friends of mine have a local amateur company and have done two UK premieres of her work - and they were well received.

But she seems to be almost entirely under the radar here despite being in the top 20 performed writers in the US and is the most produced living US writer for the stage. She does write quite a lot about women in science but also has written pieces inspired by Shakespeare and Austen.

Worth a look if you are in the market for something a bit different (and I am not on commission!!)

[bordeaux]

Fans of lost classics should try and visit the Shaw Festival at Niagara-on-the-Lake once in their lives (and couple it with a trip to Stratford, Ontario). Their brief is to put on plays from Shaw's era and they quite often have some intriguing rarities. I saw Rodney Ackland's The Old Ladies in 2002 when I was there. I think a lot of these plays are merely of historical interest, though. The major rediscoveries of relatively unknown British plays in my theatre-going life have been Ackland's Absolute Hell, Rattigan's After the Dance and Githa Sowerby's Rutherford and Son (I'm thinking of the Katie Mitchell production with Bob Peck).

John Whiting and James Saunders are once biggish names who've been forgotten. The former's Penny for a Song was done twenty years or so ago in the Whitehall theatre, I seem to remember. I could imagine someone doing something interesting with his Devils (filmed by Ken Russell).

Amongst US playwrights with a big name, I'm always surprised how little John Guare we've seen over here in major productions. The only one I can recall is Six Degrees of Separation.

[Jan]

Nov 3, 2019 18:10:34 GMT bordeaux said:

Fans of lost classics should try and visit the Shaw Festival at Niagara-on-the-Lake once in their lives (and couple it with a trip to Stratford, Ontario). Their brief is to put on plays from Shaw's era and they quite often have some intriguing rarities. I saw Rodney Ackland's The Old Ladies in 2002 when I was there. I think a lot of these plays are merely of historical interest, though. The major rediscoveries of relatively unknown British plays in my theatre-going life have been Ackland's Absolute Hell, Rattigan's After the Dance and Githa Sowerby's Rutherford and Son (I'm thinking of the Katie Mitchell production with Bob Peck).

John Whiting and James Saunders are once biggish names who've been forgotten. The former's Penny for a Song was done twenty years or so ago in the Whitehall theatre, I seem to remember. I could imagine someone doing something interesting with his Devils (filmed by Ken Russell).

Amongst US playwrights with a big name, I'm always surprised how little John Guare we've seen over here in major productions. The only one I can recall is Six Degrees of Separation.

I saw the RSC productions of both Penny for a Song and The Devils, both in the 1980s, neither much good but maybe worth another revival.