Arts & Manners: London Letter

At the time of writing, London’s theaterland is looking nervously over its shoulder at a pair of bogeys. One of them goes under the name of “redevelopment,” the other is Value-Added Tax (VAT). The latter is much more imminent and, for the moment at least, much more mysterious, simply because no one knows what the percentage applied to theater is going to be. On the Continent, where VAT is already in operation in a number of countries, theater is largely exempt, but nobody here believes that any Tory government could smile benevolently in the direction of culture, and so there are long faces in the rooms where theater bosses gather. Optimists reckon on a 10 per cent increase in ticket prices, pessimists plump for 25 per cent.

Redevelopment is the next crisis in the queue after the VAT position has been clarified; the resisters are already taking up their battle stations. Spearheading the counterattack is Equity, the actors’ union, which has discovered the existence of a plan to build a six-lane highway from Trafalgar Square to somewhere north of Cambridge Circus, a project that could, on the face of it, slice the Garrick Theater in half, neatly remove the foyer areas from Wyndham’s, the Phoenix, and the Talk of the Town and do the devil knows what to the Shaftesbury. An opinion possibly more informed than Equity’s considers that this scheme will never materialize; likewise there are those who believe that most of us will never live to see the day when the Strand-widening scheme comes into operation, a plan that threatens to leave the Adelphi, Vaudeville, and Duchess Theaters lying lifeless in its wake. All the same, the barricades are being manned and significant phrases about “the quality of life” and, more materially, “the danger to the tourist industry” are being uttered. Peter Ustinov is one of those who has lent his considerable weight to the “Save London’s Theaters” campaign, which is in a way interesting because Mr. Ustinov is acting in—he has also written and directed—The Unknown Soldier and His Wife, the first presentation at the brand-new New London Theater at the top end of Drury Lane.

PH

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Peter Hepple

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At the time of writing, London’s theaterland is looking nervously over its shoulder at a pair of bogeys. One of them goes under the name of “redevelopment,” the other is Value-Added Tax (VAT). The latter is much more imminent and, for the moment at least, much more mysterious, simply because no one knows what the percentage applied to theater is going to be. On the Continent, where VAT is already in operation in a number of countries, theater is largely exempt, but nobody here believes that any Tory government could smile benevolently in the direction of culture, and so there are long faces in the rooms where theater bosses gather. Optimists reckon on a 10 per cent increase in ticket prices, pessimists plump for 25 per cent.

Redevelopment is the next crisis in the queue after the VAT position has been clarified; the resisters are already taking up their battle stations. Spearheading the counterattack is Equity, the actors’ union, which has discovered the existence of a plan to build a six-lane highway from Trafalgar Square to somewhere north of Cambridge Circus, a project that could, on the face of it, slice the Garrick Theater in half, neatly remove the foyer areas from Wyndham’s, the Phoenix, and the Talk of the Town and do the devil knows what to the Shaftesbury. An opinion possibly more informed than Equity’s considers that this scheme will never materialize; likewise there are those who believe that most of us will never live to see the day when the Strand-widening scheme comes into operation, a plan that threatens to leave the Adelphi, Vaudeville, and Duchess Theaters lying lifeless in its wake. All the same, the barricades are being manned and significant phrases about “the quality of life” and, more materially, “the danger to the tourist industry” are being uttered. Peter Ustinov is one of those who has lent his considerable weight to the “Save London’s Theaters” campaign, which is in a way interesting because Mr. Ustinov is acting in—he has also written and directed—The Unknown Soldier and His Wife, the first presentation at the brand-new New London Theater at the top end of Drury Lane.