“Is British Theatre Guilty of Failing the Working Class.”

Are bears guilty of sh*tting in the woods?

Gardner’s article is vital, but there’s so much more to say. From my experience, it’s a variety of (occasionally illogical) reasons as to why people feel failed by theatre. Since Gardner, Maurine Beattie, Maxine Peake, Eddie Marsan (amongst others) have all chipped in from different perspectives – but all write in a bubble. It all needs to be compared. It’s all linked. It all matters.

So no apologies for dragging this up – it’s been on my mind for a while and we need to keep this conversation going. And before I begin: I know I’m oversimplifying/generalising, but isn’t this long enough? Short answer: YES. Long answer: it’s school, it’s normalised, and look at NT Live for a microcosm. Full answer: fasten your seatbelts…

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“…and if it takes a whole day and wipes out their savings, then so much the better. Because it matters! It matters, damnit! We’re talking about the sublime.”

(At Hampstead, watching The Moderate Soprano, this got a round of applause. I squirmed in my cheap seat (£15), waiting for my off-peak train (£18), wondering “Does Sir David hate me?”)

Sir David’s un-inclusive outburst encapsulates a lot. Theatre is sublime! Tickets are stupidly expensive. Trains are worse. Theatre seems London-centric, and too much is.

16-25 schemes are essential for teenager/student theatregoers. What about retirees? Zero-hours contracts? Families on free school lunches? The Shakespeare Trilogy needed a diverse audience, but only discounted for young people, not people like Hannah herself. And, without much advertising, those 16-25-year-olds were, largely, booked ahead, already on board.

There are schemes such as the Arcola and Nottingham’s pay-what-you-can. I think it’s successful; it’s certainly welcoming. Could this work in the West End? I’d genuinely think that if cheapest tickets were, say, £15 or PWYC, people like us would pay “full price” £15 and others wouldn’t feel patronised.

And theatre is a terrible medium to see last minute, and if your job’s unpredictable and not just 9-5 (say, zero-hours) you’re unlikely to book ahead and can’t spontaneously attend.

Oh, and a train from one side of London to another costs £6. That’s nearly £25 for a family of four. Outside of London…

Theatre excludes working-class theatregoers, thus theatremakers: Sir David proclaims that art should be inaccessible and his audience cheers! Before talking theatremaking, we must talk accessibility for all. Mostly we should be militantly political about trains.

***

But this assumes an interest in and familiarity with theatre.

Joan Bakewell recently said:

“Older people who go to the theatre are the ones who’ve got nice retirement pensions and can access the theatre easily and feel comfortable there after a lifetime of visiting, so they tend to be middle-class – I think the division between wealthy and poor accelerates as you get older, and so I don’t think you’ll get many retired older working-class people accessing the arts because they feel it’s passed them now.”

(Bakewell said that on Front Row – a magazine show. A different discussion mentioned how magazine shows like Zoe Ball’s Book Group re-encouraged reading by being unpretentious. Can/does theatre encourage so? Can theatre make a Richard & Judy Book Group, esp. with NT Live, for new older audiences?)

If you’ve never encountered any Shakespeare, any Simon Stephens, any Sondheim, how do you begin? For familiarisation, entry schemes should be for all ages – beginner’s shows should be a thing.

(and (off-topic) Bakewell’s We Need To Talk About Death is FAB)

But why has theatre passed older working-class people? I believe a rot sets in a lot earlier – Rufus does too. I might be putting two and two together and making five, but please bear with.

Drama is taught wonderfully. Did you perform Shakespeare at school? It’s an empowering leveller, or just a bit of art in a child’s life. We know the arts are being excluded from the curriculum, and thus it’s middle-class parents who’ll subsidise schools’ loss. If drama clubs become optional or expensive, of course it’ll exclude. We need drama in schools.

English is taught… problematically. Did you study Shakespeare? Of course you did! Was it theatre, or was it torture?  We read lines out loud – struggling with archaic vocab – and also occasionally watched movies. As a Reading boy I connected with Branagh’s Much Ado; I connected less with Othello as played by Anthony Hopkins.

Representation matters. Representation in school and children’s literature matters most. As kids, we don’t just want to see ourselves – we need to. Children connect best with books about people like them. It’s common knowledge that children’s literature skews towards white middle-class texts, and people are challenging this. Children’s theatre? For most children that’s not the Unicorn or even panto, that’s the Shakespeare you watch in school. Does it skew white middle-class? WE WATCHED A WHITE WELSH OTHELLO!

If we’re going to make Shakespeare part of the Key Stage 3 curriculum we need to place him in that context. “If you are from a minority background, it’s implied that you leave your cultural capital at the door of the classroom,” claimed Farrah Seroukh recently, and (white) working-class is a background left at the door with the theatre we study: Priestley, Bennett, Shakespeare. With no representative productions, what cultural capital can a working-class child bring to the Bard?

Can we nominate a playwright for 2019’s laureate?

Children and YA literature must serve as either mirror or window; windows showing lives you’ll never know, mirrors showing you. Theatre does too. Watching Cumberbatch, Mirren, even Dicaprio, or the bulk of the BBC Shakespeare, working-class schoolchildren never see mirrors. This is one reason why everyone needs to speak the speech themselves, in drama, SO DON’T CUT IT FROM THE EBACC. Otherwise, what is theatre, but archaic vocab and posh movies? Hell, I’m from Reading and went on many theatre trips, but with few mirrors, that’s certainly how my old classmates still see theatre…

Maybe I only love theatre because Branagh’s Ivanov was from Reading. That’s depressing. Thank you Reading.

Theatre is literary. It’s Shakespeare in the classroom. It’s Pinter, Beckett, O’Neill, Shaw, even Dario Fo. Three dimensional literary criticism. Words words words.

Literacy in the UK: www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2018/mar/02/working-class-children-born-to-fail-teachers-disadvantaged-pupils. The stats here are shocking.

It may seem comparatively insignificant – “working-class children are two years of education behind, they might miss Spamilton!” – and it is. It’s also obviously contentious and exaggerated. Theatre’s not literary, wholly. Even Victor Hugo isn’t literary. Or TPTGW. Or Stomp. But Stoppard, or Sondheim, or Shakespeare? I wonder: if “high income households are more likely to read books frequently than low income”, does that harm low-income interest in literary playwrights, like Priestley, Bennett, Shakespeare?

And secondly, Gardner’s article is about who makes theatre – “If you work in theatre and are constantly surrounded by people who went to private school and Oxbridge [which, shorthand here for ‘not working-class’, is telling] you start feeling inadequate”. “England also does relatively badly on equality of opportunity – in terms of the degree to which social background influences skills attainment. The only country where the parents’ level of education has a greater effect on children’s skills attainment in literacy and numeracy is the Slovak Republic.”  Low-income households aren’t privy to the opportunities of high-income ones, especially in the arts, due to literacy – and we wonder why creative teams are predominantly from high-income families!

And for God’s sake, it’s families who can’t afford to buy books whose children have lower levels of literacy. Do we really bloody expect these families to buy a bundle of tickets to War Horse? Not only should we be protesting discriminatory library cuts, we should be bloody staging Shakespeare in them.

Without an education system instilling that drama is worthwhile, with a diverse and representative theatrical curriculum, we tell all children – especially working-class ones – that the stage and the arts aren’t for them. We have been for years. I’d argue that in drama we make theatre and in English we study it; if we cut drama, theatremaking becomes middle-class, and if we study English poorly, theatregoing becomes unwelcoming and discriminatory. Theatre in schools is neither a mirror nor a future for working-class children.

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You lot.
Sitting back, taking it easy, waiting for me
To – what? Impress you, amaze you, show you what I’ve got?

These are the opening lines to Iphigenia in Splott, one of my least favourite recent shows (Sophie Melville is mesmeric, mind). Effie begins by acknowledging that she’s the only working-class person in the room. Us and them.

I had HUGE problems with Iphigenia. I felt that Owen appropriated working-class clichéd misery to preach an easy political point to a converted choir, a middle-class pantomime. If Effie attended Iphigenia she’d feel misrepresented. Why wasn’t Effie welcome to attend her own story?

Today, if we want working-class theatre, we do one of two things. Either we look back. “Why do they need to revive [Road]? Why isn’t the Royal Court putting on new plays that are dealing with the lives of working-class northerners today?” Do read this article, which goes on to aptly ask “when was the last time I saw a northerner on stage” and note that at the Court, “with its reputation for being at the forefront of every theatrical shift, RP remains the standard”. Whatever you thought of Road, it is amazing that there are no contemporary plays like it at the Court – indeed, Rita Sue was the ONLY working-class story told there last year, eventually... It’s a backwards-looking blind-spot.

Or we appropriate. “Brexit and events such as the Grenfell Tower fire highlight the growing gulfs between the haves and have-nots”, asserts Gardner; Gardner’s former Grauniad stomping-ground commissioned Sir David on Brexit, a have on the have-nots. Hmm. Some shorts are good (Gary Owen’s is thoughtful and thought-provoking), most aren’t (Charlene James’ is based on the twist that a sexy person is a Brexiteer); but who wrote, directed, performed in these, and who was their intended audience; aren’t Sir David, Headlong and the Guardian “block[ing] access to the opportunities and jobs that the middle class take for granted”? Anywho, the NT tackled Brexit, Rufus and Dame Carol; Rufus also set wonder.land in a contemporary state school with help from a middle-aged multimillionaire.  Haves and have-nots.

But Grenfell, I recently saw Broken Dreams, and despite some imperfections, this was the real story told by the right people. You don’t need to live a story to write it, theoretically, but authenticity matters. Yet who is being commissioned to tell stories of contemporary working-class life? Could Andrea Dunbar break through today? Discuss.

“We critics are still a homogeneous bunch: no longer dead, white males perhaps, but still all middle-class and university-educated, still all white”. TV and cinema being accessible, working-class misrepresentation gets quickly seen and criticised in letters or on Twitter. Theatre being inaccessible, critics are our public voice of dissent, and if they’re homogenous, can they criticise?

And whilst I loved that blog about Road, I’m very upset that blogging = criticism. Criticism should always be paid. Not for the reasons snobby Shenton says – because if it’s unpaid, only people who can afford the time and money and comfort will critique, thus excluding working-class writers further. It’s cyclical.

How to change? How did Dunbar and Cartwright break though? Broader directing/writing schemes? Financial support for low-income creatives? Teach drama in state schools and, more importantly, have it performed there? So it’s governmental? Yes and no. When was the last competition for specifically working-class playwrights, especially mentoring for young writers; Stormzy’s recently, publicly started encouraging diverse authors and poets – great! – but why nothing similar for theatre, why never anything similar for theatre? Discuss.

Effie concludes “What is gonna happen when we can’t take it anymore?” This wasn’t a “shattering, angry call for immediate revolt” (how’s that revolt going, Guardian?). It was us-and-them again; a miserablist story about an inauthentic life told to a middle-class circle-jerk. Afterwards as the audience drank wine and discussed Aeschylus, I thought about the people I knew like Effie – this wasn’t their story. People like Effie can speak for themselves. There are ways to get Effie to tell her story. Collaborate with Effie, don’t write for her. Bring Effie into the theatre to watch, not to be watched.

P.S. Sophie Melville – the incredible star of this show – even believes that theatre comes across as inaccessible, saying of how she felt at 16 before coming across Owen’s earlier (better) plays and recognising herself in them: “I was just scared of [acting] being posh and it being Shakespeare and not being able to understand what was being said”.

P.P.S. Given how many careers can be kickstarted up there, how much does it cost to stage a show in Edinburgh?

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Now, after the practicalities, entry points, and storytellers, I’d like to focus on four working-class classics: 1) Les Mis, 2) Cathy Come Home, 3) Sunshine on Leith, and 4) Henry IV. What goes on stage? What does that say?

1) Does Les Mis have something to say about class? Sod that, it’s a blockbuster. “Wanna see Les Mis?” – it’s a treat. “Wanna see working-class great Kenneth Cranham in a French puzzle-box about dementia?” – less of a treat. We can bang on but, for many people, theatre is a day out and that’s that.

But this links to London-centricity. I think that a show being a treat is great! The Father is not a treat. That it only played in Bath and London limits its audiences; financially/geographically, plays like this are ghettoised as London, metropolitan, middle-class. They need to leave London. But blockbusters? By now Les Mis is like Big Ben.

Quick comparison to cinematic blockbusters – Fast-and-Furious blockbusters are most popular than Bergman-y arthouse, yet London theatre struggles with Fast and Furious and stages Through A Glass Darkly/Fanny and Alexander/Persona/Scenes from a Marriage, TWICE/Bergman The Musical.  “Theatre isn’t literary” he said… I’m not convinced theatre caters to the broadest of tastes…

But for many, theatre’s just the blockbusters, and why not? We must protest inordinate prices, but being in London makes for a capital day out, and ya snobs this is something tours like Kenright’s redistribute excellently.

(and, with Toneelgroep’s Blockbuster Musical around the corner, what a time for the big guns!)

2) Of all the great working-class plays – Wesker, Osborne, Cartwright (and their contemporaries...) – I’m mentioning Ken Loach for a specific reason. I Daniel Blake was a sensation – Loach’s 2nd Palme D’Or, referenced in parliament, it drew national attention to the issue of food banks. It’s a masterpiece. It peaked at 9th in the UK box office.  On the other hand, Noel Clarke’s Brotherhood opened, just a month before Blake, to over £1.5 million more.

I’m moving to cinema, not theatre, because of accessibility, so success is easier to gage. “If we really wanted more of the white, working-class in our theatres we’d be making work that bounced off the sorts of stuff they do flock to engage with… the big and bold and tribal and gut-wrenching,” Gardner quotes, “But we don’t. We revive Chekhov in translations by David Hare. We do not want working-class people as they are, so we do not really want them at all.” Loach (politically) and Clarke (locally) tell lived-in, authentic, big bold tribal stories. The audiences turn up, esp. for Clarke. And whilst Blake and Brotherhood are gut-wrenching, both Loach and Clarke also made charming comedies. With Eric Cantona!  People flock.

If you felt reflected in Kidulthood, where’s your reflection on stage now? And I wonder, was the audience of I Daniel Blake people like Daniel Blake?

Well, Cathy played both Barbican and borstals, which says it all – these stories can be great theatre for metropolitan theatregoers and visit their target audiences too, they reflect their audience, and they reach out to their audience, where there’s a will.

That’s Loach; Clarke?  Why don’t we see these stories more often, or urban stories ever? Production snobbery.  Kidulthood the Musical clearly WOULD be popular. If it plays the Noel Coward Theatre, it’s located/priced out of its audience. Touring it is less prestigious and not Olivier-eligible. A very urban modern story probably won’t play Broadway or warrant a revival. It takes courage to make theatre just for the here-and-now. Like Cathy.

So the twofold answer is simple in theory. 1) Have more working-class talent on committees – but Gardner details the unease there – but it’s step 1. 2) Broaden not just what’s commissioned, but where, for whom, and why; the RC or Hampstead or NT staging Cathy would be self-defeating without taking it further; look at Love, clearly vital, akin to Loach, but sadly inaccessible; the infrastructure for completely portable (and even non-profit) theatre (from regional schools to the West End) must be there. SO MUCH of this comes to government arts funding. Simple!

Start with someone established. Noel Clarke should make theatre! And Ken Loach! Nothing there could go wrong…

(“We revive Chekhov in translations by David Hare”. And by Icke, who anglicises to Uncle Johnny. And Anya Reiss, who sings along with Common People and adds ‘only after you’ve f***ed a woman’. And Dead Centre, who order a takeaway (at the BAC, MUST SEE, the best show about theatre I’ve ever seen). Yet I’ve never seen a Chekhov with Vanya’s line “What do you say’ll happen to us, me mam, and our Sonya?” That sounds like something my family would say; now there we are in the greatest ever play. But no, he’s always posh. On this, guess who’s leading the way? Gary Owen!  Translators are not purists when it comes to setting, era, character, exactitude, plot, words. But why are we purists when it comes to accent and class?)

3) Sunshine on Leith is my perfect working-class play. It tells of two squaddies getting over the war and getting with their girlfriends. Somewhere in the background, they’re working-class. It’s never mentioned. It doesn’t matter. But they don’t flatten all the vowels and throw the R away.

“I often wonder why middle-class audiences want to pay to hear me tell stories about working-class life,” quotes Gardner, “And why is it that so seldom we are funded to tell the stories of working-class success?” I believe that’s because creatives perceive ‘working-class life’ as ABOUT working-class – that working-class people wake up and think “I am working-class”. Thus we revive A Taste of Honey, and leer at Effie’s middle-class appropriation, like well-acted Guardian articles. Theatre wants working-class politics, classics and clichés. Effie BEGAN by saying “You lot”, ‘othering’ herself.

Jamie doesn’t! Musicals have a better track record at keeping class in the background – ETAJ, Blood Brothers, Billy Elliott, Perpetual Succour, The Girls, Made in Dagenham, even Kinky Boots, even London Road (and even wonder.land). Why are musicals so far ahead? I’d assume that it’s because they’re often big-budget, crowd-pleasing fun: celebrating title characters (like Iphigenia?) who shout “Some of us belong to the stars”! We’ve not had a play doing this since when, Pitmen? Jamie is about coming out, Billy the miner’s strike, London Road collective trauma and redemption, but Sunshine on Leith is totally low-stakes – it’s your everyday boy-meets-girl – and yet it’s everything: a tried-and-true love story, authentic, happy. And working-class.

The telly does this too to roaring success. So there are clearly hugely talented, hugely popular writers and performers who want to tell straight drama/comedy about working-class success.

When we talk working-class stories, at best it’s Four Yorkshiremen and at worst it’s poverty porn. But it’s a discriminatory lack of imagination that leads us there. Why can’t your basic comedy/history/tragedy be any class? Why can’t any working-class story go from misery to happiness today a-ha a-ha a-ha a-ha?

…because writers write what they know, and most theatregoers are middle-class thus write with unconscious bias. It’s cyclical. But in theory why not?

4) In Playing the Part, Ian McKellen bemoans losing his Bolton accent because there was the preconception that the Dane needed to be posh, the Bard’s words RP*. Why, he asks, when Tom Courteney, Albert Finney, David Warner didn’t? Good question, and one he can’t quite answer.

Just this year, with Andrew Scott’s Hamlet a palpable hit, I lost count of how many people said “Interesting to hear Hamlet with a different accent”.

“How someone speaks is one of the markers for class, so it’s perhaps not surprising that some working-class artists find it easier to try to fit in by coding and putting on what Scottee calls “the arts version of yourself”.”

If accent is a marker for class, and it’s unusual to hear non-RP Shakespeare, Shakespeare is middle-class.

*A personal note. Born in Berkshire but parents from up north, I decided that losing any accent would be more like the theatre I saw, so spent my teenage years trying to sound like Noël Coward (who himself exaggerated his accent to impress in theatre). In many ways, it did make a better impression when going to uni, and going to the theatre; I heard very few accents like my family’s, I sounded the part. What does that say about a) inclusivity, and b) me? But that’s not my accent and doesn’t represent me – and you can never go home again, I can’t now lose this fake voice. It’s funny how crucial voices – literal, spoken voices – are to identity. Had I had more heroes in the literary world – more characters in Shakespeare or Chekhov on stage – with the accent of my parents or grandparents, I’d proudly speak like them. But now? What do I have? Is this my voice?

Group therapy over, back to the point…

Macbeth is another Shakespeare McKellen played posh, in 1976. His Porter was Ian McDiarmid, who dials up a daffy Scots accent to ‘other’ himself. In 2018, Rufus Norris put on his Macbeth. His Porter was Trevor Fox – a stunning Shakespearean actor – who “dials up his natural Geordie to squeeze laughter out of the Olivier audience”.

“‘Working-class character as detonator.’ The character in question will have little to no emotional life of their own and will exists purely to generate chaos or, less egregiously, to hold a mirror up to the other characters – to generate narrative tension.”

Wasn’t that McDiarmid in 1976? Isn’t that Fox in 2018?

What’s more damning is that Anne-Marie Duff – one of our finest actors – still has her East London accent. She’s lost it, though, to play a Lady. Fox keeps his, to play a Fool. Coding.

Natasha Tripney’s ‘detonators’ include Consent and Amongst Friends, and I’ve argued that the entire Iphigenia script was ‘working-class detonator as character’. Theatremakers know, expect, hope (?) that their audiences will be predominantly middle-class and feel comfortable using ‘working-class’ as a shorthand for ‘laughable’, ‘dangerous’, or ‘dumb’. ‘Other’.

“Those from working-class backgrounds often get typecast as working-class characters who are not only often caricatured and offensive, but are often also secondary roles and therefore less well-remunerated,” quotes Gardner. This is true from Consent to Coriolanus; how class is weaponised says a lot.

This is why, to me, Phyllida Lloyd’s Shakespeare Trilogy is our Hamilton: who lives who dies who tells your story (05:01). Both take a text that underpins our nationality (the Constitution for the US; the Bard for us), and both shout that these are for everyone – those who reflect our nation today. Yes, Lloyd’s trilogy was all-female, but think about the diversity of ages, races, nationalities, classes, cultures, body sizes, sexuality… Shakespeare – our National poet – belonged to everyone.

Wonderfully, I think that since all-female casts were compared to “a dog’s walking on his hind legs”, we’ve only gotten Glenda’s Lear on Broadway and Matthew Tennyson as Salome because of Lloyd’s pioneering brunt-bearing. But a production where Harriet Walter’s son was Claire Dunne and her daughter was Leah Harvey was about more. It wasn’t all-female – it was all-inclusive. Where else are Cynthia Erivo, Jade Anouka, Ashley Maguire, Cush Jumbo, Sharon Rooney warriors, wizards, kings, family?

Most productions are middle-class, but use regional or working-class as ‘other’. Lloyd threw this out the window. Few have followed her here. Why?

What is a working-class story? Prince Hal vs Hotspur. ANYTHING in British history is a working-class story. Almost anything in world theatre can be too. Cast it right.

If we cast all Shakespeares as Cumberhamlets and Hiddleston-anuses, we reinforce our quaint London sensibilities. Does that make Maxine Peake’s Hamlet working-class, her Winnie working-class? Not at all, accent isn’t class – but it means people from her working-class background see and hear themselves as heroes. The wonderful Trevor Fox is the ONLY Geordie actor I’ve ever seen on stage. Growing up I didn’t hear people who sounded like my mum on stage and I still don’t; I wanted to ‘fit in’ and still do. Had I known back then that Hamlet’s soliloquies could sound like Maxine Peake... That matters. What did Peake herself say about being inspired by Victoria Wood? “She sounds a bit like me”.

I don’t know how many people got to see The Shakespeare Trilogy on TV – my only mini-bugbear was despite amazing outreach, its temporary theatre was in London, not tour-able – but I hope enough people watch it and recognise the Bard’s words in their voice, and their voice in the Bard’s words.

Play these shows in schools.

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Everything is interconnected. NT Live is a near-perfect second-best. The Olivier can ‘transfer’ to any cinema. It’s accessible! A national treasure like McKellen is classless – September 27th will ignite many first-time theatregoers worldwide (of course, his Fool has an othering regional accent because of course he f***ing does). I will fight to the death for it.

The RSC go one better, screening into schools for free.

However, this is the current NT Live season: Follies, Young Marx, CoaHTR, Julius Caesar, Julie, King Lear, George III, Allelujah! – and, aforementioned, Macbeth. Season 8: Deep Blue Sea, Threepenny Opera, No Man’s Land, Amadeus, Saint Joan, Hedda, Twelfth Night, R&GaD, Obsession, WaoVW, Peter Pan, Salome, Angels, Yerma. Diversity?

In those 23 productions, how many regional accents are going regional? Reliably Alan Bennett; other than him, 2 (David Morrissey and Trevor Fox). And no lead roles.

More Oscar Wilde plays have been transmitted in the last year than working-class plays in the last ten.

Instead, we get Macbeth, and its aforementioned problems, told to the world. Thank you Rufus!

The RSC is better (compare their Macbeth) but most of the RSC shows I’ve seen have still had this RP-accent bias.  Showing THAT in schools is only so progressive.

We have to go back to 2011’s revival of The Kitchen (1957) to find the ONE working-class story, out of nearly 100, transmitted to the world.

So, why is the National not transmitting working-class stories? Well, what can it transmit? Rufus gets one thumb up with Love, Nine Nights and Barber Shop Chronicles (despite wonder.land, Iphigenia and Macbeth). Hytner had Elmina’s Kitchen, Pitmen and London Road (which took 5 years to get to Ipswich – and only via a not-good movie). Anything else? Across London? Oscar Wilde again? Is NT Live genuinely the best the Nation has to offer?

(Well, I think SRB in Collaborators was meant to be a working-class detonator, so maybe twice, via Stalin, hooray ? ? ? ? ?)

I’ve always loved NT Live – the National Theatre is finally National, and International. I saw Everybody’s Talking About Jamie at a foreign cinema, and to see that story go global made me cry. But how come the regions who only see NT Live never see their regions or lives? I want to love NT Live, but it’s that word ‘National’ that sticks in my throat. We should be in uproar.

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There. 6 months after the fact, everyone needed my overlong opinion on the subject… It’s that NT Live statistic that sickens me most – yet it’s the best of UK theatre’s bad job. There’s such a rot at every level. When that’s so normalised, what does that say about theatremakers, and us as theatregoers?

Two quick postscripts. We in the UK have chips on our shoulders, but theatre is global. Toneelgroep in London attracts a middle-class metropolitan audience – in Amsterdam? Of course Broadway is elitist, but United States? “Bringing my working-class relatives into the middle-class space of the theatre; getting my blood family to meet my chosen family” sounds familiar – yet it’s about the exact same problem in Australia! Is this a global issue?

Let me end with one final, historical note. The Mystery Plays were theatre for the working-class, by the working-class, about the working-class. The actors and the audience were workers from York, from Leicester, from the locality. And who are the main characters? God and Jesus. Imagine such class-blind casting today! In British theatre’s beginnings, working-class stories were the Alpha and Omega.