Hampstead 2022

I have mixed feelings about this. It's been said in previous posts that, while Downstairs does a lot of brilliant new work, Upstairs has been very hit and miss recently, with some poorly chosen plays (and not all new writing either). I think maybe they needed a new direction, though sad that it's been forced by a funding cut. I hope they will find a way to continue with the good work Downstairs, and maybe some more crowd-pleasing work in the main house.

The programming recently has been rough. Memory of Water and Night Mother late last year I found very poor, and Fever Syndrome was also not great. I hope whichever direction they go in there is some better productions in the main house.

I often have this problem too when someone posts a tweet. It's Time Out reporting that Roxana Silbert is stepping down as AD, and the theatre will no longer focus solely on new writing.

Ah, maybe one for the FAQ section, if you have Twitter cookies blocked (including through third party cookies) tweets show as black. I have to specifically change my ad-block and browser settings to allow embeds to load on this site and only on this site for some reason.

It is brutal when that axe comes down. Ouf.

Feels exactly the same as Sport England does with the lottery money. It's been so successful there, a whole bunch of very serious sporting countries are trying to follow that model.

Time to regroup at .. checks notes .. Swiss Cottage.

'new writing' seems to cover quite a spread, perhaps esp. for funding purposes. I noticed this work at Hampstead was given the nod (at least to workshopping) on the basis of a one-page synopsis from someone who'd had a work performed before.

Contrast that with, say, The Bush who are currently calling for full script submissions from new writers. One of them is a serious, dedicated commitment of time and resources.

I’m not exactly disagreeing, but most theatres do that - have open script windows to find and engage with new talent, but commission based on who they already have relationships with. Hampstead do a full script submission every year too, and the Bush have also commissioned plays on the basis of a short pitch. That’s fairly standard.

Having said that Hampstead is pretty much in free fall right now. Everyone’s quitting, commissioned work is on pause, no one knows what’s happening. Hi There’s a big industry open letter coming out soon in support of new writing at Hampstead.

I would be interested to see how many plays that originated at the Hampstead that have gone on to a transfer/future professional production over the past 5/10 years

I'm clearly in the minority on 'Blackout Songs' - I liked the first 15 minutes, the acting was great, but then it kept going round in the same circles, the question on hand - keep the addiction, have a wild time, and destroy yourself/each other, or lead 'tedious' clean lives, is a very familiar one from 'trainspotting', and there was nothing to make me care about either of the protagonists, so after a while I just wanted it to be over. But downstairs has been a great resource for writers - they've dared to experiment, and sometimes it's good, sometimes it's not so good, but it's a small investment, and there's usually something interesting about every play..

Nobody seems to have solved the problem of making upstairs work yet. It's quite an unforgiving theatre with a big stage and a relatively small auditorium, and it seems to diffuse energy from the play rather than focus it. The audience who pay for the more expensive tickets seem much older, whiter, richer, and more conservative. Somehow they've never managed to create the same buzz that the similarly sized (but somehow better shaped, and maybe better sited) Almeida manages - and the plays mostly seem a little tame (perhaps this is an issue of the taste of the producer, Greg Ripley Duggan, who has been there consistently across Ed Hall and Roxana Silbert's tenure - though he does seem good at raising money). Maybe what's needed is to do bolder new work (perhaps bolstered by bigger names as actors and directors) and try to draw audiences from further afield - if they can get their funding back. Without funding, I don't see a way to keep the place alive.

Off the top of my head the transfers from Hampstead from the last 10 years were Chariots of Fire, The Judas Kiss, Good People, Sunny Afternoon, Di and Viv and Rose and Mr Foote's Other Leg. I'm excluding Caroline, or Change because that was at the Minerva at Chichester.