Share your unpopular opinions here!

Jun 14, 2016 8:48:19 GMT @cardinalpirelli said:

Jun 14, 2016 6:07:07 GMT theglenbucklaird said:

Really interested why you think European theatre is 'years ahead of British theatre' (aren't negative views worthless in isolation). But even more interested why we're 'just catching up' and truly fascinated why 'that gap may stop closing' soon.

Negative 'reviews', responses to a specific show, are only relevant to that show and pretty much 'I didn't like it', 'I liked it' and that's that, positive reviews at least prompt me to go and see something I might not (steve's review of Clytemnestra at The Gate for example, thanks steve!); negative 'views' are at least a topic for conversation and debate, given their broader range.

I'm not talking musical theatre here, where the US is streets ahead but in the field of non-musical theatre. I see a lot of international theatre and the ideas and approaches take a while to seep through to British theatre, which is relatively conservative and parochial. What I see now from young directors is what the likes of Ostermeier and Van Hove have been doing for years.

It's no surprise that as the UK has become closer to Europe and, with populations intermingling to a greater degree, that that gap has been closed. It's not all to do with political integration as on the edges you have somewhere like Iceland and Vesturport who have made waves. Polls show that, across Europe, however, there is a growing mood of isolationism and that mood can only hamper the cross-pollination of international theatres and theatremakers.

EDIT: Just realised that Iceland is a member of the EEA so there is free movement. Russia maybe and the Vakhtangov instead?

I'm not sure I agree. I say this from a position of relative ignorance, but I often wonder if we romanticise ‘foreign theatre’. I haven’t been abroad in two years now, but whenever I go abroad I find it fascinating to look at the cinema listings. The last time I saw Paris, there were posters all over the place for ‘Un film de Ken Loach, scenario de Paul Laverty’ – Jimmy’s Hall, a film that made pennies at the box office and was treated as a footnote by a past-it leftie windbag by half the papers here, but represented the best of English auteur cinema by a rare double Palme d'Or winner (hooray!) when it played as a ‘foreign film’ – and posters all over the place for a sh*tty little French rom com that was so bad it never reached our shores but was clearly doing well over there. Walk through London a few years ago, and there’d have been adverts for the new Xavier Dolan movie next to Pudsey The Dog: The Movie. I bet artistically minded cinemagoers were having identical conversations on both sides of the channel: “Look at the cinema they make over there, look at the sh*t we make over here, the grass is so much greener.”

Is that not true of theatre? Having only been to one theatre outside England, on Broadway ten years ago, my encounters with foreign theatre have been OStermeier, Ninagawa, Vakhtangov, where my encounters with UK theatre have been Thriller Live and Mamma Mia. On that basis we’re not years behind but epochs. However, in Germany, similarly, is Mamma Mia not the hottest ticket, not Ostermeier? Are there not people talking about how they’re still years behind Katie Mitchell, Simon Mcburney, Cheek by Jowl, let alone upstart wünderkinds like Rupert Goold (now a wünder-middle-age), Joe Hill-Gibbons and Robert Icke? Is German theatre actually represented by Ostermeier, or is the best of German theatre represented by OStermeier? 

Besides, I don’t think the distinction between us and them really exists now, let alone as a gap that's mercifully closing.  There've been great talents we've produced, on whose shoulders EUropean directors are now standing, on whose shoulders young British directors are beginning to stand.  Look at West End sell-out Simon Stephens, a channel hopping auteur-endorsing juggernaut, and West End sell-out Duncan Macmillan who, with Atmen/Lungs, The Forbidden Zone and 2071, is surely snapping at Stephens’ heels for the position of Anglo-European playwright-laureate (not to mention West End sell-out Florian Zeller, it goes two ways). I don’t think we’re many years behind: I think the best stuff there is as good as the best stuff here, the worst stuff there is probably as bad as the worst stuff but mercifully we dodge that bullet, and there’s a really healthy, ever growing relationship between theatres across Europe and indeed America and we’re lucky to be in the middle. Is there not something telling that in this country Ivo van Hove won the Olivier, sold out the West End, warranted a cinematic run and built up the momentum to go to Broadway and win the Tony (woop woop!) and is now part of England’s National Theatre?