Cameron Mackintosh - No Theatre until 2021

Makes perfect sense - especially when he says that he will need 4-5 months to get a production up and running again, from the time when he gets the go ahead to re-open.

So for example even if he were to reopen in December, he would need social distancing to be relaxed by July/August - which obviously isn’t going to happen.

I don't think he's ended contracts. I follow most of the Les Mis London and tour casts on social media and believe me if he had we would know about it!

Wonder if there is an element of him throwing down the gauntlet to government to make them think twice about perhaps demanding social distancing in the future in theatres unnecessarily - that is, if you do that, you stop us from opening.

We may well not need social distancing in the Autumn.

He says specifically big musicals though. I wouldn't be surprised if they programme monologues/smaller scale plays with big names

Christ! This is, errr, something of a read.
Of course we will never know how much is true, but it sounds horrific.

I don't do Twitter!

Any chance of a summary?

Found it!

Unless people come to terms with putting into context the coronavirus issue there will never be live theatre again.

CM says till 2021. What date: January 3rd? May 27th? November 9th at 11.57 sharp? This is the sort of nonsense, apparently authoritative but in fact baseless, which has been spouted ever since talk of lockdowns began. If the pre-requisite for the end of social distancing is a working vaccine then the answer to when there will be live theatre again at this stage is "we don't know and cannot know". But now that it is clear that the virus, like other viruses is here to stay, if the pre-requisite is "when there are no more cases" the only possible answer to when live theatre will restart is "never".

By making this virus into something unique and unprecedented (it's neither) rather than an episode in the constant struggle against viral and bacterial diseases the expectations have been created that there will have to be a definitive outcome rather than the overcoming of a threat through awareness, vaccination, medication and gradual immunity.

RIP Theatre. The Puritans finally won.

the stuff about furlough not being used e.t.c is easily provable. And it's worth noting the thread seems to be backed up by other employees

Well we all know he’s got an ego. Put a camera on these people and they’ll perform for it. Sorry but I don’t believe for one second that CM instructed FOH on how to collect litter. I do believe that he probably didn’t want ugly rubbish bins in his nice refurbished theatre and that that staff were told that, which then becomes “CM makes me stand with plastic bags while people throw snotty tissues at me”. Disgruntled employees will twist a story to suit their own agenda.

I tend to be suspicious of people who rant on social media. There are multiple sides to any story, but it's well established that the side people hear first usually becomes their reality and the people who rant know full well that if they can get their pitch into the public eye first then the truth hasn't got a chance.

Intent is key. If someone's trying to get a reasonable response out of an intransigent company after all standard channels have failed then their grievance is probably genuine. It they're trying to turn popular opinion against someone with no apparent objective beyond that then it seems to me that it's nothing more than spite.

I remember reading an article about the renovation of the Victoria theatre and it mentioned ‘billionaire theatre producer’ and ‘aged 60 something’ and then I looked at the picture, of Cam and the cast on stage and I had to take a moment because I couldn’t work out where the pensioner was in the picture.

And then I realised what a billionaire pensioner looks like. I’d like to meet whoever does his work, because they do a bloody good job.

Can we kill this idea that there won't be live theatre ever again and it's not true either when we have the likes of Sleepless, Jesus Christ Superstar and Beat the Devil all performing tonight.