Ben West on the decline in quality of regional theatre; he fears it can only get worse
We may have been languishing for months in the worst recession for decades, but theatre appears to be booming. West End theatres enjoyed a record £500 million in ticket sales in 2009, with audience figures exceeding 14 million for the first time. Attendance for straight plays was up 26 per cent on 2008, at 3.6 million. The many hits have included Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart’s Waiting for Godot, the National Theatre’s War Horse, and Enron and Jerusalem, which both transferred from the Royal Court to the West End.
Quality theatre is supposedly infiltrating the regions, too, and there has been some good-quality stuff on the circuit recently, such as The Pitman Painters, The History Boys, Gethsemane and Citizenship. And confidence in regional theatre was underlined in November when the Ambassador Theatre Group expanded its portfolio of 23 London and regional theatres to 39, splashing out more than £90 million to buy those owned by Live Nation, making it the biggest theatre owner in Britain.
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