Sheridan Morley died suddenly last weekend. He was The Spectator’s theatre critic from 1990 to 2001. His knowledge of both the stage and its leading practitioners was encyclopedic, while his many theatrical anecdotes were hugely entertaining. He and his wife, the producer and critic Ruth Leon, were planning to spend more time shuttling between London and New York, from where he was going to send occasional reviews. What follows is the first — and now sadly the last — in the planned series. Sheridan was a good friend of The Spectator. We will all miss him a lot.
The business of Broadway is still a cash business. The politics are that anything with a ‘made in the UK’ tag still sells like nothing else. Consider the current snob hit at the Lincoln Center, Tom Stoppard’s three-part Coast of Utopia, which premièred at the National five years ago. A ticket for that will cost you on average $100. Say you take along a partner, go out to eat, need transport and a babysitter; you’re looking at $500 per play. But this, remember, is a trilogy, so to see it complete you’re looking at $1,500 (call that £750). And you wonder why other straight plays here are in real economic trouble. You could probably take home something from a used-car lot for less, or, the way things are going in the real-estate business, make that crucial first down payment on a home of your own.
Then again, consider this: Kevin Spacey turned around his struggling Old Vic with a production of O’Neill’s Moon for the Misbegotten which has only recently closed there. Not surprisingly, he and it, too, are heading for Broadway in the spring, but here’s the kicker. For his acting efforts Spacey will get $60,000 a week. The scheduled run is only 89 performances, so what are tactfully known as ‘premium’ tickets (i.e.,
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