Well, it’s nice to feel on trend. The Today programme this morning carried an item on the popularity of one-man and one-woman theatre shows, following on from the success of two such shows in the Olivier Awards: Sarah Snook in The Picture of Dorian Gray and Andrew Scott in Vanya. Only in passing did they mention a rather important factor in all this: money. If you’re trying not to haemorrhage cash in a post-Covid world, it helps if you can cut your wage bill.
I should know. Straightened times call for inventiveness – which is one of the reasons why my latest venture into musical theatre, A Lark, about the Ralph Vaughan-Williams’ affair with a woman 40 years his junior (while he was still married to his first wife) takes the form of a one-woman show. It is a rather charming story because it is not all about betrayal and ratting on your partner: Vaughan-Williams remained deeply loyal to his first wife, by then stricken with arthritis, even when carrying on with a young poet, Ursula Wood, who had written to him opportunistically in what might have seemed the vain hope of having him set one of her poems to music.
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