London theatre is still dying
There’s usually nothing special about central London’s Argyll Street. Tourists pootle safely in and out from Oxford Street Station, shopping bags sagging in overloaded hands.
I felt slightly sorry for those who were caught off guard last summer as the street was swamped by punters craning for a glimpse of Rachel Zegler singing from Don’t Cry for Me Argentina as Eva Peron from the balcony of the London Palladium, before the nightly performance of Evita. It was a sly bit of metatheatrical smoke and mirrors from director Jamie Lloyd. Some argued that it mirrored Peron’s bond with the Argentinian people: I admire the chutzpah of making the paying audience, some of whom coughed up hundreds, watch the rendition on a screen. A flurry of opinion pieces celebrating the resuscitation of the theatre swiftly followed. Had rumours of theatre’s death at the hands of diminished attention spans and streaming services been greatly exaggerated?
Now, the box office numbers paint an even more optimistic picture. The West End set a record 17.6 million theatregoers last year, outnumbering Broadway by nearly five million. Tax incentives and comparatively low costs make London more attractive for producers. Record footfall and zeitgeisty moments are one measure of health. But the quality and originality of plays that are produced is another. Look closer and things are not quite so jubilant. A West End that needs a Hollywood face on the poster to fill its seats is not a robust artistic ecosystem. Sure, audience numbers are in rude health, but whether the industry has lost its artistic ingenuity is a different question. Gertrude in Hamlet sums it up best: “More matter and less art.”
The balance between popular appeal and artistic risk is always precarious. But the theatre’s post-Covid recovery has involved a tilt towards commercial kitsch. Stranger Things, The Devil Wears Prada and Paddington are just three of the big ones currently hoarding room in the West End. And now there is apparently a stage version of The Traitors in the works! It is hard to imagine a more egregious cash grab.
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Not all adaptations are cynical. Productions of Atonement, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, Hamnet, The Line Of Beauty, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest offer something for the thinking theatre goer. I’m Sorry, Prime Minister, Fawlty Towers, and Only Fools and Horses something for the golden oldies. But they do remove an opportunity for new voices and new writing.
Celebrity casting is not new to theatre. And some celebrity actors are famous precisely because they are immensely talented: I’d probably pay to watch Bryan Cranston clip his toenails for three hours, let alone star in All My Sons. But starry casting seems to have become the favoured way to get anything produced. Investors need reassurance, and a bankable name offers if not guaranteed popularity, then at least a hope of it. The artistic pipeline is slowly choking. Nadine Rennie, co-chair of the Casting Directors’ Guild, has warned that celebrity casting is killing the theatre industry, arguing that an over-reliance on recognisable names diminishes audiences’ appetite for unknown work and emerging writers.
Playwrights are jumping ship to TV, where budgets and audiences are so much bigger. Jack Thorne cut his teeth at the Bush Theatre in West London before becoming the writing force behind hits like Skins, This is England and big budget adaptations of His Dark Materials and Lord of the Flies. I doubt Adolescence could have sparked a nationwide conversation from the stage, only available to an audience constrained by geography and price.
TV is also luring actors away from the stage. Saturday Night Live UK’s success is heavily indebted to the theatre scene, having assembled a rough and ready cast of relative unknowns with serious stage pedigrees. George Fouracres had an established career at the Globe, while Hammed Animashaun is a National Theatre regular who earned an Olivier nomination for last year’s Dealer’s Choice revival. There are flickers of hope. Mark Rosenblatt’s debut play Giant about Roald Dahl’s anti-Semitism, though cushioned by the prestige of director Nicholas Hytner and stars Elliot Levey and John Lithgow, stormed last year’s Olivier awards. The Broadway transfer has justly been recognised with a slew of Tony nominations. But a more potent example is Ava Pickett’s 1536, a new story from a young unknown writer already dubbed the “Charli XCX of young playwrights” by Baz Luhrmann. Unhelmed by celebrity casting, that has found its audience on its own terms. Transferring from the Almeida to the Ambassadors Theatre in the West End, it did not need a name emblazoned on the marquee to sell it. Just strong reviews and stronger word of mouth from adoring audiences.
[Further reading: The best theatre to see in 2026]
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