Dominic Cavendish
@domcavendish
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Telegraph theatre critic; “no day but today” dominic.cavendish @telegraph .co.uk
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Ricky Gervais: Humanity, review: With his most cohesive and heart-on-sleeve show yet, it's good to have him back:
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Still love this Slattery quote - “What is important isn’t someone’s body, it’s whether their smile reaches their eyes.”
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The National Theatre, emblem of our cultural vitality, cannot now afford to keep on its front of house staff. Let that sink in.
That is an abject national humiliation.
These weeks will never be forgotten.
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@metpoliceuk
@TellMamaUK
Hollow words when you tolerate hate speech being projected onto Big Ben. Stop taking the public for fools.
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She didn’t need an accolade from the Stage, she didn’t need a UK theatre award. Lyn Gardner has been an indisputably good thing for the Guardian, for British theatre and for the reviewing culture. She made us all travel further and work harder. Shocked she’s going. Irreplaceable
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If Cineworld goes and the Culture Recovery Fund fails to prop up enough of the country’s theatres, we could see towns that once had a playhouse and a cinema culturally emptied out in the space of a year.
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5 stars for Maggie the Magnificent
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Judging by the honking of car horns and general shouts of joy in the streets, the people of Stratford upon Avon are really getting excited about Shakespeare this evening
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if the young are, as reported, likely to shrug off this virus, can't London theatre just restrict itself to the under-25s for the next month and charge everyone a tenner? Full houses, a revolution in theatre-going... (maybe)
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Never such innocence,
Never before or since,
As changed itself to past
Without a word – the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages,
Lasting a little while longer:
Never such innocence again.
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Not a phrase misjudged, not a look or movement mistimed, not a beat of comedy missed, not a nuance untouched. 5 stars for Matthew Warchus's superlative Present Laughter, which shares the joy of acting, and mines its lonely flipside:
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Hytner: "This is a much better plan than anyone expected and it’s a big achievement for DCMS. Obviously there’s a lot of work to done ... But I warmly welcome the way Rishi Sunak and Oliver Dowden have responded to the tenacious and detailed lobbying of the entire arts sector.”
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@metpoliceuk
So he committed an assault? Yet was de-arrested. This doesn’t add up. Or do you mean he was mobbed, pushed back and it was simply easier for the police to bundle him away by force, and pin him to the ground as might happen in a police state?
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"Sheffield Theatres has today announced that, subject to government advice, it hopes to bring Shakespeare to Sheffield’s outdoor spaces later this year" - that's enough, that's enough to make me smile today. Bring, it, on.
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Very good
George Osborne appointed artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe
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The Govt must heed Hytner on regional theatre: “There is a real crisis looming. Repertory theatres have gone to the wall. The reps at the moment are doing fantastic work but they don’t know how much longer they can do it for.”
@DCMS_SecOfState
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free your mind, and your ass will follow - a 5-star rave for Nick Hytner's phantasmagorical Shakespeare rejig:
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imagining a scenario in which british theatre-makers, actors.. go off to paris, berlin, rome, warsaw etc where they are welcomed with open arms, workable subsidies and the invitation to help transform the landscape; and what's left in the UK is dinosaur world live in a car-park.
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if you've ever had a good time at the theatre, please retweet Sonia's piece today. The industry isn't pleading for special treatment, but crucial life-support; the window of opportunity to prevent the unwitting dismantling of British theatre is very narrow
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Whatever happens in the coming month with lockdowns, theatre in the past few weeks has been teeming with activity and possibility. Just knowing that the sector is waiting in the wings to bounce back is cause for applause, even if the partial govt support is a source of regret.
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Am waiting for the sequel, where it goes under the blow-drier and applies post-shower hair gel.
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The Donmar Warehouse is to reopen temporarily from 3 to 22 August with a socially distanced sound installation – Blindness, based on the dystopian novel by Nobel-prize winning José Saramago, adapted by Simon Stephens and directed by Walter Meierjohann
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oh and here's Benedict C.. hard in training as Hamlet. Let Cumberbatch-mania begin anew.
#BenedictCumberbatch
http://t.co/ZeCwLcUn1d
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“should the RSC really be awarded over £15 million a year, while Birmingham Rep, increasingly a creative powerhouse, only receives £1.8m? The RSC may be a bigger concern, but the sheer disparity in what the two companies receive is alarming and unfair.”
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I don't know why The Mousetrap news has hit me so hard. (it's The Mousetrap!). But people would have flocked to see it, and the statement of it - that London's back - would have gone round the world. The amount it would cost the Govt to underwrite it as nothing to that dividend.
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we must save all of it, or we will save none of it
The National Theatre is preparing for a "substantial level of staff redundancy" as it fights to survive the Covid-19 crisis, and has appealed for government support "to mitigate the loss of vital talent and infrastructure" in British theatre
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In terms of the toil, knowledge and good humoured devotion Janine Shalom put into her pr work and the way she oversaw so many important shows these past 30 years they should dim the lights for her on Shaftesbury Avenue. Seriously. Women like her make British theatre what it is.
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Support theatre, support cinema & do yourself a favour - Go see Vanya - on release from Tues
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Happy Birthday, Bard
"The weight of this sad time we must obey,
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most: we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.”
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This petition, asking Govt to review social distancing in theatres before November, has been granted approval. The more people who sign it, the more the industry can keep this issue to the forefront of public and hopefully parliamentary debate; pls share
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An essential read - and warning - from Sonia Friedman: "Imagine the next six months. One by one, our arts and cultural organisations will have to spend their reserves until there is nothing left. They will have no alternative but to enter administration"
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hadn't for some reason realised that the Edinburgh Festival is the world's third biggest ticketed event after the Olympics and World Cup. Still worth a 'wow' that.
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1,138,335 views on YouTube so far just for Cumberbatch (Creature) and Miller (Frankenstein); more than a thousand Oliviers-worth (or roughly a three year run). Incredible.
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I’m not sure I can face another three month round of famous people reading sonnets in their country piles. That’s what I’m dreading most I suppose. I’d suggest a 10k minimum fine for it.
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Useful - and heartening? - survey from UK theatre company SeatPlan "Theatregoers remain steadfast, with 88% of them saying they are as, or more, likely to attend a West End theatre after lockdown"
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time to phase out theatre-programmes I think. They look lovely, and often read well, but in the main they end up having to be recycled; a versatile phone app wd be better.
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Utterly grim. Major, major theatre for that area.
Nuffield Southampton Theatres has been placed into administration.
Administrators say it's after falling into financial difficulties because of
#Covid19
pandemic. A buyer's being sought for the business.
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It feels as if this is the week that theatre, rising to its feet after being run over, is going to get knocked down again by the govt reversing having barely checked the original damage. If there is no further aid, then what this country was, culturally, is as good as finished.
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Hello
@OliverDowden
. We've stuck to the script -
#StayHomeSaveLives
- and now theatres are starting to fold. Are you going to stand by and watch the cultural infrastructure crumble on your watch? What's your message to the theatre sector?
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Sonia Friedman is now queen of the West End - and Broadway !
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If you want to see what you'll look like in 30 years just go to the Edinburgh Fringe and consult a mirror after three weeks
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The joy of a print review. And the headline nails it.
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How far would I go to watch some sheer bloody theatre? About as far as Land’s End, that’s how far.
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“It’s going to be almost impossible to make a living from theatre for the next few years. The people who get out there are going to be the most passionate ones. The next age could be a time of innovation.”
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there will come a day when there's an audience sitting in a theatre in London listening to 'Sunday' (from Sunday in the Park with George) and I can already hear myself sobbin.
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The very good has become unmissably extraordinary…
From Gielgud to Gielgold.
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the theatre image of the year?
@EducatingRitaUK
@minacktheatre
our incredible stage management tying the set down after the show tonight we made it to the end with our amazing actors
@JessJohnson2015
@StephenTompki19
268 people stayed and cheered and cheered just 2 left
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Nica Burns launches the Edinburgh Comedy Awards - they said it couldn’t be done, but she saved em
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I think Rufus Norris should pop up in the midst of those at home screenings going 'give us your f***ing money'. If every Frankenstein viewer paid a quid the NT would be in a less dire place
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Mike Bartlett got it spot-on in King Charles III, then:
Harry: "I do not want her noble princess made
Instead descend myself into the mass
Take off the princely burden of my birth
And for my life be Harry, man and friend"
#Megxit
.
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A producer said to me this week ‘you have surely realised by now that they [the govt] don’t care about theatre?’ I found I had no counter argument.
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Blistering set by
@andrewdoyle_com
at Comedy Unleashed laying into the news establishment (specifically BBC) silence over the WPATH revelations.
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The Finborough is 40 today - let's hear it for the fringe, without which so much wouldn't have been possible
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A crud six months and who knows what the next will bring. but I've been continually inspired without exception by everyone I've spoken to - actors, directors, producers & more - since the crisis started; can-do spirit, resolve, total dedication; the best of British. Here's to you
"Theatre has been viable for thousands of years. Yesterday’s announcement from the Chancellor that our industry is not viable represents an almighty blow and is, frankly, a huge insult to the theatre industry."
#SoniaFriedman
's full statement:
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A show so good the whole of the West End can hold its head up that bit higher
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How to slow COVID, help save theatre: New rule - if you want to go out for a pint you have to have it at a theatre. Every pub a performance space. Oh, and put the Barn team at the heart of the Whitehall pandemic response operation.
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I'd like to see the NT giving an online platform every day to a different theatre outfit - doesn't always have to be an appeal, cd just be an update, a bit of content. So many competing voices, activities, ideas need coming under one digital roof, providing national focal point.
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An artistic director told me 'We're just shoring up what is effectively a collapsing industry, let's not make any bones about it'. I gather a proposed parl petition to ask govt to reconsider social distancing in theatres before Nov was flat rejected. Torn between fury and despair
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A delight revisiting Stoppard's Arcadia at 30 - and the willingness of original cast members + their director Trevor Nunn (and Rupert Goold) to do so too attests to the huge reverence and affection in which it's held
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So, catastrophe averted. Well done to those who have worked hard within government and without to deliver an unprecedented emergency package of support for our culture sector. An agonising wait to put it mildly. Tough times still ahead.
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The rule of 6, 6 Nimax theatres reopening, and impending news about 6 the musical. I'm detecting a pattern
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From Sian Phillips' memoir: "I was asked to go to the Royal Court for a chat and spent a depressing hour with a group of middle-class people in working-class disguise who told me a lot of things about the importance of the working-class point of view."
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My dad died 12 years ago today - a heart attack, no goodbyes. I remember being stung by these lines in Wolf Hall afterwards: “Since he went, I feel my age. As if I were just a boy, till a few days ago. But God has snapped his fingers, and I see my best years are behind me.”
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people in Edinburgh on Twitter, don't be shy, @ me with your shows. Can't promise to fit them in but you never know. Happy to do the odd r'tweet too.
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I interviewed this incredible woman a few days ago online in Minsk; she has just been arrested. With
@BFreeTheatre
I call on
@BorisJohnson
and the UK government to urge restraint and respect for human rights on the Belarus authorities
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Stephen Daldry & Good Chance have just announced - along with many other partners (incl Handspring) - The Walk, "the most ambitious public art event ever attempted", an 8000 km walk across Europe by a large Syrian child refugee puppet; multiple events en route. Will share info👍
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“We need you and we’ve missed you”
“I believe in the theatre.”
“Those of us who believe in the theatre also believe in its resilience.”
Listen to The Duchess of Cornwall speak about the vital importance of theatre and performance at the virtual
@OlivierAwards
, tonight at 10:20pm on
@ITV
.
#OlivierAwards
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years of not helping my son with his maths finally paid off. He got an A*
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Adrian Lester wants to play Sweeney in Sweeney Todd, “and Lear’s another one”; was talking about a non disclosable project at the Almeida on R4 Loose Ends. Triple burst of enthusiasm for that.
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Theatres Trust: 'The 6 month time frame signals that we will not see theatres being able to fully reopen in the near future. With the job retention scheme ceasing at the end of October, it will herald more job losses.. and result in irreversible damage to our cultural landscape'
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Still thinking about this. Come on
@RishiSunak
@OliverDowden
let’s move on from the suggestion that such testimonies are the unfortunate consequence of the pandemic. They’re the result of a support package that doesn’t cover enough people.
To press the point home to Oliver Dowden. I read out a letter from a talented musician who is seriously thinking of selling her instruments, as like many freelancers, she was unfairly deemed ineligible for the government's self-employed support scheme. (2/4)
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“Within a decade Britain’s 500-year-old tradition of nurturing new stage plays has been brought to a shuddering halt. We produce the world’s best dramatists. But the theatre is the last place you would look. All you will find there is an art form dying.”
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we just need someone who's mad about British theatre to win the next Euromillions jackpot and hand it over; that's all {I will handle the distribution of funds, minimal commission}
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time to act
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Never was so much decided on behalf of so many by so few
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8 years since my dad died. And yet also, somehow, just yesterday.
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You know that icky twitter phrase applied liberally to shows that make you want to sob your eyes out and leap for joy at the same time - “it broke me” - shit, that just bloody happened with Fun Home
#funhome
#broken
#tinypieces
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‘Joined August 2010’ ... I have now officially wasted 10 years of my life on this never quite quittable site.
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I think I’ve just seen the best new play about university power-games - and the relation between identity, status, sexuality and desire - since David Mamet’s Oleanna. A dark comedy of ideas for the social media generation. Not sure the title does it justice; it’s fresh not fusty.
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@GordonBrown
If only someone hadn’t helped trash the economy, creating long term pain at the expense of short term gain. We were sold prudence, we got the opposite.
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reminder: the virus isn't bothered if you're bored with lockdown and want to get back out there (it'll be delighted)
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So low in spirits about theatre I’ve started to binge on chocolate eclairs.
#obesitysecondwave
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final tweet of the morning - a reminder that years ago, I set up and it contains gazillions of hours of people chatting about theatre. If you're studying Macbeth, it's great for that; or you can just bask in Ken Campbell nattering:
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It’s got to the stage where I’m even missing the Reading Hexagon and the Churchill Bromley. Give it another three months and I’ll even be pining for the Shaw theatre on Euston Road.
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Finally,
@OfficialALW
also reveals that in addition to substantial renovation and innovation works on the upgraded
@Starlightlondon
, there's a new completed musical, subject and title yet to be announced
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