As too few young people are coming individually or on school visits, take the performances to them via television. Plays on the box are, I fully admit, no substitute for the real thing; but they are better than nothing, and actually better than an awful lot of programmes on the box.The current production of A Streetcar Named Desire, starring Glenn Close, at the National would make enthralling television, as would Sam Mendes’s farewell season at the Donmar. But theatre and television keep an unhealthy distance from each other. How often do you see a play by Tom Stoppard or Alan Ayckbourn or Caryl Churchill on the BBC or Channel 4? Who can recall the last televised Chekhov or Ibsen or Shakespeare? It’s actually a bigger disgrace than the lack of school visits to theatres, when one considers the influence of television and the public service broadcasting remit.I would like to see our subsidised National Theatre and our subsidised national television service, if I may refer to the BBC as such, working together.
Let the BBC show at least six productions a year, with curriculum guides for schools. Nicholas Hytner has started making the right sort of provocative speeches. His next should be a public challenge to the BBC director-general, Greg Dyke Put some plays on television. The National Theatre can provide them, as can other theatres around the country. And no, Mr Dyke, not just on BBC 4, on the mainstream channels watched by large mainstream audiences. They like good drama too.*Mike Leigh’s latest film, All Or Nothing, is a moving and poignant piece.
When I watched it at the Cannes film festival, it even had journalists sobbing, something that usually only happens when an expenses claim is turned down. Leigh has been holding a number of question-and-answer sessions after selected performances of the film. I would like him or Timothy Spall, the star of the movie, to answer one question. As part of the Mike Leigh method of working, Spall spent weeks mini-cab driving to prepare for his role as a taxi driver in the movie.