The luvvies are in uproar. Just listen to the din. ‘Horrified,’ says Dame Judi Dench. ‘Disgraceful,’ spits Sir Peter Hall. Equity’s spokesman is officially ‘astonished’ and Sir Donald Sinden calls it ‘absurd’. They’re talking about the imminent closure of the V&A’s Theatre Museum in Covent Garden. The museum has been open since 1987 and it houses a vast collection of costumes, scenery, photographs, scripts and theatre paraphernalia from the past three centuries. But the space is in need of a major overhaul. Two attempts to cadge a multimillion pound grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund have failed, and now the V&A has decided it’s had enough. In January it will shut down the life-support systems and the entire collection will be beamed back to the mother ship in South Kensington.
What happens to it after that isn’t entirely clear but a touring exhibition has been promised for 2008. Not good enough, say the leading lights of the theatre. After a lacklustre start their campaign is gathering pace. When the closure was announced last March a group of famous actors met up in a stationery cupboard and penned an angry letter to the Times — an ante-diluvian tactic which had very little effect. Then the veteran producer Thelma Holt threatened to withdraw her photograph of Jill Bennett (aka Mrs John Osborne) if the museum closed down. Odd tactics that, like negotiating with a kidnapper by offering to shoot the hostage. Most recently the theatre newspaper the Stage has assembled a fistful of big-hitters and announced a last-ditch campaign to save the museum.
They’ve got two months. Will they succeed? First, the sums. The museum sucks up two and a half million quid each year and draws in 166,000 visitors. So each attendance costs £15 in subsidy. Sounds a lot but it’s actually a quid less than the V&A’s average expenditure per visitor.
Next, the problems. One difficulty is that the museum’s remit is far too wide. Officially, it extends beyond the theatre to include all the performing arts, from grand opera to tap-dancing via rock music, jazz, Cirque du Soleil and Michael Barrymore. Rather than attempting to cover everything, it wisely focuses on the history of the theatre, with a few gestures in the direction of ballet and pop. Even so the exhibition feels selective and bitty.
A much bigger problem is that the museum lacks an iconic can’t-miss attraction, something on a par with, say, the Elgin Marbles, or the dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum, or the ‘Laughing Cavalier’ at the Wallace Collection. People who cross the globe to see those treasures wouldn’t cross the road to see the Theatre Museum. And that’s partly because of another problem, an ineradicable flaw in its DNA.
The concepts ‘museum’ and ‘theatre’ are mutually incompatible. A live performance is dynamic, transient, unpredictable and, once finished, irrecoverable. People love the theatre because it’s alive, and because it’s alive it is also dying. There’s simply no shared ground between that unique communal experience and the silent and ageless meditations of a museum. Put more simply — covering walls with playbills and bits of old scenery will never take you to the beating heart of the theatre.
Yes, it’s interesting to browse around the place occasionally, to cast your lascivious gaze over Kylie’s costumes or to stare in awe at the make-up box of the Master. My favourite exhibit is a letter from the Lord Chamberlain, typed in freakish crimson ink, offering to license the first production of Loot provided several cuts are made, including the line: ‘He has a very personal approach to flogging.’ It’s priceless. But I think I could live without having seen it.
Another difficulty is the weird and intractable lay-out of the building itself. The entrance hall is dark and forbidding and there’s no natural light anywhere because the exhibition area is situated wholly below ground. It’s one of the weirdest indoor spaces you’ll ever see. There’s a haphazard series of arcades, salons and corridors all linked by a long and gently shelving walkway covered in a scarlet carpet. This chicaned ramp is implacably hostile to the wheelchair-user — unless he happens to be a paralympic medal hope. But there are also surprises at every turn. Take a left and you’re in a room full of Joseph Grimaldi memorabilia. Take a right and you’re celebrating the life and work of the ballet-meister Sir Kenneth MacMillan.
After gyrating to the bottom of the ramp there’s another revelation as you emerge into a 100-seat studio theatre. This is a wonderful amenity with just four problems: a fat brick pillar at each corner of the acting space ensures that every seat has a restricted view. It’s absurd. Next door is a sprawling reception area with chunky marble columns, soaring gold-fringed mirrors, black-leather banquettes and walls decorated with paintings of a pouting David Garrick. If the room had a voice it would scream, ‘Turn me into a gay nightclub now!’
That this hotchpotch of unshapely grottoes and scalene galleries has been turned into a museum at all is a tribute to the ingenuity and imagination of the curators. And, yes, it could be improved in numerous ways but is there a compelling reason not to keep the behemoth as it is? This seems the simplest solution. So what next? I dare say all of us, even the high-profile campaigners, know what’s needed. Not soundbites or photo-ops but cash. A big fat injection of hard currency — and soon.
This tactic has already attracted the support of one influential voice. Sir Donald Sinden told the Times he was outraged the museum was about to close ‘because of a piddling sum of money’. Too right. I’ll hold the pot if he’ll do the piddling. A mere £2.5 million will keep the place running for another year. Such a sum would be beyond the reach of most good causes but the sickly museum is blessed in its supporters. At least a dozen major stars have signed up for the cause, including Kevin Spacey, Peter Bowles, Sheila Hancock, Alex Kingston, Simon Callow, Diana Rigg and every last member of the Redgrave clan. Here’s my suggestion. Let the outspoken celebs all club together and raise half the money between them.
Then let some twinkly-eyed magician (Sir Peter Hall, stop looking the other way) generate the remaining million and a quarter by laying on a Christmas fund-raiser at the Old Vic. Sunday night is the traditional evening for these rumbustious affairs. But who, I hear you cry, will pay the ushers, the hat-checkers and all the bar staff? Why the critics will offer their services for free. At last! A chance to do something useful in a theatre. So come on, you superstars. Stop striking poses in the Times. Do what you’re good at. Get the show on the road.
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