Isn’t it odd how “gender-blind” casting and the not-enough-good-roles-for-women issue still vexes the profession and yet many amateur companies have little choice?

Amateur companies often have a strong pool of very competent women but struggle to cast male roles because fewer men sign up to amdram. I saw, for instance, a rather jolly non-pro Peter Pan (half term panto – good idea)  last week in which John and Michael Darling, most of the pirates and lost boys were played by girls and women. The dame – usually of course played by a man pretending to be a grotesque woman – was played by a woman too which certainly gives pause for thought. There weren’t many men on stage but it all worked to pretty reasonable theatrical effect.

I know too, that amateur companies have to cast their nets quite widely when they’re trying to cast say, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, The Gondoliers, or anything else which really does demand some strong male casting.

And yet, at another level, we’re still told that men dominate the profession to the detriment of talented women so what on earth is going on? Are drama schools getting equal numbers of applicants? Because if they’re not but are recruiting 50/50 (as I know most of them are) then they are presumably not applying  quite the the same  strict criteria to men that they do to women.

The only drama school I know which determinedly recruits on talent, potential and nothing else usually ends up with far more girls than boys – many of them, presumably,  the very ones, who’ve been shining in their local community or youth theatre.

I often see quite weak graduating students in drama school showcases because we are, of course, running too many courses and training far more actors/performers  than the industry needs or can absorb. In a showcase “tail” most will usually be male. That confirms my strong, long held suspicion that some of them were enrolled more for political reasons than for their ability.

And yet … traditionally once they’re out and available for hire male actors find far more roles and opportunities than female ones. There’s something very strange happening here. And it boils down to muddled thinking about casting as well as recruitment to drama school.

Don’t blame Shakespeare, by the way. He was simply writing within the constraints of his day. In 2020, as most productions now acknowledge, there’s no reason why nearly all Shakespeare’s roles can’t be played very successfully by women as anyone who saw Glenda Jackson as Lear or Harriet Walter as Brutus will attest. I’ve also seen women ably playing Banquo, Bottom, Mercutio, Hamlet and lots of others.

Television and film are, possibly, different because we do expect a certain adherence to naturalism and suspend our disbelief less readily. But look at the number of shows which now revolve around women and create wonderful roles for them: Gentleman Jack, Call the Midwife and The Crown to cite just three examples from dozens I could mention.

Yes, these women are there. One of the ways of solving the gender imbalance might be to forget quotas and simply recruit the best. Trouble is, it wouldn’t be long before we were fretting about a shortage of male actors for professional roles. Welcome to Topsy Turvy Land.

Perhaps the time has come to focus on trying to persuade more boys to take part in schools, youth theatres and local companies. A big project in schools nationwide perhaps? “It’s cool to perform”? We need the best – regardless of gender.

Meanwhile, on the face of it,  it seems pretty absurd that talented female actors are abundant at pre-entry level but struggle against (often) less talented males for roles once they hit the industry.

Nobody knows for certain (although several journalists have made rigorous efforts to find out) how the tradition of buying and eating ice cream in theatre intervals began. It’s certainly deeply entrenched now and may be linked to the same tradition in cinemas which has been with us almost since the screen began to flicker.

It’s an odd thing to do, when you think about it. How many of us would – at home – suddenly reach for a pricey junk food sugar fix at nine o’clock in the evening? Well each to her (his) own but it’s the “pricey” bit which has been vexing me lately.

I almost never succumb to the ice cream thing despite usually being in a theatre or concert hall several times each week. In fact it was probably twenty years since I’d bought one. Then – last summer when I was feeling low and it was very hot – I was reviewing at the proms and suddenly fancied one. I am still reeling with indignation and astonishment that my little five minute indulgence cost me £4.50. I won’t bore you with Ancient Briton comments such as that when I was first married I could buy a week’s groceries for that – but I confess it all went through my mind.

Since then I’ve been watching ice cream costs elsewhere – I gave in again last month at Jermyn Street Theatre and paid a much more reasonable £2. My grown up granddaughters wanted to treat me at Cambridge Arts Theatre recently because I’d bought them a pre-show supper. I assured them that it shouldn’t be more than £2.50. They returned with an ice cream for everyone but were annoyed that they’d had to pay £4.00 each.

Such pricing is outrageous. The brand leader is Criterion Ices and they are sold wholesale for £18.53 for eighteen 130ml units That is, please note, JUST OVER ONE POUND PER TUB and I don’t suppose competing brands are very different.  But some theatre managements seem to think it’s OK to chalk up a 300 or 350% profit. The words “rip” and “off” come to mind. Well done Jermyn Street – yes, of course, theatres and venues need to find ways of maximising their income and I suppose ice creams can help with that. 100% profit is reasonable. Any more is extortionate.

On the other hand, I’d rather – as I’ve said before – that tickets were priced according to what the theatre needs to charge to balance the books. I really don’t like added extras (“transaction charges”, “heritage levy” etc) or merchandise sold at obscene prices.

And if we could get to that stage perhaps we could phase out ice cream sales in theatre altogether? They don’t sell them at Unicorn Theatre and that’s a dedicated children’s venue. Perhaps there’s a case for boycotting them elsewhere? I’m tempted to lose a lot of friends by starting a campaign. It really isn’t necessary especially given the so-called obesity crisis and the state of the nation’s teeth. Snacking is not good for any of us – except, perhaps, money grabbing theatre managements.

I’ve been reading play versions of A Christmas Carol – as you do, in February, obviously. And it strikes me that for anyone wanting to programme it for 2020 or 2021, be they professional or amateur, there can never have been such a range of interpretations to choose from.

“When Charles Dickens published his ‘little Christmas book” in 1843 it took just six weeks for the first adaptation to reach the stage” writes Piers Torday in an author’s note to his 2019 adaptation for Wilton’s Music Hall. And Michael Billington notes in a 2017 Guardian review of David Edgar’s version for the RSC that there have been 250 film and stage versions in the last seventy years alone.

Edgar tells me that the ever popular novel has been reworked for each generation across the 176 years since it was written. He regards his, which focuses on the plight of the Cratchits as the “austerity version”

Piers Torday, on the other hand, approached it through his discovery that, although Dickens campaigned for the rights of women, his treatment of his own wife Catherine, mother of his ten children, was shocking by any standards anywhere and at any time. He wrote hideously cruel and unfeeling things about her to his friends in letters and tried to have her committed to an asylum while he enjoyed an affair with Ellen Ternan. And he was writing this fifteen years before 1857 The Married Women’s Property Act decreed that a man no longer acquired everything his wife owned.

Torday’s version which sat very atmospherically in Wilton’s Music Hall, presents Marley and Scrooge as dead brothers-in-law. The business is now in the hands of the misanthropic Fan Scrooge, widow of the former and sister of the latter. It’s a neat way of feminising the whole story and I Ioved her feisty irrascibilty and irritation with the ghost of her husband who haunts her at the beginning.

Of course this wasn’t the first female Scrooge although it went much further than its predecessors. Take the the one directed by Guy Retallack at Bridge House Theatre Penge last Christmas.  My three star thoughts on 28 November for Musical Theatre Review:

“ Rachel Izen plays the reformed curmudgeonly miser as a man. I had assumed that we were going to see Mrs Scrooge which would have been an interesting take on the narrative … but for much of the show’s duration she is unconvincing.”

Another recent version of A Christmas Carol is Jack Thorne’s  for The Old Vic in 2017. It uses a narrator, lots of carols, and a cast of 15 to tell the story without straying too far from the novel. There’s a lot of joy, tradition and “feel good” is this take on the work. It’s frisky but doesn’t run with any sort of agenda of its own – unlike Steven Knight’s recent three episode TV version.

Every inch a relatively scary ghost story (in contrast to most of the stage versions which never forget they’re family Christmas shows, along with everything else)  this leisurely take on a pretty short novel presents a youngish quite personable Scrooge in the shape of Guy Pearce. “As far from Alastair Sim as you could get” writes Knight in the Sunday Times.

See what I mean about choice and flexibility?

Christmas Carol: A Fairy Tale Piers Torday, Nick Hern Books, 2019

 A Christmas Carol:Charles Dickens A new version by Jack Thorne, 2017

 A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, A new version by David Edgar, 2017

 This is an abridged version of an article which appears in the February/March 2020 issue of Sardines Magazine

Are we actually convinced that a perfunctory glance inside the bags of theatre goers is keeping anyone safe? As I’ve said before elsewhere, I keep a sharp knife in mine for apple paring – I’m very fond of apples (“An apple a day … etc”) but have awful teeth. All quite innocent although I suppose I could do someone else quite an injury with it if I were that way inclined. No one at a theatre door has ever noticed said knife.

For that matter evil things don’t have to be in bags – I could easily carry a small gun or other nasty weapon into a theatre in a pocket  strapped under my coat or wedged in my knickers but, of course, there are no body checks in theatres. So let’s just hope that no nutter/terrorist/radical/mentally ill person (choose your term) ever does it.

I am very sceptical about the efficacy of bag checks. And I object to the side effects such as being obliged to arrive at the theatre early and then queueing up outside in the cold or rain. In fact I’m often astonished at how meekly most people comply.

And I object even more to the policy of Cambridge Arts Theatre where I saw a show last week. They don’t check the contents of bags but there are size restrictions with a template on the wall you have to measure your bag against as if you were in an airport. The mistaken implication is, presumably, that you can’t conceal  a knife or gun in a smaller bag. Now, of course, other theatres do this too – National Theatre, for example – although I walk in and out of there frequently, as well as attending shows, but I have never been challenged not even for a “random bag check”.  The FOH house woman at the entrance to the Cambridge Arts auditorium, however, took one look at my handbag – my handbag, for goodness sake – and made me measure it. “That’s just about OK” she said “but if it were any larger you’d have to put it in the cloakroom.”

Right. I never part with my handbag for anyone, anywhere. Even letting go of it for 2 minutes at airport security makes me very twitchy. It contains my notebook, pens, money, cards, tissues, i-Pad, phone, lipstick and so on. It’s almost welded to me.  Of course I’m not going to put it in a cloakroom. And actually, because I wasn’t reviewing or working that night this was one of my smaller bags (see photograph). Well let’s be clear – it wasn’t the fault of the woman talking to me. She was simply enforcing the policy of the misguided management at Cambridge Arts. My grown up granddaughters had a small, neat carrier bag with them and they really weren’t allowed to take it into the auditorium although it would have tucked tidily enough under a seat without causing any problems.

What is the rationale for this? Is it really about terrorism or are they afraid someone might try to smuggle in drinks that they haven’t purchased at one of Cambridge Arts’s pricey bars? Other venues say that “large bags” may not be taken into the theatre. Obviously you have to exercise common sense given narrow rows of seats and access issues but I know nowhere else which exercises a policy as inflexible at this.

We hear a lot these days about people who find theatres alienating, daunting, off-putting and so on. Bag policies – whether it’s inspecting the contents or draconian rules about putting them in cloakrooms –  are not going to help.