13 years ago Jonathan Church brought 42nd Street to Chichester Festival Theatre during his time as artistic director there.
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00 Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers.
00:06 A very, very familiar face in front of me, Jonathan Church, for 10 years, Festival Theatre,
00:11 just Festival Theatre Artistic Director. Now Jonathan, with this time you're on the road
00:16 with a production of 42nd Street, which is a musical, which is very, very dear to you, isn't it?
00:21 And it's coming to the Mayflower in Southampton. What makes it a special show for you, 42nd Street?
00:27 Partly it's history. We did a production in Chichester, which led me to want to make
00:33 a big touring production that the rest of England and the UK could celebrate.
00:40 And it's just one of those musicals that has everything I like in musicals,
00:46 you know, great songs, great book, but most importantly, the most extraordinary dance sequences.
00:53 You know, you sort of feel when people have seen the show, they literally want to dance off
00:59 down the street, having seen the show.
01:02 Yeah, and you say that, and I think that's probably what I remember most from, was it 10, 11 years ago?
01:07 Scary, a long time ago in Chichester, but it was just so beautiful to look at,
01:10 just enjoying those patterns on the stage. And that you can do on, are there bigger theatres you're going to?
01:16 Certainly bigger in terms of capacity.
01:19 Well, the Mayflower is definitely bigger. It's one of my favourite theatres.
01:24 Is it right? What makes it so?
01:26 I've spent, you'd laugh, so many of the big shows I've seen over the years,
01:31 I've seen at the Mayflower. From my early pantomime going days, when I was running Salisbury,
01:37 I used to go down to the Mayflower and see, you know, those kind of legends of pantomime down there.
01:44 I remember Brian Condley, Danny LaRue, John Inman even down there.
01:52 So it was, you know, it was always the place you went for a big event.
01:56 And a lot of those big touring musicals, that was because I was in Salisbury.
02:01 I went, you know, I went to see them, gosh, 25, 30 years ago.
02:05 So it became the home of event theatre for me.
02:10 And, but yeah, we're doing a whole range of theatres. I think the Mayflower is one of the biggest,
02:16 but we, you know, we squeeze into some more kind of conventional prosceniums as well.
02:24 But we've got a set that's very clever that will expand, contract.
02:27 And we also, you know, we started at Sadler's Wells, which is, you can't get much bigger than that.
02:33 And we go abroad to Toronto for Christmas.
02:36 Oh, wow. And you'll be going across there?
02:39 Yeah, looking forward to Toronto in the snow.
02:42 Oh, fantastic. Brilliant. That sounds lovely.
02:45 And it's at the Mayflower in October, isn't it? The start of October.
02:50 And you and I chatted a lot during the pandemic about ways theatre might change,
02:54 what the pandemic would do to the theatre and just in what ways the theatre would survive.
02:59 Are we in a pretty good place with the theatre now nationally, do you think?
03:02 I think we are in a good place. I think, you know, we talked about this.
03:06 One of the things, and I hope 42nd Street falls smack bang into this.
03:11 One of the things we felt is people wanted a good time coming out of the pandemic.
03:16 You know, some of the tougher titles and the harder, you know,
03:22 I think will always be valuable and always be necessary in the repertoire.
03:25 But post that period of lockdown and tough times for everybody,
03:31 that celebration was one of the things people really wanted from the theatre.
03:35 And so, you know, singing in the rain last year, 42nd Street this year,
03:39 feels like we've hit the sweet spot in terms of what audiences want.
03:44 Fantastic. Well, as always, really lovely to speak to you.
03:48 Good luck with everything and let's catch up on the next show. Thank you.
03:51 Thanks, Phil.
03:52 [BLANK_AUDIO]