There is usually nothing special about central London’s Argyll Street. Tourists file safely in and out of Oxford Street station, shopping bags dangling from overburdened hands.
I felt a little sorry for those who were caught off guard last summer, as the street was choked with punters looking to see Rachel Zegler sing Don’t Cry for Me Argentina like Eva Peron from the balcony of the London Palladium, before the night’s performance Evita. It was some slyly metatheatrical smoke and mirrors from director Jamie Lloyd. Some argued that it reflected Peron’s connection to the Argentine people: I admire the chutzpah of getting paying audiences, some of whom coughed up hundreds, to watch the performance on a screen.
A flurry of opinions celebrating the theater’s revival quickly followed. Were rumors of the death of theater at the hands of shrinking attention spans and streaming services greatly exaggerated?
Now, box office numbers paint an even more optimistic picture. The West End set a record 17.6 million theatergoers last year, beating Broadway by almost five million. Tax incentives and relatively low costs make London more attractive to manufacturers.
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Record walking moments and emotions are a measure of health. But the quality and originality of the shows that are produced is different. Look closer and things are not so happy. A West End that needs a Hollywood face on the poster to fill its seats is not a strong artistic ecosystem. Of course, the audience numbers are in bad shape, but whether the industry has lost its artistic ingenuity is another question. Gertrude in Hamlet sums it up best: “More matter and less art.”
The balance between popular appeal and artistic risk is always precarious. But theater’s post-Covid recovery has included a tilt toward commercial kitsch. Foreign things, The devil wears Prada AND Paddington there are only three of the big ones currently packing rooms in the West End. And now apparently there’s a stage version of it The traitors at work! It’s hard to imagine a bigger money grab.
Not all adaptations are cynical. The productions of Atonement, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Hamnet, Beauty Line, One flew over the cuckoo’s nest offer something for the thinking theatergoer. Excuse me prime minister, Fawlty TowersAND Only fools and horses something for the golden oldies. But they take away an opportunity for new voices and new writing.
Celebrity casting is nothing new to the theater. And some famous actors are famous precisely because they’re extremely talented: I’d probably pay to watch Bryan Cranston cut his nails for three hours, let alone star in a movie. All My Sons. But star casting seems to have become the only way to produce anything. Investors need security, and a bank name offers guaranteed popularity, or at least a hope of it.
The artistic pipeline is drowning in silence. Nadine Rennie, co-chair of the Casting Directors Guild, has warned that celebrity casting is killing the theater industry, arguing that an over-reliance on household names reduces audiences’ appetite for unknown works and emerging writers.
Playwrights are moving to television, where budgets and audiences are much larger. Jack Thorne cut his teeth at West London’s Bush Theater before becoming the writing force behind hits such as leather, This is England and major budget adjustments of His Dark Materials AND lord of the flies. suspect Adolescence it could have ignited a nationwide conversation from the scene, available only to an audience limited by geography and price.
TV is also luring actors away from the stage. Saturday Night Live UKThe success of ‘si owes much to the theater scene, having assembled a rough and ready cast of relative unknowns with serious stage backgrounds. George Fouracres had an established career at the Globe, while Hammed Animashaun is a National Theater regular who earned an Olivier nomination for last year Dealer’s choice revival. There are flickers of hope. Mark Rosenblatt’s debut game Giant about Roald Dahl’s anti-Semitism, although tempered by the prestige of director Nicholas Hytner and stars Elliott Levey and John Lithgow, attacked last year’s Olivier Awards. The Broadway transfer has been rightly recognized with a slew of Tony nominations. But a more powerful example is that of Ava Pickett 1536a new story from an unknown young writer already dubbed “the Charli XCX of young playwrights” by Baz Luhrmann of all people. Unsatisfied by celebrity casting, it has found its audience on its own terms. Transferring from the Almeida to the Ambassadors Theater in the West End, it didn’t need an established name to sell it. Just strong reviews and stronger words from the adoring audience.
(Further reading: The best theater to see in 2026)
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