New, Strange and Different

I refer, of course, to the world of West End musicals. Of course.

I've spent the last two Friday nights in the magical land of showbiz.

Astonishing.

I saw We Will Rock You and Mamma Mia, (research purposes, see, because - oh, just research purposes, ok?) and encountered a whole world I HAD NO IDEA EXISTED. As a TV writer the audience I write for largely consists of me - the notion of trying to second guess what 6 million people might fancy watching is beyond me, and anyway I never meet them. If I wanted to I'd have to wander round the streets while the show was being broadcast, knock on doors, introduce myself and ask how they think it's going. Going on past experience they'd probably say 'never watch telly, me' and slam the door in my face even as I picked up the sound of the final credits music drifting from the sitting room.*

Firstly, the audiences - amazingly diverse. Lots of tourists, ages from 14 to 95, all regions of the UK (including at least one coach party from Huddersfield, if my ear for accents is as keen as like to believe).

Secondly, the enthusiasm. The bristling excitement in the lobby, the packed auditorium, the applause that followed every single song, the little neon tubes waving in the glittering darkness of the auditorium, the standing ovation... a great collective experience.

Thirdly, the professionalism and talents of musicians and supporting dancers and singers.

Fourthly, in the case of We Will Rock You, just how entirely it failed as drama. And I mean just jaw-droppingly DREADFUL, worse than amateur panto**. Using a 'nudge nudge we all know this is ridiculous but isn't it an hilarious laugh ooh how ironic' style to justify the limpest dialogue and least effectively structured narrative piece I've ever seen (how can you botch the ending? With all those singers, dancers, costumes, flashing screens, swivelling runways, and upliftingly bombastic rahk, HOW CAN YOU BOTCH THE ENDING?!), it ended up like the most expensive sketch ever performed by 'The Young Generation'***. Which may have been its intention, because...

Fifthly - its audience loved it. LOVED it. Cheered and cheered and left the theatre with shiny excited faces.

Mamma Mia was MUCH better - really well crafted, genuinely funny and even touching in places. This is partly to do with the fact that the Abba catalogue are all about love, the losing of it, and the encroaching bitterness that comes with break-up, whereas Queen songs are about - well, nothing much - but mainly to do with a well-made dramatic structure and a genuine attempt to mine the drama of the songs and build on it.

My main reaction was shock - I have no idea how to reach that audience. I just don't get it. And the audience is vast, and shelling out massive sums, but I just wouldn't know how to give them something that would please them. Which is my problem, not theirs.

TV is a small and self-important world. One audience in a vast, shifting, fractured world of audiences that are going to be fracturing, shifting, and reconstituting at an accelerating pace as we finally move into the digital age.

Write for an audience you think you've identified, or write for yourself and see if they find you? You decide.



*Or I could do something like this blog and hope they might write in with constructive criticism, in order that I might fulminate with rage about how people JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND MY MASTERFUL INTENTIONS. And let's face it, people who write and read blogs are a bit weird and probably don't indicate the feelings of the majority of the audience. Yes you are. You know you are.

** Amateur panto can be brilliant even it's badly written, because you know that everybody else know that Buttons (teaches RE at the local secondary), is getting off with the Second Ugly Sister (works behind the counter at the chemists in the high street).

***That explains a lot.