Heavy meal... Breakfast with Mugabe at the Soho Theatre, London. Photograph: Tristram Kenton
With theatre, it's either feast or famine. I'm told that tickets for the RSC's Antony and Cleopatra at The Swan in Stratford-on-Avon are selling on e-Bay for £250, writes Michael Billington. Meanwhile the same company's Breakfast With Mugabe closes at the Duchess in London this Saturday after a three-week run. So what does this tell us?
Obviously, that the public likes star names in classic plays. Antony and Cleo has everything going for it. Patrick Stewart and Harriet Walter as the ageing lovers. Rave reviews all round. And a play that is part of the national folk memory.
Meanwhile Breakfast With Mugabe is a new play by Fraser Grace dealing with present-day Zimbabwe: in particular the colonial context from which Mugabe's corrupt regime emerged. I admired the play's complexity but it clearly never stood much commercial chance: although excellently directed by Antony Sher, it boasts no big stars and African politics, sadly, doesn't sell tickets.
But the contrast between Antony and Cleo and the Mugabe play proves something else: that theatrical success is all about horses for courses. Gregory Doran's production of Antony and Cleopatra fits perfectly in The Swan: instead of lavish Cecil B DeMillery, the emphasis is on the emotional intimacy of Shakespeare's epic. It's the right play in the right space.
However Breakfast With Mugabe, which sold out at the Soho Theatre, clearly lost its natural audience when it moved into the West End. Cost may have a lot to do with it: a top price of £15 or £20 at the Soho became £35 when the show transferred. But there's also a psychological barrier which means that the kind of young audience you find at the Soho seems scared off by the very idea of the West End.
Behind all this lies an even bigger dilemma: how do you ensure that enough people get into a hit show like Antony and Cleopatra? Its artistic impact depends on the fact it plays in a relatively small theatre; yet that also limits the numbers who can see it. Clearly the show will have a long life: there is already talk of a London run and an international tour. But the RSC has still not found the ideal London base to which to transfer its Swan hits: the Playhouse and the Trafalgar Studios have both been tried but neither remotely matches the neo-Jacobean charm of the Stratford venue.
In one way, of course, it's good to find a Shakespeare play creating the kind of buzz normally associated with a Madonna concert. But how will enough people get to see it? Televising it is the obvious answer: even the BBC, which seems to loathe Shakespeare except in its own adaptations, might for once step in. In the meantime, in the few days left, I'd recommend seeking out Breakfast With Mugabe. It may not be a smasheroo like Antony and Cleo. But it reminds us of the way colonial arrogance breeds its own revenge. Which is an idea that Shakespeare himself perfectly understood.
