THE BBC4 THAT WE LOVE BUT DON'T KNOW
At least one crisis at BBC4 has turned out to be a false alarm. Roly Keating was not, as reported, "moved" from his post as controller of Four. It is true that he is now working for the taskforce which will make the case for renewal of the BBC's charter in 2006. But, in fact, he took up this "exciting" job of his own accord. Some folk in the corporation even believe that helping to win the argument over the licence fee would aid Keating's longer term dreams of director generalship. In the meantime, he is still at his BBC4 desk one day a week, overseeing the world of high-minded telly, and will return to the job full time in the autumn.
Another crisis, though, is real enough. More than a year after it was born, BBC4 is getting average audience figures of 31,000. A couple of shows a week break 100,000, but it's not a cheerful picture for those Prospect-reading types who were hoping for a new television era of Dennis Potters, Omnibuses and Reithian seriousness. Although over 40 per cent of British homes have invested in the new equipment, clearly not enough of those Prospect readers have gone digital, so can't watch BBC4 even if they want to. In this sense, the channel is a sleeper organisation, waiting for us to catch up with it. Four's mantra is often muttered: "People who watch it love it, but not enough people are watching it."
This creates a dilemma for the very charter that Roly Keating is hoping to persuade the government to renew. In March, BBC4 picked up two awards from the Royal Television Society for shows which must have been good, even though not many people watched them. If the channel is producing great high-brow fare, why isn't it going out on terrestrial, to nourish the rest of the nation? Keating says this is answered by the new "BBC4 zone" on BBC2, where the best digital programmes also get terrestrial showings. The first batch of these documentaries (about autism, racing cars, war-time Guernsey and apes) has recently been aired. Such items will continue twice-weekly in late-night slots. For people who like the idea of the channel but haven't yet got the technology, Keating says it'll take five years before Four starts to punch its weight. Its budget is a modest but functional ?30m, which Keating says will stay put. And, if you like the idea of a serious, publicly-funded digital channel, it'll be to your advantage that the man now working on overall BBC spin is also running the channel.
POSTWAR ARTISTS
In previous wars there has usually been an artist not far from the front line. But there is no plan for an official war artist to go to Iraq. With nearly 1,000 journalists covering the conflict, there is little need for a chap with a palette. The Imperial War Museum, which is responsible for choosing war artists, is increasingly cautious about sending artists into dangerous zones. Peter Howson, posted to Bosnia, "went off his rocker" after being caught up in skirmishes, and suffered a nervous breakdown. Better to be postwar artists, like Ben Langlands and Nikki Bell, who were sent to Afghanistan long after the main fighting was over. Even then, however, the duo nearly stepped on a mine while taking photographs, only noticing it was there when they developed the images.
MATRIX THEORY
Fans of sci-fi blockbuster "The Matrix" don't need to wait for the release of the sequel "Reloaded" to find out if the world is real or not?the film-makers have roped in actual philosophers to untangle the movie's knot of epistemological brain-teasers. On the Matrix website you can find essays by the likes of philosopher of mind Colin McGinn, who tackles the category distinction between imagination and perception. Rachel Wagner examines the film's use of Buddhist ideas of nirvana, suggesting that the focus on individual attempts to achieve enlightenment in The Matrix alludes to the Theravada ideal of the arhat. And cybernetics professor Kevin Warwick (who himself wants to be a robot and has inserted a 100-pin electronic port in his body) recommends we "get into a future in which we can be part of a Matrix system" (though Warwick is oddly in disagreement with the film's heroes, whose quest is precisely to get back to human reality). And if you don't believe in the internet, there's a book: Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy and Religion in The Matrix (Benbella Books).
TOBY LITT'S ALPHABET
One of Granta's best young British novelists, Toby Litt, has revealed the influence on his writing of his early career as a bookshop assistant. Sorting titles one day, it struck Litt that it would be clever to write books that could be arranged on the shelf alphabetically and chronologically at the same time. Litt has slyly carried out his idea. His books have been entitled, in order, "Adventures in Capitalism", "Beatniks", "Corpsing", "Deadkidsongs" and "Exhibitionism". Moreover, both his collections of short stories (the first and fifth books) begin with vowels?another pattern? Litt's new novel is called Finding Myself. We will be impressed when he gets round to his 26th book, to be entitled (surely?) Zimmerframed.
VAT-FREE CULTURE
Directors of museums, theatres and orchestras are sweatily anticipating a legal decision on VAT. The Zoological Society of London last year won a European Court of Justice ruling over HM Customs' interpretation of legislation that exempts cultural services from paying VAT on income (often admission charges). The ZSL and Customs are expected to settle soon; London Zoo is due to get back a whopping ?30-40m in VAT overpaid since 1990. Other non-profit cultural institutions could then win back many times that amount.
Theatre preview: OFF-WEST END
This May, the pressure will be on the Almeida theatre's new artistic director, Michael Attenborough, to prove that he can pull off the kind of risks for which his predecessors Jonathan Kent and Ian McDiarmid were rightly celebrated. Attenborough has been bequeathed a theatre restored at a cost of ?7.6m, and on the 8th he will be lowered into the crocodile pit of the national press's critics when Trevor Nunn's production of Ibsen's "The Lady From The Sea" opens the newly renovated Islington theatre.
The need for risk-taking in the British theatre is urgent, and Attenborough is in the right place for it. He is running an institution which exists in that ambiguous bracket known as off-west end: a conceptual rather than a geographical term which describes theatres with a far greater punching power than the average fringe venue (the Tricycle, the Bush, the Soho, the Battersea Arts Centre) yet whose intimacy allows their artistic policies to stay freer of commercial demands than the west end.
Inevitably, off-west end venues prove to be the sum of their artistic directors, and this year three new candidates at the Donmar, the Almeida and the Hampstead theatre will be striving to prove that they can carve a distinctive repertoire which will continue to mark them as necessary stop-offs on the adventurous theatregoer's map. The west end's flabbily safe musical and light-comedy-led repertoire is now at its worst for decades, dwindling into neon-lit irrelevance. This is the moment for off-west end to take its chances.
What does theatrical risk mean in the 21st century? Outgoing artistic director of Hampstead theatre Jenny Topper certainly suffered when she opened her gleaming new National Lottery-assisted ?15.7m building this February with a devised piece by the multimedia theatre company Station House Opera, part of a "creative" tour of the building which was derided by the "Observer's" Susannah Clapp as "apparently designed for nursery-school pupils."
Topper's architectural legacy to her successor, Anthony Clark, is an undoubtedly fine achievement, but while the Hampstead Theatre has had hits such as Charlotte Eilenberg's The Lucky Ones, all too often its repertoire has come across as middlebrow and wearyingly unadventurous. New writing has formed a significant proportion of its output, but it is not enough to champion emerging playwrights if they are not prepared to push the limits of their medium.
Sometimes, as both Sam Mendes and his successor Michael Grandage have repeatedly found at the Donmar, impact can be achieved by breathing new life into a classic. Who would have thought that a twinned season of "Twelfth Night" and "Uncle Vanya" was going to be the undisputed critical hit of 2002, or that Kent and McDiarmid's decision at the Almeida to put on Chekhov's little-staged, four-hour-long "Platonov" would result in several unforgettable theatrical moments, such as the scene when a steam train seemed-with clever use of sound-to explode from the stage and run straight through the audience?
The point is not to privilege either new writing or classics., but for artistic directors to sustain a personal vision without bowing to either the trendy or the traditional. Despite lavish alterations to its foyer, dressing room and bar areas, the essential space between performers and the audience in the Almeida remains the same. A shiny building is a good badge, but the mark of success in off-west end theatres will come down to directorial independence.
Rachel Halliburton
UNDER THE RADAR Low frequency listings
Jasmin Vardimon's Lullaby, a dance piece about sickness, premieres at Herzog & De Meuron's pink, slinky new Laban Centre, London, from 24th April.
Stravinsky's Faustian sliver, The Soldier's Tale, plays alongside Darius Milhaud's rarely-seen The Poor Sailor in an operatic double bill directed by Wally Sutcliffe at BAC, London, from 20th May.
A disused corner shop at 220 Upper Tooting Road, London, is the venue for Theatre-rites' magical new puppetry installation, Shopworks, from 1st May.
Billed as a cross between An Inspector Calls and The League of Gentlemen, The Man Next Door is the latest offering from anarchic clown troupe Hoipolloi, at Northampton's Royal Theatre, from 25th April.
Inventive early music singers I Fagiolini ("the little beans") join a trio of mimes to perform Orazio Vecchi's medieval madrigal comedy L'Amfiparnaso at George's Church, Brighton, on 15th May.
Following her elliptical quest book, Rodinsky's Room, Rachel Lichtenstein has been collaborating with photographer Lola Flash on Keeping Pace: Older Women of the East End, at The Women's Library, London from 22nd May.
