Catch the ones that got away

Your production of an early Ibsen above a Camden pub was a sell- out success, you've got a handful of rave reviews, your last-night party was wild, but when you wake up the next morning, what happens? Nothing. Small-scale theatre works within a system of brutal equality which pays no heed to the laws of natural selection. Among the hundreds of mediocre productions staged year round, the shows that are very good quickly sell out but then disappear, just like all the dross. With small-scale rents ranging from pounds 500 to pounds 2,000 a week, it's rare that anyone can afford to remount a successful fringe production.

The one recourse an under-funded company may have to a little life-giving publicity is through reviews, but with 20-odd shows opening each week in London alone, creeping conservatism sets in. Newspapers cannot afford to send critics to everything in the hope of picking up the neglected gems, so they tend to opt for the safest bets.

Tom Morris, a former critic-turned-artistic director at BAC, is well aware of this predicament, and has organised a recurring season of small- scale transfers called "I Wish I'd Seen That", sponsored by Time Out. The first season, last year, pleased audiences, companies and BAC and the second is currently under way.

"After a production has had an initial success, the gamble is less risky. And it's shameful that the best new work is not protected beyond its first run," he says, identifying a more general issue in arts funding. "There's been a productive emphasis on funding new work over the past 10 years. But the definition of what `new' means has been rather narrow. It's not just a question of getting it on in the first place, but allowing it to survive and be seen by as wide an audience as possible."

One of the productions in the first season of "I Wish I'd Seen That", Jack Shepard's Chasing the Moment first seen at the Southwark Playhouse, is now on tour in Israel. Meanwhile, Alison Brown's production of A Doll's House, which transferred from the Etcetera Theatre, is packing them in at BAC.

The Criterion Theatre in Piccadilly is geared to a similar idea, though with 600 seats to fill and a commercial management, it has to be confident of its target audience. This accounts for its success with Kevin Elyot's My Night With Reg, which transferred from the Royal Court Upstairs. In a venue the size of the Upstairs Theatre, the entire run could not have been attended by more than 1,200 people.

A receiving theatre must also take into account how the transfer to a proscenium arch space will affect a production designed for a studio theatre. Though 1995 saw several surprising West End transfers of small-scale productions (in Killer Joe and Trainspotting, both from the Bush), this new context was not always flattering to the work. The Sunday Times's critic rhapsodised over Trainspotting in the intimacy of the Bush but vilified it at the Ambassadors.

For Tom Morris at BAC, no such considerations apply as the shows transfer into a comparable space, which gives him greater freedom. "For `I Wish I'd Seen That' there is no stylistic criterion. The work is simply the best, new, small-scale work in London, so you do find Ibsen alongside a frenetic, physical one-man show about being a Chinese Singaporean in London [Ivan Heng's Journey West]. If it turned out that all the best were productions of Shakespeare, then we'd put them on." As it turns out, the work in "I Wish I'd Seen That" reminds us of all that is best about small-scale theatre: its exuberant diversity.

n BAC is hosting the `I Wish I'd Seen That' season. For further details call 0171-223 2223

CLARE BAYLEY