We’re allowed to book a holiday, but theatres are still closed. How patient are performers expected to be?

Well this is confusing isn’t it? Thanks to new proposed “air bridges”, as long as face masks are worn, hundreds of people will be allowed to travel on a plane together for several hours in a confined space with just two communal lavatories, and yet our theatres remain closed. Not closed entirely, but closed for the purpose for which they were built: watching live entertainment.

Last week, arts minister Oliver “Dowdy” (spot the deliberate spelling mistake) unveiled his cunning five-point manifesto to get shows back on the boards. He might as well have scribbled it in biro on the back of a fag packet. Dowden’s useless “plan” contained no actual opening dates and no update on the cash rescue package that was promised back in early June. While other countries have put their hands in their pockets, hundreds of thousands of us involved in the performing arts in the UK are sitting at home feeling increasingly desperate.

Here’s a fact: no one loves a luvvie and, at the height of the pandemic, it was uncomfortable to talk about anything that wasn’t a simple matter of life and death. So many of us put up and shut up – especially those lucky enough to have savings and other work on the side. After all, all what right did we have to whinge when people were dying?

Now, even though we seem to be over the worst of it and lots of business are getting back to normal, huge numbers of people in the entertainment industry are continuing to be phenomenally patient, holding their nerve while it becomes increasingly apparent that we will be the last ones back to work. And while we wait theatres are beginning to topple, and redundancies are being announced.

What are we actually waiting for?

When lockdown was first announced, I naively visualised it as a temporary magic spell, a kind of Sleeping Beauty scenario, and I genuinely believed that, when this was “all over”, a wand would be waved and theatres would magically come alive again, the chorus back in their costumes, the orchestra in it’s pit and the audience in their seats. As we all know now, this isn’t the reality. Instead, around 200,000 people are without work and wages.

Sometimes the enormity of this situation is too much for me to get my head around and I push it to the back of my mind. After all I’m 60, and I’m lucky: I have performed all over the world, I have almost 40 years’ worth of gig memories to keep me going, and if my live performing career should end now then at least I’ve had my turn. But even I know this isn’t just about me, and one of the benefits of having been around the touring block so many times is that I am very aware of how theatre props up so many other things in a community.

For starters, who will fill the West End restaurants if there are no big shows and coach party musicals? Ditto all the pasta joints in the provinces. I cant tell you how many times I haven’t been able to get a pre-show table at any decent restaurant chain when we were on the road with the Grumpy Old Women shows. From 6pm to curtain up, any restaurant within walking distance of a provincial venue would be heaving with middle-aged women clutching Groupon vouchers.

It’s nothing to be particularly proud of, but I once did a show at the gorgeous little Rose Theatre in Kingston and afterwards the catering manager came round personally to congratulate me on the evening’s bar takings. Apparently they’d sold more wine that night than during a whole week of Christmas panto performances. Go menopausal ladies, with our chardonnay habits!

What I’m trying to say is that we oil each others wheels. Theatres create a footfall, which sells meals – hell, it even sells lipstick. How many of us have stopped making that little bit of an extra effort now that there’s nowhere special to go? As for the fashion industry, I’ve barely bought anything new over the past few months; apart from not having any real disposable income, what’s the point? The only thing I’ve worn out during lockdown is my pyjamas.

I’ve just finished reading Maggie O Farrell’s Hamnet, a heart-bruising tale of Shakespeare’s wife and the loss of their 11-year-old twin son from the plague. Back then, when the plague hit London, all the theatres closed and shows were performed outdoors. This is always an option, but as someone who knows the misery of performing in pissing rain we can’t rely on keeping the entire industry going by moving it outside. Not when today’s punters, unlike Shakespeare’s first audiences, have the option of staying indoors and watching Netflix instead.

Fingers crossed our theatres will survive. People will always want stories, and live is best and indoors is better. Indoors with loos and a fully-stocked bar is the best of all. But only the government can save us.

Break a leg everyone.

Jenny Eclair’s new book, ‘Older and Wider: A survivors guide to the menopause’, is out this week