Where Are London’s Playwrights?

Playwrights are all but invisible in London’s West End. Now it takes celebrities to sell anything. “The author is dead in the West End. Particularly, as it were, the living author. In a talk at the Edinburgh book festival on Monday, Alan Ayckbourn railed against the dominance of celebrities – picking out Madonna and Ewan McGregor for particular bile – in theatreland, and the now near-impossibility of staging good plays with decent actors, without a Matthew Perry or a Jason Priestley to jolly the whole thing along.”