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      For U.K. Bands, Touring Europe Is Now a Highway to Brexit Hell

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      It’s not just that musicians need visas. Band merchandise is now a complicated export, and most tour vans are only allowed to make three stops.LONDON — When the British rock band Two Door Cinema Club began playing shows across Europe a decade ago, the group’s three members would jump in a van, throw their instruments in the back and drive from their then hometown, Belfast, Northern Ireland, to sweaty clubs in Amsterdam, Berlin, and Paris.“We did that hundreds of times,” Kevin Baird, the group’s bassist, said recently by phone. “Everything was at a moment’s notice,” he added.Now, it’s not so simple for Two Door Cinema Club — or any British act — to tour Europe. Last Friday, the band headlined the Cruïlla music festival in Barcelona, Spain, playing to an audience of 25,000 screaming fans. But because of Britain’s 2020 departure from the European Union, known as Brexit, the band spent weeks beforehand applying for visas and immersing themselves in complicated new rules around trucking and exporting merchandise like T-shirts.Visas and travel within Britain to apply for them cost 7,500 pounds, about $10,400, for the band, two extra musicians, and an eight-person crew, Baird said. New rules mean that a British tour van carrying audio and lighting equipment, or merchandise, can only make three stops in mainland Europe before it must return home.Before Britain left the E.U., Two Door Cinema Club would head off on tour at a moment’s notice. Samuel Aranda for The New York Times“It’s proved a headache when there was never a headache before,” Baird said. “If we were a band starting out, we wouldn’t have done it,” he added.For much of this year, Brexit has been an even bigger talking point in Britain’s music industry than the coronavirus pandemic. Since Jan. 1, when a trade deal between Britain and the European Union came into force, hundreds of British musicians — including Dua Lipa and Radiohead — have complained that the deal makes touring the continent more costly for stadium acts, and almost impossible for new bands.The new rules are “a looming catastrophe” for young musicians, Elton John wrote on Instagram in June. “This is about whether one of the U.K.’s most successful industries, worth £111 billion a year, is allowed to prosper and contribute hugely to both our cultural and economic wealth, or crash and burn,” he added.Even musicians who supported Brexit have complained. Bruce Dickinson, the lead singer of Iron Maiden, told a TV interviewer in June that, although he welcomed Britain’s departure from the European Union, he found the new rules unreasonable. He then addressed Britain’s government: “Get your act together,” he said.The furor over the regulations has led to a blame game between Britain’s government and the European Union over which side is responsible for the new barriers, and who made viable offers when negotiating the trade deal.Regardless of who is responsible, the issue has become an embarrassment for the British government. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said his government is working “flat out” on the issue. “We must fix this,” he told lawmakers in March.Yet so far, there hasn’t been enough progress to appease musicians. In June, Britain agreed to new trade deals that the government said would allow musicians to tour easily in Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein. This was met with disdain: “Ah those infamous tours of mountainous Liechtenstein with its total lack of airport,” Simone Marie of the band Primal Scream wrote on Twitter.“We’re all becoming increasingly despondent,” said Annabella Coldrick, the chief executive of the Music Managers Forum, a trade body. In June, she helped launch Let the Music Move, a campaign for the government to compensate artists for the new extra costs and renegotiate the tour rules.Rebecca Swann drove her truck from Britain to Spain, carrying the band’s equipment.Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesThe band’s equipment, which now can make only three stops in mainland Europe before it must return home.Samuel Aranda for The New York Times“The problems are only just starting to become clear,” as the coronavirus pandemic eases and bands start booking tours, Coldrick said. The biggest sticking point was the regulation that vans and trucks can only stop three times before they must return to Britain, she added.Several British music trucking businesses have already moved some of their operations to Ireland to get around the rules. But Coldrick said this was not a viable solution: Trucks would also have to make longer journeys to pick bands up, increasing costs. It also seemed like a poor outcome for Britain, she said, because the country was losing companies and workers.For Two Door Cinema Club, the main issue was visas, said Colin Schaverien, the band’s manager. In June, a member of the band’s crew was rejected for a visa on a technicality related to his job title, so he had to reapply. Another band member, based in Belfast, was told they had to fly to Scotland for a visa appointment.Despite the band’s problems before traveling to Spain, Two Door Cinema Club’s show last Friday went off without a hitch.“All the things we were worried about didn’t materialize,” said Baird, the bassist. The band’s equipment, traveling in a truck from London, cleared customs on the British side in 25 minutes; checks at the border in France took only 10. The band, whose members flew to Barcelona, had no problems at the airport.Once in, the group was so excited to be playing a show after months sitting at home during the coronavirus pandemic, they took selfies of every moment, Baird said.Fans, mostly in face masks, enjoying Two Door Cinema Club’s show at the music festival.Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesThe crowd was equally excited, said Marc Loan, 36, a fan who was in the audience. “I made sure I didn’t drink much, so I didn’t have to miss anything,” he added.“It was amazing,” Baird said of the night.Brexit was the last thing on his mind during the gig, Baird added, but it reared its head the next day when the band and crew headed to the airport to fly home. Members of the group with Irish passports, which everyone born in Northern Ireland can hold as well as a British one, breezed through passport control; those with British passports were stuck in line for only an hour.The band was pleased with the trip but Baird was worried about how a more complicated schedule would work. “We’re all well aware this was a one-off concert,” he said. “What we’re apprehensive about is next year when we’re playing three different countries in three days. I expect that will be a lot harder.” More

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      17 New York Arts Organizations Are Among Those Receiving $30 Million

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      The Queens Museum, Harlem Stage and 44 other groups were chosen to receive aid from Bloomberg Philanthropies for digital innovation.The Queens Museum is among 46 cultural nonprofit organizations selected for a new $30 million program by Bloomberg Philanthropies that is intended to support improving technology at the groups and helping them stabilize and thrive in the wake of the pandemic. A Bloomberg Tech Fellow is being appointed at each organization, the philanthropies announced Tuesday.Heryte Tequame, assistant director of communications and digital projects at the museum, was chosen as its fellow in what is known as the Digital Accelerator program and will be in charge of developing a digital project of her choice. In an interview she said that in 2020, the museum “realized where we needed to expand our capacity and invest more.”“I think now we’re really taking the time to see what we can do that has longevity,” Tequame said. “And not just being responsive, but really being proactive and having a real future-facing strategy.”The organizations don’t know exactly how much of the $30 million each will receive yet, but Tequame said she wants to use at least some of it on the museum’s permanent collection.Another recipient, Harlem Stage, selected Deirdre May, senior director of digital content and marketing, as its tech fellow.That performing arts center — which largely focuses on artists of color — aims to use the assistance in part to increase accessibility, Patricia Cruz, its chief executive and artistic director, said in an interview. “People who cannot leave their homes, for example, would be able to see some of the finest artistic performances that could be made,” Cruz said, because “that’s the core of what we do.”The 46 organizations selected for the program include nonprofits in the United States and Britain. Among them are 26 in the United States, and 17 of those are in New York City, including the Apollo Theater, the Ghetto Film School and the Tenement Museum. The chief executive of Bloomberg Philanthropies, Patricia E. Harris, said in a statement that when the pandemic hit, cultural organizations had to get creative to keep their (virtual) doors open.“Now we’re excited to launch the Accelerator program to help more arts organizations sustain innovations and investments,” Harris said, “and strengthen tech and management practices that are key to their long-term success.”As Cruz from Harlem Stage put it, “We’re ready to be accelerated.” More

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      Andrew Lloyd Webber’s New Act: Activism

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      LONDON — Andrew Lloyd Webber, 73, has for decades been a household name in Britain for his flamboyant, quasi-operatic musicals. Now, he’s becoming known for something more unexpected: activism.For over a year now, Lloyd Webber — who redefined musical theater with shows like “The Phantom of the Opera” and “Cats,” and served for years in the House of Lords — has been harassing Britain’s conservative government to get theaters open at full capacity, at times making scientifically questionable claims along the way.This June alone, he made newspaper front pages here after pledging to open his new “Cinderella” musical “come hell or high water” — even if he faced arrest for doing so. (He quickly pulled back from the plan after learning his audience, cast and crew risked fines, too.)He went on to reject an offer from Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain that would have let him do a trial opening of “Cinderella” without restrictions because it left other theaters in the lurch; take part in legal action against the government demanding it release results of research into whether coronavirus spread at cultural events; and to tell an interviewer he regretted caucusing with Britain’s Conservative Party when in the House of Lords because the party was now failing to support the arts and commercial theater.“The way he’s done it is like something out of his musicals — it’s loud, it’s over the top,” said Arifa Akbar, the chief theater critic for The Guardian newspaper.A scene from Lloyd Webber’s new musical “Cinderella,” which is now playing to reduced capacity audiences, despite his wishes.Tristram KentonJames Graham, a leading playwright (whose “Ink” played Broadway in 2019) said approvingly that Lloyd Webber had become “a big thorn in the government’s side.”Theater has been one of the industries hit hardest by the pandemic. In New York, most Broadway theaters do not plan to reopen until September. In England, theaters have been allowed to open with socially distanced and masked audiences for brief periods, with the West End most recently reopening on May 17.But Lloyd Webber has, impatiently at times, urged the government to provide clarity on when theaters can reopen at full capacity, complaining that they were forced to remain shut or enforce restrictions far longer than other businesses.Now the government seems to be giving him the clarity he sought: it plans to lift most remaining restrictions on July 19.“I never wanted, never intended to be the sort of spokesman for the arts and theater in Britain,” Lloyd Webber said in a recent interview at the Gillian Lynne Theater, where his musical “Cinderella” was in socially-distanced previews. “But there came this strange situation where nobody else seemed to be.”Outside the theater, several theatergoers praised Lloyd Webber’s new role. “I’ve never been his biggest fan — I’m more a Sondheim fanatic,” said Carole Star, 70. “But if I see him tonight, it’ll be difficult not to hug him.”“I could cry at what he’s done this year,” she added.Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice last September at a socially distanced London performance of their musical “Jesus Christ Superstar.”David Jensen/Getty ImagesBut others said they were glad he had pulled back from the threat to fully reopen before the government decided to allow it. “I admire his passion, but I hope he keeps things safe,” said Samantha Fogg, 25.Lloyd Webber, who participated in vaccine trials, said he had been driven by “a real sense of injustice” that theater has been treated differently than other parts of British life. He complained that in June, tens of thousands of soccer fans were allowed in stadiums — “everybody singing completely pissed,” he said — while theaters could only open at limited capacity and amateur choirs were not allowed to sing indoors. (Scientists have been clear that outdoor events are far safer than indoor ones.)The British government’s attitude to the arts was “dumbfounding,” he said.But health officials are not impressed with a theater composer’s opinions on the safety of fully reopening.In June, the British government released a report on a series of trial cultural and sporting events. The events, mainly held outside for people who could show that they had tested negative, only led to 28 potential coronavirus cases, it said, but the data had to be interpreted with “extreme caution.” And the study was conducted before the more infectious Delta variant began sweeping Britain.The report “basically says everything’s completely safe,” Lloyd Webber claimed. But Paul Hunter, a British academic specializing in epidemics, said in a telephone interview the report did “not in any way” say it was safe to reopen indoor theaters. (He said he approved of the government’s plan to reopen at full capacity on July 19.)When the pandemic first hit Britain, Lloyd Webber tried to show that theaters could reopen safely by adopting measures like those that were keeping his “Phantom of the Opera” running in Seoul. Those included requiring audience members to wear masks, doing temperature checks at the door and spraying theaters with disinfectant.Thanks to strict protocols, the composer’s “Phantom of the Opera” played to full audiences in Seoul.Woohae Cho for The New York TimesLast July, he spent over 100,000 pounds, about $140,000, to stage a trial at the Palladium theater in London to prove such measures worked.“I’ve got to say this is a rather sad sight,” Lloyd Webber said that day, as he looked out over a largely empty auditorium. “I think this amply proves why social distancing in theater really doesn’t work,” he added. “It’s a misery for the performers.”That event didn’t lead to any major reopening of theaters, and Lloyd Webber said his frustrations grew as Britain let airplanes fly at full capacity, and people return to pubs, restaurants and garden centers with abandon. Last September, he sarcastically told a group of politicians that he had considered turning the Palladium into a garden center so it could hold performances again.“I am absolutely confident that the air in the London Palladium — and indeed in all my theaters — is purer than the air outside,” he added, despite the growing scientific consensus that it was far safer to be outdoors than in.Lloyd Webber’s breaking point came last December, he said, when theaters were allowed to reopen for a handful of performances only to be forced shut again as cases rose, even though shops were allowed to stay open. “You saw scenes of people literally cheek by jowl, no distancing, nothing,” he said.“That’s the point I realized this government has no interest in theater,” he added. “Once I realize that, I didn’t see any reason to hold back.”He later clarified that the government had been right to shut down theaters at that point (there were over 25,000 coronavirus cases in Britain on the day the West End shut, and in a matter of weeks they peaked at over 60,000). Lloyd Webber said he didn’t feel he’d ever called for reopening too early. “I think everybody thought things would get back earlier,” he said.Lloyd Webber, who owns significant real estate in the West End, has been the most outspoken critic of the British government’s commitment to the arts during the pandemic.Tom Jamieson for The New York TimesOther British theater figures, such as the producer Sonia Friedman, have also made headlines by urging the government do more for theaters, but none have garnered as much attention as Lloyd Webber, who along with being a composer, owns substantial real estate in the West End.Lloyd Webber, whose personal wealth has been estimated at £525 million, reported that it was costing his company £1 million a month just to keep his seven theaters closed, and said that he had to mortgage his London home to raise funds. But he insisted money was not behind his advocacy. “My main concern is to just get everybody back to work,” he said.“I don’t think money’s got anything to do with it,” Julian Fellowes, the creator of “Downton Abbey,” who wrote the book for Lloyd Webber’s “School of Rock,” said in a telephone interview, adding, “He’s a man on a mission and you can tell.”But Lloyd Webber has not escaped criticism in his own community. In April, it was reported that the orchestra for “The Phantom of the Opera” in London would be slashed in half when it reopens, with percussion, harp and oboe replaced by keyboards.“When I see him get on his soapbox, part of me wants to applaud him and part of me wants to take him to task,” Matt Dickinson, a percussionist who lost his job, said in a telephone interview.Asked about this, Lloyd Webber said he was not the show’s producer, and pointed out that during lockdown he had recorded a set of orchestral suites that employed 81 freelance musicians.Ivano Turco, left, and Rebecca Trehearn in “Cinderella,” which has been given a contemporary spin thanks to a book by Emerald Fennell (“Promising Young Woman”).Tristram KentonLloyd Webber remains an extraordinarily busy — or driven — man. As well as trying to produce and finish “Cinderella” — whose book, by Emerald Fennell, the director and screenwriter of “Promising Young Woman,” gives the fairy tale a contemporary twist — he has been involved in a £60 million refurbishment of the Theater Royal, Drury Lane.Even as he explored old churches in Hampshire the other day, he said, he could not escape his newfound role in politics, saying that people would tell him, “We cannot believe that the government could have treated the arts in the way it has.”But sometimes he clearly is happy to highlight it. When the government set the reopening date of July 19, Lloyd Webber wrote on Twitter that he would add a special “Freedom Day” performance and a gala with proceeds benefiting Britain’s health care system.“I am thrilled,” he wrote, “that at last it seems theaters can finally reopen!” More

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      Peter Zinovieff, Composer and Synthesizer Innovator, Dies at 88

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      His powerful, affordable instruments made memorable sounds for Pink Floyd, Kraftwerk, David Bowie, King Crimson and many others.Peter Zinovieff, a composer and inventor whose pioneering synthesizers shaped albums by Pink Floyd, David Bowie, Roxy Music and Kraftwerk, died on June 23 in Cambridge, England. He was 88.His death was announced on Twitter by his daughter Sofka Zinovieff, who said he had been hospitalized after a fall.Mr. Zinovieff oversaw the design of the first commercially produced British synthesizers. In 1969, his company, EMS (Electronic Music Studios), introduced the VCS3 (for “voltage controlled studio”), one of the earliest and most affordable portable synthesizers. Instruments from EMS soon became a staple of 1970s progressive-rock, particularly from Britain and Germany. The company’s slogan was “Think of a sound — now make it.”Peter Zinovieff was born on Jan. 26, 1933, in London, the son of émigré Russian aristocrats: a princess, Sofka Dolgorouky, and Leo Zinovieff. His parents divorced in 1937.Peter’s grandmother started teaching him piano when he was in primary school. He attended Oxford University, where he played in experimental music groups while earning a Ph.D. in geology. He also dabbled in electronics.“I had this facility of putting pieces of wire together to make something that either received or made sounds,” he told Red Bull Music Academy in 2015.He married Victoria Heber-Percy, then 17, who came from a wealthy family. She and her parents were unhappy with the extensive travel that a geologist’s career required. After Mr. Zinovieff worked briefly for the Air Ministry in London as a mathematician, he turned to making electronic music full time, supported by his wife.He bought tape recorders and microphones and found high-quality oscillators, filters and signal analyzers at military-surplus stores. Daphne Oram, the electronic-music composer who was a co-founder of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, taught him techniques of making music by splicing together bits of sound recorded on magnetic tape in the era of musique concrète.But Mr. Zinovieff decided that cutting tape was tedious. He built a primitive sequencer — a device to trigger a set of notes repeatedly — from telephone-switching hardware, and he began working on electronic sequencers with the electrical engineers Mark Dowson and Dave Cockerell. They realized that early digital computers, which were already used to control factory processes, might also control sound processing.Mr. Zinovieff’s wife sold her pearl and turquoise wedding tiara for 4,000 British pounds — now about $96,000 — to finance Mr. Zinovieff’s purchase of a PDP-8 computer designed by the Digital Equipment Corporation. Living in Putney, a district of London, Mr. Zinovieff installed it in his garden shed, and he often cited it as the world’s first home computer. He added a second PDP-8; the two units, which he named Sofka and Leo, could control hundreds of oscillators and other sound modules.The shed was now an electronic-music studio. Mr. Cockerell was an essential partner; he was able to build the devices that Mr. Zinovieff envisioned. Mr. Cockerell “would be able to interpret it into a concrete electronic idea and make the bloody thing — and it worked,” Mr. Zinovieff said in the 2006 documentary “What the Future Sounded Like.”In 1966, Mr. Zinovieff formed the short-lived Unit Delta Plus with Delia Derbyshire (who created the electronic arrangement of Ron Grainer’s theme for the BBC science fiction institution “Doctor Who”) and Brian Hodgson to make electronic ad jingles and other projects.The programmer Peter Grogono, working with Mr. Cockerell and Mr. Zinovieff, devised software to perform digital audio analysis and manipulation, presaging modern sampling. It used numbers to control sounds in ways that anticipated the Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) standard that was introduced in 1983.On Jan. 15, 1968, Mr. Zinovieff brought his computer to Queen Elizabeth Hall in London for Britain’s first public concert of all-electronic music. His “Partita for Unattended Computer” received some skeptical reviews: The Financial Times recognized a technical achievement but called it “the dreariest kind of neo-Webern, drawn out to inordinate length.”Mr. Zinovieff at the Electronic Music Studios in London in 1968. The following year, the company introduced one of the earliest and most affordable portable synthesizers.Evening Standard/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesMr. Zinovieff lent a computer to the 1968 exhibition “Cybernetic Serendipity” at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. Visitors could whistle a tune and the computer would analyze and repeat it, then improvise variations.Continually upgrading the Putney studio was expensive. Mr. Zinovieff offered to donate the studio’s advanced technology to the British government, but he was ignored. To sustain the project, he and Mr. Cockerell decided to spin off a business.So in 1969, Mr. Zinovieff, Mr. Cockerell and Tristram Cary, an electronic composer with his own studio, formed EMS. They built a rudimentary synthesizer the size of a shoe box for the Australian composer Don Banks that they later referred to as the VCS1.In November, they unveiled the more elaborate VCS3, also known as the Putney. It used specifications from Mr. Zinovieff, a case and controls designed by Mr. Cary and circuitry designed by Mr. Cockerell (who drew on Robert Moog’s filter design research). It was priced at 330 pounds, about $7,700 now.Yet the VCS3 was smaller and cheaper than other early synthesizers; the Minimoog didn’t arrive until 1970 and was more expensive. The original VCS3 had no keyboard and was best suited to generating abstract sounds, but EMS soon made a touch-sensitive keyboard module available. The VCS3 also had an input so it could process external sounds.Musicians embraced the VCS3 along with other EMS instruments.EMS synthesizers are prominent in songs like Pink Floyd’s “On the Run,” Roxy Music’s “Virginia Plain” and Kraftwerk’s “Autobahn,” and the Who used a VCS3 to process the sound of an electric organ on “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” King Crimson, Todd Rundgren, Led Zeppelin, Tangerine Dream, Aphex Twin and others also used EMS synthesizers.“I hated anything to do with the commercial side,” Mr. Zinovieff told Sound on Sound magazine in 2016. He was more interested in contemporary classical uses of electronic sound. In the 1970s, he composed extensively, but much of his own music vanished because he would tape over ideas that he expected to improve.He also collaborated with contemporary composers, including Harrison Birtwistle and Hans Werner Henze. “I didn’t want to have a commercial studio,” he said in 2010. “I wanted an experimental studio, where good composers could work and not pay.” Mr. Zinovieff and Mr. Birtwistle climbed to the top of Big Ben to record the clock mechanisms and gong sounds they incorporated in a quadraphonic 1971 piece, “Chronometer.”Like other groundbreaking synthesizer companies, EMS had financial troubles. It filed for bankruptcy in 1979 after branching into additional products, including a video synthesizer, a guitar synthesizer and a vocoder.Mr. Zinovieff handed over his full studio — including advanced prototypes of an interactive video terminal and a 10-octave pressure-sensitive keyboard — to the National Theater, in London, which belatedly found that it couldn’t raise funds to maintain it. The equipment was dismantled and stored for years in a basement, and it was eventually ruined in a flood.Mr. Zinovieff largely stopped composing for decades. During that time he taught acoustics at the University of Cambridge.But he wasn’t entirely forgotten. He worked for years on the intricate libretto for Mr. Birtwistle’s 1986 opera “The Mask of Orpheus,” which included a language Mr. Zinovieff constructed using the syllables in “Orpheus” and “Eurydice.”In 2010, Mr. Zinovieff was commissioned to write music for a sculpture in Istanbul with 40 channels of sound. “Electronic Calendar: The EMS Tapes,” a collection of Mr. Zinovieff’s work and collaborations from 1965 to 1979 at Electronic Music Studios, was released in 2015.Mr. Zinovieff in 2015, the year “Electronic Calendar: The EMS Tapes,” a collection of his work and collaborations from 1965 to 1979, was released.Graeme Robertson/eyevine, via ReduxMr. Zinovieff learned new software, on computers that were exponentially more powerful than his 1970s equipment, and returned to composing throughout the 2010s, including pieces for cello and computer, for violin and computer and for computer and the spoken word. In 2020, during the pandemic, he collaborated with a granddaughter, Anna Papadimitriou, the singer in the band Hawxx, on a death-haunted piece called “Red Painted Ambulance.”Mr. Zinovieff’s first three marriages ended in divorce. He is survived by his fourth wife, Jenny Jardine, and by six children — Sofka, Leo, Kolinka, Freya, Kitty and Eliena — and nine grandchildren.A former employee, Robin Wood, revived EMS in 1997, reproducing the vintage equipment designs. An iPad app emulating the VCS3 was released in 2014.Even in the 21st century, Mr. Zinovieff sought better music technology. In 2016, he told Sound on Sound that he felt limited by unresponsive interfaces — keyboards, touchpads, linear computer displays — and by playback through stationary, directional loudspeakers. He longed, he said, for “three-dimensional sound in the air around us.” More

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      Moshing in the Rain: The Tenuous Return of the British Music Festival

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      Spending three days camping at a muddy music festival is a British tradition. But event operators fear that few will go ahead this summer, despite a trial last weekend.DONNINGTON PARK, England — At 5 p.m. on Friday, a metal band called Death Blooms walked onstage in a field here and launched into a pummeling track to open Download Festival, Britain’s first large-scale music festival to take place since the Covid-19 pandemic began.A second later, several hundred rain-soaked fans — including two men dressed as bananas — began careering into one another in front of the stage, arms and legs flailing, smiling ecstatically as they formed Britain’s first legal mosh pit in 15 months.After 10 minutes, Jim Ellison, one of the bananas, rushed out of the tent to catch his breath. “It’s so good to be back to normality,” said Ellison, 19. He acknowledged that most wouldn’t define normalcy as “a man in a banana costume moshing,” before cutting the interview short as Death Blooms started playing a song called “Life is Pain.”“I’m really sorry,” Ellison said, excusing himself, “but I love this tune.” He ran straight back into the pit.When the metal band Death Blooms opened Download, a mosh pit quickly formed in front of the stage.Joe Giddens/Press Association, via Associated PressSince the 1970s, music festivals have been a key part of the British summer: events where teenagers get a first taste of parent-free vacations, music fans find community and people generally get very muddy and carefree. But there is widespread concern that few events will go ahead this year despite nearly half of Britain’s population having been fully vaccinated against Covid-19. And organizers say they risk going bankrupt.Last week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that social distancing measures would continue in England until at least July 19 — almost a month after all restrictions were planned to be lifted. Within days, several major festivals were canceled for the second year in a row, with organizers saying they couldn’t afford to pay suppliers if there was no guarantee that the events would occur.“There seems to be a whole body of evidence saying, ‘You can do outside events safely,’ but for some reason the government won’t let us,” Chris Smith, the director of WOMAD, a world music festival, said in a telephone interview. His event was scheduled for July 22, and Smith was hoping that the government would provide support so the event could go ahead.British festivals range from world-renowned events like Glastonbury — which turns a farm in southwestern England into a temporary city for one week each year — to scrappier productions like Tribfest, an event for cover bands.In 2019, almost 1,000 were held, attracting 5.2 million attendees, according to the Association of Independent Festivals, a trade body. That year, festivals generated 1.7 billion pounds, $2.3 billion, for Britain’s economy.Download was initially canceled in March. This weekend’s hastily arranged special edition was able to go ahead only because it is part of a government trial to see whether and how cultural life can return safely. Previous pilot events — two 3,000-person club nights and a 5,000-capacity rock concert in Liverpool — led to eight cases of potential coronavirus transmission, according to one of the scientists involved, Iain Buchan.Arriving on the first day of Download for a typically rainy and carefree British festival. Joe Giddens/Press Association, via Associated PressDownload 2021 had a significantly reduced capacity: The three-day metal, punk and hard rock festival usually sees over 110,000 hard-rock fans camp in Donnington Park — a set of fields next to a racetrack in Leicestershire, England — to watch bands like Slipknot and Slayer. But for the government trial, only 10,000 fans were allowed, and the lineup featured only British acts to avoid the risks of international travel and quarantines.Attendees had to take a coronavirus test before going in, and agreed to also do one five days after the festival so that scientists could see whether the event caused the spread of coronavirus. But once inside in the grounds, masks weren’t required, while headbanging, moshing and drunken conversations at the camp site were prevalent.Melvin Benn, the director of Festival Republic, Download’s organizer, said he wasn’t concerned about a coronavirus outbreak at the site given the testing system. “I probably need to be more worried about trench foot,” he said while sheltering from a downpour.Attendees also weren’t worried about catching Covid. Harry Jackson, 26, a theater technician, said that the only anxiety he’d had around the festival was doing the pre-event test. “I sat there staring at it for half an hour going, ‘Please be negative, please be negative, I don’t want to miss this,’” he said. “I consider Download my home,” he added. “It’s my family.”The organizers of Britain’s other festivals say they can only be sure that their events will go ahead this summer if the government creates an insurance initiative to guarantee their costs if the country delays its reopening again. Austria and Germany have adopted such programs, but the British government has not, despite pressure from politicians.Last month, the House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, a cross-party group of lawmakers, said in a report on festivals that there would be a hole in the “lives of music lovers and makers alike” this summer as a “direct result of the government’s refusal to back insurance for the sector.”At least one festival has found a creative solution. Last month, Brainchild — a three-day event for up-and-coming musicians and theater makers that is planned for the beginning of August — asked its 2,500 attendees to agree to be refunded only half their ticket price if the event were canceled so the organizers could start paying acts and equipment suppliers.Only 106 people declined to lose the £60, Marina Blake, the festival’s creative director, said in a telephone interview. “It was extraordinary,” she said. “It shows people are so desperate to have something to look forward to,” she added, noting that such an initiative was probably not viable for large events.Ben Barlow, the frontman for Neck Deep, said during the band’s set that he was glad to be able to perform again.Katja Ogrin/Getty ImagesAt Download, the relief to be back at a festival was palpable. During the pop-punk act Neck Deep’s set, the singer Ben Barlow said, “This is our first gig in two years, and I never want to wait that long again.”“If we’re the lab rats, let’s give them a good experiment,” he added, encouraging the heaving crowd to mosh. Barlow looked close to tears several times during the set.On Saturday morning, the scene at Donnington Park was typical for a British music festival. Music fans wandered around bleary-eyed, and two interviewees said they’d decided to skip the on-site showers and instead freshen up with a combination of wet wipes and hand sanitizer.At 11:30 a.m. James Carroll, 23, stood by a stage, waiting for the day’s music to start. He was hurting a bit from moshing the day before, he said, but it was nothing that a few cans of beer couldn’t sort out. “Day two, straight back on it,” he said.Soon, a band called Lotus Eater took to the stage, its singer screaming into a microphone as his band created a cacophony behind him.Immediately, the mosh pit began again. There were no men in banana costumes this time, but soon there was someone dressed as a Tyrannosaurus rex. More

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      How Jodie Turner-Smith Is Reshaping Anne Boleyn's Story

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      Jodie Turner-Smith portrays the ill-fated wife of Henry VIII in a new mini-series. The show has stirred debate in Britain, which is sort of the point.LONDON — Britain’s most recent rendering of the story of Anne Boleyn, the second of Henry VIII’s six wives, begins at the end. When the new mini-series “Anne Boleyn” opens, it’s 1536, the queen is pregnant and powerful — and has five months left to live.Anne’s story, which occupies a special place in the British collective imagination, has spawned an abundance of fictionalized depictions onscreen (“The Tudors”) and in literature (“Wolf Hall”). It is generally told as a morally dubious young woman seducing an older king into leaving his wife and his church, before she is executed for failing to give birth to a male heir.But the new mini-series, which premiered last week on Channel 5, one of Britain’s public service broadcasters, attempts to reframe Anne’s story, instead focusing on her final months and how she tried to maintain power in a system that guaranteed her very little.In the three episode-long series, Anne is played by Jodie Turner-Smith, best-known for her role in the film “Queen & Slim.” It is the first time a Black actress has portrayed the Tudor queen onscreen.“We wanted to find someone who could really inhabit her but also be surprising to an audience,” Faye Ward, one of the show’s executive producers, said in an interview. Since there were already so many depictions of Anne Boleyn, the show’s creators “wanted to reset people’s expectations of her,” Ward said.Turner-Smith’s Anne Boleyn, center, desperately tries to maintain power in a system that guarantees her very little.Sony Pictures TelevisionAnne (Turner-Smith) and her brother George (Paapa Essiedu).Sony Pictures TelevisionMadge Shelton (Thalissa Teixeira), Anne’s cousin and lady-in-waiting.Sony Pictures TelevisionThe series employs a diverse casting playbook, in a similar vein to the Regency-era Netflix drama “Bridgerton.” But whereas that show’s characters are fictional, in “Anne Boleyn” actors of color play several white historical figures: The British-Ghanian actor Paapa Essiedu plays Anne’s brother George Boleyn, and the British-Brazillian actress Thalissa Teixeira portrays Madge Shelton, Anne’s cousin and lady-in-waiting.Although race does not figure overtly in the show’s plot, the program makers adopted an approach known as “identity-conscious casting,” which allows actors to bring “all those factors of yourself to a role,” Ward said.For Turner-Smith, that meant connecting her experiences with the ways in which Anne, who was raised in the French court, was an outsider and suffered at Henry’s court.“As a Black woman, I can understand being marginalized. I have a lived experience of what limitation and marginalization feel like,” Turner-Smith, 34, said in an interview. “I thought it was interesting to bring the freshness of a Black body telling that story.”Casting Turner-Smith as one of Britain’s best-known royal consorts has caused debate in the press and particularly on social media in Britain, with “Anne Boleyn” trending on Twitter the day after the series premiere.In the newspaper The Daily Telegraph, the writer Marianka Swain called Turner-Smith’s casting “pretty cynical” and wrote that it was designed to have “Twitter frothing rather than adding anything to our understanding of an era.”Others, though, have welcomed the show’s perspective. Olivette Otele, a professor of the history of slavery and memory of enslavement at the University of Bristol, noted in The Independent newspaper that the series arrived at a time when Britain was “soul searching” about how to understand its colonial past. “The past is only a safe space if it becomes a learning space open to all,” she wrote in praise of the series.It was important to the show’s creators to center the narrative around Anne’s perspective, rather than Henry’s (played by Mark Stanley).Sony Pictures TelevisionDuring the show’s press run, Turner-Smith’s comments about the royal family’s treatment of Meghan, Duchess of Sussex — including that having her in the family was “a missed opportunity” for the monarchy — made headlines in Britain.Meghan’s treatment by the palace — which she told Oprah Winfrey in a bombshell March interview had driven her to thoughts of suicide — is representative of “just how far we have not come with patriarchal values,” Turner-Smith said.“It represents how far we have not come in terms of the monarchy and in terms of somebody being an outsider and being different, and being able to navigate that space,” she said, adding that “you can draw so many parallels if you look for them” between Anne and Meghan’s attempts to figure out life within a British palace.“There is very little room for someone brown to touch the monarchy,” said Turner-Smith — who, upon being cast as Anne, fully expected the move to draw criticism in the country.For the actress, that presented even more reason to push back against people’s assumptions about Anne. “Art is supposed to challenge you,” she said. “The whole point of making it this way was for a different perspective. What is going to resonate with somebody by putting a different face to this and seeing it in a different way?”Dr. Stephanie Russo, the author of “The Afterlife of Anne Boleyn: Representations of Anne Boleyn in Fiction and on the Screen,” said there were many reasons for Britain’s fascination with and attachment to the Tudors, and Anne specifically. The “soap opera” of a younger woman disrupting a long-term marriage remains fascinating, she said, as does the rise and fall of a powerful woman.There is also a patriotic element, Russo said: Anne’s daughter was Elizabeth I, the monarch who oversaw Britain’s “golden age,” when William Shakespeare was writing his plays and many historians credit the British Empire as having been born.The series was conceived as a feminist exercise, unpacking what Eve Hedderwick Turner, the show’s writer, called “those big, insulting and detrimental terms” attached to Anne, which at the time included accusations of treason, adultery and an incestuous relationship with her brother.“There is very little room for someone brown to touch the monarchy,” Turner-Smith said.Sony Pictures TelevisionIn the mini-series, Anne falls out of favor with Henry after a stillbirth. No matter how nominally powerful or ambitious she is, she is no match for the forces that seek to extinguish her, which come to include her husband, his advisers and the country’s legal system. All the while, she tries not to show vulnerability in public.It was important, Hedderwick Turner said, for the creators to put “Anne back in the center of her story, making her the protagonist, seeing everything from her perspective.”The political machinations of Henry VIII and his advisers, his internal life and his motivations are largely obscured in the series. Instead, viewers are privy to Anne’s state of mind and her relationship with her household’s ladies-in-waiting.“Henry is spoken about as this great man, because he had all of these wives” and killed some of them, Turner-Smith said. “It’s just like: Actually, there’s a woman at the center of this story who is so dynamic and fascinating and interesting.”Hilary Mantel, the author of the “Wolf Hall” trilogy charting Thomas Cromwell’s life serving Henry VIII, wrote in a 2013 piece for the London Review of Books about how fictionalized accounts of Anne’s life communicate society’s contemporary attitudes toward women.“Popular fiction about the Tudors has also been a form of moral teaching about women’s lives, though what is taught varies with moral fashion,” she said.What, then, does this “Anne Boleyn” say about today’s world?“We’re finally getting to a place where we’re allowing women to become more than just a trope,” Turner-Smith said.Traditionally, when playing a female character, “you’re either the Madonna or you’re the whore, right?” she said. But in this series, “We’re saying we’re unafraid to show different sides of a woman.” More

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      Disabled People Fear Being Left Behind as U.K. Culture Venues Reopen

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      Some disabled people have spent a year devouring shows online, and they want continued access. Some theaters are promising to provide it, but fears persist.LONDON — Before the pandemic hit Britain last year, Michelle Hedley could only go to her local theaters in the north of England if they happened to be doing a captioned performance.That happened five times a year — at best, said Hedley, who is deaf.But during the pandemic, suddenly, she could watch musicals all day and night if she wanted, as shuttered theaters worldwide put shows online, often with subtitles. “I started watching anything and everything simply because I could!” Hedley, 49, said in an email interview. “Even subject matters that bored me!”“I viewed more theater than I had done (it felt like) in a lifetime,” she added.Michelle Hedley worries she will be forced to go back to being “grateful” for being able to access just a handful of captioned shows each year now that British theaters have reopened.Mary Turner for The New York TimesNow, Hedley fears this access is about to be lost.On Monday, theaters, museums and cinemas started reopening across England, some for the first time since March 2020. Audiences have been so grateful to be back inside theaters, they have clapped following the announcements to turn cellphones off.But for many disabled people, who make up 22 percent of England’s population and have diverse requirements — such as wheelchair access, audio description or for “relaxed” performances where audiences are allowed to make noise — this moment is causing more mixed reactions. Some fear being forgotten, and that struggling venues will concentrate on producing in-person shows and forgo online offerings, or cut their in-person services for disabled people.There is little evidence of that so far, and some venues say they will continue to include disabled people, but the real effect of venues’ reduced budgets won’t become clear for months.“I will be forced to go back to being grateful for just five shows a year,” Hedley said. “It is very frustrating.”Others are concerned, too. “I just have this sense of being left behind with people being so euphoric that they can do things in the flesh again,” Sonia Boué, an artist who is autistic, said in a telephone interview.Before the pandemic, Boué, 58, would only visit museums if she was convinced a show would be worth the huge amount of energy the experience took. Getting the train from her home in Oxford to London could be overwhelming, she said, as could dealing with crowds in a packed museum. “I’ve been in situations when I’ve just wanted to throw myself down on a station platform and lose it,” she said.Online, she could view shows whenever she wanted. Last year, she went back again and again to one by the painter Tracey Emin and the photographer Jo Spence, she said, with both influencing her own art. “The whole experience was so rich and wonderful,” Boué said.Sonia Boué believes that following Britain’s lockdowns, it should be easier than ever to identify with, and consider the needs of, disabled people.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesBritain’s cultural venues have struggled over the past 12 months, with thousands of layoffs. Many venues only survived the pandemic thanks to emergency funding from the government.Some high-profile venues have said they will keep working to include disabled people as they reopen. Kwame Kwei-Armah, the artistic director of the Young Vic theater in London, told The Guardian in May he wanted to livestream at least two performances of all future shows, with viewers limited to about 500 per stream, mimicking the theater’s capacity. The Young Vic intends to guarantee some of those tickets for disabled people, a spokeswoman said in an email. On Friday, the Almeida, another London theater, said it would film and released digitally its next season’s shows “where possible” but gave no further details.But for regional theaters that are coming off a year without ticket sales, streaming may not always be possible. “It’s a huge financial outlay, making films, so you really need to think about it from the start,” Amy Leach, the associate director of Leeds Playhouse, said in a phone interview. She hoped her theater would do that for future work, she said.People’s concerns are not just about cuts to streaming. Jessica Thom, a performer and wheelchair user who’s made work about her Tourette’s syndrome, said in a telephone interview that she was worried that some venues may see online shows as an accessibility alternative to offering the relaxed performances she loved to go to, where people were free to move around or make noise. “The anxiety about being written out is real,” she said.Last week, English National Opera said it would be doubling the number of relaxed performances it offers in its next season, although only to two from one.Leanna Benjamin, a wheelchair user who has myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) and often experiences pain, said in a telephone interview she was worried venues may drop online ways of working that have flourished during the pandemic.In the last year, Benjamin was commissioned to write three short plays — her first assignments as a playwright. “I’m like, ‘Thank you, Covid!’” she said. “You may have made me be isolated and life feel really tough, but on the other hand you’ve launched my career.”Those commissions included work for Graeae, Britain’s leading deaf and disabled-led theater company, as well as “The Unknown” for Leeds Playhouse (streaming until June 5).She has been helped in such work by being able to have meetings and rehearsals virtually. “My experiences have been incredibly inclusive,” she said, “and I think a lot of us are having the same concerns about ‘Will we go back to old ways of working, when we’re told we need to be in the room?’”Leach, of Leeds Playhouse, said she didn’t think that would be the case. Her theater was intending to keep using video technology so it can expand work with disabled people in the industry.“I worked out the other day I’d need to be guided by about 25 people to go from my home to a London theater,” said Joanna Wood, who lives on England’s south coast.Tom Jamieson for The New York TimesNot all disabled people have found the pandemic liberating in terms of access to culture. Joanna Wood, who is blind in one eye, and can only see blurred shapes with the other, said for her, the pandemic has been a disaster.Before the pandemic, she’d attended plays or gone to art exhibitions at least once a week, taking advantage of a boom in audio description (for a play, that involves a describer explaining what happens onstage in between gaps in dialogue).But it took months for theaters to start putting audio-described content online, she said. There were some highlights, she added — the Old Vic in London made sure all its livestreamed shows had audio description — but she often felt like she had gone back to the moment five years ago when she started losing her sight and couldn’t access culture at all. “It felt completely disabling,” she said of last year’s experiences.Some theaters, like the Globe in London, have started offering in-person performances with audio description, Wood said. But she won’t be able to attend for months. “I worked out the other day I’d need to be guided by about 25 people to go from my home to a London theater,” she said. “I can’t tell if someone is wearing a mask or not, I can’t keep distance, so I don’t feel ready,” she added.Many other disabled people feel similarly anxious about attending events in person, she said, having been disproportionately affected by the pandemic. She was worried theaters might cut back on services assuming there isn’t demand, even if the trend for that hasn’t happened yet.Six British museums and theaters said in emails they intended to maintain provisions for disabled audiences, and not cut back. Andrew Miller, a campaigner who was the British government’s disability champion for arts and culture until this spring, said many institutions would be hard pressed to “wriggle” out of commitments even if they for some reason wanted to, as much funding in Britain comes with a requirement to expand access. But future funding cuts could make the situation “messy,” he said. “There is a genuine worry there’ll be significantly less investment,” he added.Boué said she just hoped British theaters and museums kept disabled people in mind. It should be easier than ever to identify with disabled people, she said. When the first lockdown hit, “it was this jaw dropping moment when everyone felt completely immobilized and like they didn’t have the freedoms they’d always taken for granted,” she said.For once, “it was like disability was really everyone’s problem,” she added. More

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      The West End's Comeback: London Theater Reopens

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      London’s theater scene re-emerged with “The Mousetrap,” Agatha Christie’s long-running murder mystery, which has changed little from its debut in 1952, let alone from before the coronavirus.LONDON — At 8:30 p.m. on Monday, two friends were huddling outside St. Martin’s Theater in London’s West End doing something no one has for 14 months: arguing during the intermission over who was the murderer in “The Mousetrap,” Agatha Christie’s long-running whodunit.“I’m convinced it’s the posh woman who runs the hotel,” said Lockie Chapman, 40, a singer, before immediately changing his mind.“Actually, it’s the major!” he said. “Or how about that shifty Italian dude?” he added.“The shifty Italian dude?” replied Rah Petherbridge, 37. “But he could be a red herring!”Such debates have rung out outside the “The Mousetrap” ever since it debuted in 1952, but those accompanying the show’s 28,200th performance on Monday were significant. They marked the reopening of the West End.Since March last year, when the coronavirus pandemic shut down Britain, the country’s theaters have been effectively dark. A few shows, including “The Mousetrap,” tried to come back last fall, only for a second lockdown to keep them from even making it to rehearsals.Pippa Griffin, a “Mousetrap” usher, during the show. Audience members on Monday said they felt that this time, theater’s comeback would last.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesSeveral tried again in December, including “Six,” the hit musical about the wives of Henry VIII, but they managed only a handful of performances before they were shut once more. Theaters had to perform to online audiences if they wanted to keep working.Monday’s comeback felt like it was actually permanent, 15 audience members said in interviews, many highlighting Britain’s speedy vaccination campaign as the reason for their optimism. (Over 55 percent of the British population has received at least one dose, a higher proportion than in the United States.) A small but worrying surge in coronavirus cases in Britain, linked to a variant first identified in India, did not dampen their mood.“I really think we’re back for good this time,” said Matthew Lumby, 48, a civil servant. “I wouldn’t be certain we’ll be without face masks for a while, but if wearing one’s the price of being back in a theater again, it’s a small one to pay.”The Royal Opera House has also reopened, with Mozart’s “La Clemenza di Tito.” Clive Barda, via Royal Opera HouseThe mood was similar at the nearby Royal Opera House, which also reopened on Monday, with Mozart’s “La Clemenza di Tito.” “I feel confident this time it’s for good,” said Katie Connor, 40, as several huge Rolls Royces pulled up with glamorous operagoers.“I’m just so happy to be back,” she added. “I’m pretty sure I’m going to ugly-cry for the whole two hours and 25 minutes of the show.”England’s theaters are not immediately allowed to return to their prepandemic state. For now, shows can open only at 50 percent capacity, and audience members must wear face masks throughout performances.Social-distancing rules are supposed to be removed June 21, allowing full capacity, but on Friday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned that the date might be pushed back because of the recent rise in cases.“I have to level with you that this new variant could pose a serious disruption to our progress,” Johnson said.Inside the Royal Opera House before the show on Monday. For now, venues can open only at 50 percent capacity.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesIt would be “financially bumpy” for “The Mousetrap” if distancing weren’t removed soon, said Adam Spiegel, the show’s producer, but he insisted that he would keep the show open no matter what, to give the actors and crew work. “It’s the right thing to do,” he said.Several other major West End shows are reopening this week, including “Six” and “Everybody’s Talking About Jamie,” a hit musical about a boy’s attempts to become a drag queen, with a host of others to come across England in coming months. But on Monday, the spotlight was left largely to “The Mousetrap,” which holds a Guinness world record for the longest-running play.It was “a bit bizarre” for “The Mousetrap” to be at the vanguard of theater’s return, Spiegel said. Critics have been calling it “an anachronism” since at least the 1970s, lacking the technical bells and whistles one would expect of a modern production. But Spiegel said that it was the best play to reopen the West End, as it had become a symbol of the city.“It’s been through all the ups and downs of British life of the last 70 years: terrorism, economic recessions, this,” he said. “There’s not a scientific answer to why it should be first. It just feels right.”Cassidy Janson and Danny Mac in “The Mousetrap.” Two casts were hired so that if one had to go into isolation, the other could step in.Tristram KentonThe play hadn’t needed much rewriting to lessen coronavirus risks, except the removal of one kiss, Spiegel said. Agatha Christie wrote the play just after World War II, he added, when British people “weren’t that kissy-wissy.”“So it fortunately lends itself quite well to social distancing,” he added.Backstage, though, there had been a few changes. Two casts were hired, so if one has to isolate, the other can step in. Cast and crew also had to stay distant, which meant the show’s wind machine could no longer be used, as the person operating it would have had to stand next to an actor backstage.Other shows are adopting similar measures. On Monday, the director Michael Longhurst started rehearsals for a revival of Nick Payne’s relationship drama “Constellations,” which is being staged at the Vaudeville Theater. He hired four two-person casts — including famous names like Zoë Wanamaker — to try to ensure that the show wouldn’t suffer any coronavirus-induced closures, he said. “It’s such a complicated balancing act for every production,” he added.Other theaters across England are similarly focused on small shows with lower coronavirus risks for now. The Theater Royal in Bath in southwestern England, for instance, is reopening May 25 not with a play, but with Ralph Fiennes performing T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets.” The performance will then travel around England.Temperature checks outside “The Mousetrap” on Monday. “Whatever is necessary to restart people’s ability to enjoy theater I’m OK with,” said Adam Spiegel, the producer.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesEngland’s theatrical reopening puts it ahead of Europe’s other major theater centers. In Paris, theaters may open from Wednesday, but they must finish by 9 p.m. and are allowed only 35 percent capacity. Some theaters have said that they can’t reopen under those conditions. Others have said that they can’t because they’re occupied by students protesting a lack of support for arts workers.In Berlin, theaters are also allowed to reopen on Wednesday, but only outdoors.In the West End, most theater owners and producers seem happy to accept restrictions, including the potential use of coronavirus passports to guarantee entry. “Whatever is necessary to restart people’s ability to enjoy theater I’m OK with,” Spiegel, of “The Mousetrap,” said.Many in the industry realize that it will be a long time before theaters are back to their old selves, employing thousands of freelancers. Some job losses are only just emerging. In April, The Stage, Britain’s theater newspaper, reported that “The Phantom of the Opera” would reopen July 27 but only with its touring orchestration, cutting the number of musicians almost in half, to 14, from 27.“It sets a bad precedent for the whole sector,” Dan West, a trombonist who played in the show before the pandemic, said in a telephone interview. “Every small producer will say, ‘If they don’t need brass, I don’t,’” he added.During “The Mousetrap” on Monday, any worries seemed far from people’s minds. Many audience members took off their masks to sip drinks during the show, then left them off as the tension ramped up onstage, with Detective Sergeant Trotter (Paul Hilliar) quizzing eight potential murderers.Eventually, the perpetrator was revealed, and several audience members gasped. “See, I told you!” one shouted, being shushed by those around him.“The Mousetrap” ended just had it had for every one of its previous 28,199 performances. “Thank you so much for your unbelievably warm reception this evening,” Hilliar said, after a standing ovation from the half-full theater.“Now, you are our partners in crime,” he added, “and we ask you to keep the secret of whodunit locked in your hearts.” More