The Level Is In The Detail

A personal reflection on one of the greatest gifts of Our Greatest Showman…

Some of my earliest insights into the West End’s magical alchemy (one part exotic to two parts quixotic) were observed in the unlikely laboratory of Solossy’s Newsagents, located opposite Leicester Square Underground.  It was 1980, I was trying to get a grant for film school, and Mister Solossy had three thriving premises within a hundred yards of each other in Charing Cross Road, such was the power of print in those pre-Internet days.

Solossy’s was a particularly crucial hub for theatre folk. It was the first drop-off point for The Stage, the UK Industry's weekly journal, and every Thursday without fail actors and dancers, singers and stage crew, would line up at our counters to score their copy (or shared copy) and squirrel them away, most probably to nearby Gaby’s Deli or The Golden Egg.  There, over finely-measured sips of coffee (chased down with mightily-begrudged glasses of tap water) the Solossy faithful would flick impatiently through the week's news and reviews to scour the 'Jobs' and 'Auditions' pages in search of fame and fortune (or at least the Equity Minimum). At the other end of the career spectrum, one of our most charming Solossy regulars was Maybox General Manager Geoffrey Wren (Stage + 5 x Daily Mirror). Geoffrey very kindly gave me my first ever ‘comp’ ticket, a centre stalls seat for ‘Tomfoolery,’ a hugely successful musical review that had audiences doubled up in laughter every night across The Square at the Criterion. The show, I was told, was based on the works of the fiendishly funny American satirist-songwriter Tom Lehrer, and was produced, in Geoffrey’s words, "by an exciting young producer called Cameron Mackintosh."

"Who?"

While working at Solossys I was supplementing my income as as a 'reader' for the Story Departments of US film companies; Warner Brothers had their European Headquarters at 135-141 Wardour Street, while their prodigious offspring, The Ladd Company, was based in Earlham Street.  As this reading work began to grow (at £35 per novel/ £25 per script) I was eventually able to exit Solossy’s and forsake the Thursday theatre folk for my Imperial typewriter and Tipp-ex. And then disaster struck. On the very same day my radio broke and Stanley Kubrick found his dream project. My tiny bedsit in Notting Hill had no TV (or room for one, to be honest) and the rent was wholly dependent on the boxes of books that Stanley was filtering through Warner Brothers. There was nothing for it. I couldn't simply conjure up another eccentric expat genius of twentieth century cinema by Rent Day, but I could walk across Kensington Gardens and get my radio fixed. I had just left my precious Roberts Radio for my dad to work his magic on and commenced the long trek back to Notting Hill, when suddenly, a mere hundred yards down the Earl's Court Road, my eye was caught by a card in a Job Centre window reading: ‘Commissionaire Wanted for New London Theatre.’

Where??? 

The same question was repeated the following morning when I jumped into a cab having woefully overslept.  “Never ‘urd of it, Guv,” the cabbie whinged as I clutched my last fiver, eyes fixed on the meter like it was wired to a detonator. In my haste to run an iron over my one (Oxfam) suit and run out the door, I had neglected to pick up the form from the Job Centre. You know, the one with the address and stuff on it.  The dreaded meter needle was already showing £1.75 when, Praise Be To Thames Television, the Cabbie had a revelation of Damascene significance for Yours Truly: “I know! Ain’t that where they do This Is Your Life?” 

It was the 15th of May, 1981.  The next day I started work at the New London Theatre, for that same ‘exciting young producer’ who turned eighty last week. And while many volumes have rightly celebrated the genius of the man who turned around the fortunes of British Musical Theatre (at one point in 1981 one third of West End Theatres were ‘dark’) it was Cameron’s eye for, and insistence on, the detail that made such a huge impression on me.  You could see it on the stage, no matter what combination of Creatives he’d gathered together for a production. Or whether the venue was in the West End or on the other side of the globe. Just as the audiences for his shows could ‘feel’ it in the way the experience was built, ground-up, to exceed their expectations. Unfortunately I would also get to experience it professionally (and with annoying frequency) when pitching my supposedly ground-breaking initiatives to prospective sales and marketing partners.  “Oh yes. Yes, that sounds great, David. Now what was the name of that young producer who came to us with it way back in..?” Most infuriating of all were those extremely rare occasions when I would risk including a show in a promotion or initiative without approval.  No matter what the media, or how niche the audience (including, I kid you not, Tractor Weekly) within hours of it landing my phone would ring and I’d receive a summons.  I have to tell you, five storey Georgian townhouses are beautiful on the eye, but running up and down stairs carrying armfuls lever-arch files is not fun, especially when your employer possesses a gobsmackingly encyclopaedic knowledge of almost every area of the business. As my opposite number with another Producer once put it: “Your Boss doesn’t just know the prices of every theatre ticket in the West End, he also knows the price of every sandwich!”

I’d had plenty of practise running up and down stairs, to be fair. Both back in 1981, when the office had been little more than a broom cupboard on top of the Fortune Theatre, and encompassing pretty much every level of every West End auditorium we ever had the privilege of performing in. Across all that time, and all those productions, I am delighted to say that I (almost) never lost the ability to totally immerse myself in the shows themselves, no matter what my mood going in, the state of the Advances, or how many times I may have seen that production …that week.  However, I would sometimes catch myself, perhaps in a pause for applause, with my head, or my mind, turning away from the performance. A glance, no more, towards the auditorium door. And the figure standing there in the shadows, watching over everything ...with an eye for the detail that any eagle would kill for.

DT

22nd October, 2026