The Stage

Seeing clearly - David Ian

Published Friday 12 November 2004 at 15:10 by Mark Shenton

Unlike the fictional pairing of Bialystock and Bloom in Clear Channel’s latest West End hit The Producers, David Ian - the company’s managing director of Europe - has always focused on creating theatrical hits. His track record proves him to be extremely successful at this, perhaps a result of having worked on either side of the footlights, writes Mark Shenton

Most theatre producers, outside of the fictional world of Mel Brooks’ The Producers at any rate, seek to turn their shows into hits but the law of theatrical averages seems to dictate that most shows lose money - few make it. Hence the age-old adage: “You can’t make a living in the theatre - but you can make a killing.”

Of course, Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom have other ideas in The Producers, figuring out that you can actually make more money out of over-capitalising a flop, closing it overnight and retaining the balance. But the scheme spectacularly backfires when their supposed flop turns into an overnight sensation.

And last week, the London import of The Producers became just that, some three and a half years after it took Broadway by storm, to become a smash hit show about a would-be flop. Not that events were crisis-free backstage. Just a week before previews began, the star Richard Dreyfuss suddenly departed, with the official reason given being a recurring physical injury - though the star of Jaws had already made jaws drop all over theatreland by urging a TV chat show audience not to turn up to see him in the show before Christmas as he wasn’t ready yet.

But director Susan Stroman rang up her original Broadway star Nathan Lane and prevailed upon him to come over and save the day - not to mention pocket a weekly salary rumoured to be £38,000. I would like to have been a fly on the wall in the smart Mayfair offices of David Ian, managing director of the European division of the American-financed, international media company Clear Channel Entertainment and lead London producer of The Producers, as these events played out. However, sitting opposite him a few weeks beforehand, it is difficult to imagine what would ruffle him.

He is a smooth operator and an even smoother talker, with a glowing orange tan and a generous shock of grey-streaked hair that make him look part playboy and part serious player. But he has also seen the business from both sides of the footlights, in the West End and in the regions, as performer and producer in and of shows both large and small. This has served him in good stead to face whatever challenges may come his way. Like Bill Kenwright, who also began life as an actor, Ian started out as a performer. He sang in a group called First Division that came second in the Song for Europe and therefore very nearly represented Britain at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1983.

“Sally-Ann Triplett was in Bardo - the group who won the year before me - and she did Grease and has just done Anything Goes for me, so it’s a small world.”

Coincidences and connections like this are a recurring theme in Ian’s conversation, not to mention thoughts of how different things might have been had they won. “We might have been Bucks Fizz, or you could be interviewing Mike Nolan.”

Instead, I’m interviewing Ian because he soon left behind the pop world and entered a theatrical one. He trod the boards as Rocky in a 1985 tour of The Rocky Horror Show, did time in Dave Clark’s Time - taking over from David Cassidy in the lead role at the Dominion, “which is now one of the theatres I run”, he adds - and played Joseph in a late eighties Kenwright tour of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. In 1980 he got the part of Frederic in a tour of The Pirates of Penzance, starring Paul Nicholas as the Pirate King, which also played a brief season at the London Palladium - a theatre that Ian as producer has since twice consecutively installed healthy hits into.

Nicholas and Ian became fast friends and it was on a flight to Belfast that they had a conversation that would lead to them teaming up as producers. “Paul asked me what I was planning on doing next. I had had a pretty good education and I loved the business but I said ‘it’s a bit tough, this performer lark, unless you become famous like you and get paid lots of money for the starring role’. I said I’d love to be able to be a bit more proactive, rather than waiting for my agent to ring with an audition. I’d like to choose projects and make them happen. And Paul said that if there was anything I ever thought of doing and it would involve him as an artist, he would love to do something together.”

Soon after, Ian saw a concert performance of Jesus Christ Superstar at the Barbican that he loved and saw an opportunity.

“It was nearly twenty years since Superstar had opened at the Palace with Paul as Jesus, so I thought - what about Paul doing this as an anniversary Sunday evening concert there? Paul thought it was a great idea and suggested to go in halves with me on the cost and go out halves on any profits if we made them. We did one advert on Capital Radio and the seats sold out literally within hours. So Paul suggested we put on a second performance that day - and both shows sold out.”

The next year, they did three more Sunday runs in Bournemouth, Brighton and Blackpool and they all sold out completely too, so Nicholas suggested touring it around the rest of the country.

“It was great experience for me. I went from nothing to managing what was ostensibly a full-sized London show touring nightly, going from city to city in coaches. We did fantastically well. But it also forged some great relationships, because very crucially we had to negotiate the license for Superstar with David Land, who is sadly no longer with us but was the person who managed Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber in the early parts of their career.

“I was also experiencing venues that later in my life in another world would now become mine to manage. So I know my venues incredibly well from both a performer’s perspective, having performed in them and also a producer’s perspective, having put shows into them.”

For a producer, there is clearly no substitute for hands-on experience and being able to see the overall picture but it also requires a big idea - and being able to execute it. The next one was jackpot time.

“I had always really fancied Grease as an idea. Paul and I had acquired the touring license to tour the UK with it but we didn’t have the film songs. But I thought that the trick is to do the movie live on stage.”

They needed to bring the original stage show and film together. Paul, who had worked with Robert Stigwood, producer of the film of Grease, as an actor on both Superstar and Hair, tracked him down. They all had lunch together at Claridge’s.

“And Robert, God bless him, singlehandedly made my career at that point by saying, ‘David Land tells me you know what you are doing. We’ll do it together and co-produce - you two raise what you can financially and I’ll be responsible for the rest’. It was Robert’s willingness to support and endorse someone who had never done a West End show before that changed my life. The rest is history, as they say and it is still on now eleven years later, touring around the country and making us all lots of money.”

Ian’s winning streak continued over the next decade, with a tour of Evita that Stigwood again invited him to do, another of Singin’ in the Rain starring Paul Nicholas - “our co-producer was Apollo Leisure, which started my relationship with Paul Gregg and led me to where I am today” and another Stigwood partnership Saturday Night Fever. In the same period he also put on the one-man play Defending the Caveman, the only show for which Ian has personally won an Olivier and the smallest show he’s ever produced - “it cost us less than £100,000” - and a revival of The King and I in partnership with the original Australian producers.

“It was while The King and I was in production that Paul Gregg approached me because Apollo had by then been acquired by what was then SFX and with whom I was touring their production of Dr Doolittle. He was chairman of the overall European business that included sports representation and a music business promoting tours, but he wanted someone to hands-on run the theatre side. At first I resisted. I was running what was becoming a pretty prolific, focused, small independent production office, and I was loving it. The shows were earning money and paying the office overhead and I loved the independence.”

Then SFX was in turn acquired by Clear Channel and Gregg approached him again. Instead of suggesting he leave his own production office behind, they would simply absorb it and he could continue to work on his shows uninterrupted. He signed on the dotted line.

“The brief was that this is a multibillion dollar company that just wants to grow and would like to put more shows on. And I see myself in my core as being a theatre producer, so it was music to my ears.”

But since Gregg’s departure from the company, he has also had to take on wider responsibilities for the company’s sports and motor-racing interests, too. Though Ian admits that the job entails an “element of corporate reporting”, he also adds: “It’s reporting to an owner who has so far supported me hugely and has not said no to anything, and I mean anything, that I want to do.”

“When people think of Clear Channel as this big American corporation, I say I’m a long-standing Equity member who has been around this business for nigh-on 20 years now as a performer and producer and it’s still me and I’ve got a high level of autonomy. But I’m not a private business, so we have to grow and therefore we have to take risks and participate.

“That’s great for the industry and for the theatre, because you’ve got this Goliath of a company out there that is eager to do things. It’s not an individual risking big bucks, which gives you the confidence and wherewithal to take some risk and suffer some loss, if necessary.

“It’s a real challenge - especially in a business that is fundamentally volatile - but I don’t think we’ve got burnt yet. We’re doing huge productions and they’re happening because we have a public company that is funding them because they want to grow. Certainly, speaking from personal experience, if you were on your own and look at the mountains to climb to meet a £3.5m or £4m production cost, where do you start?”

Clearly Clear Channel and David Ian are here to stay. As well as managing some 21 major theatres - three of them in the West End - the company is developing product everywhere to fill them and other venues. It has just launched the first UK national tour of Starlight Express, it is also responsible for the current tour of Cats and is partnering on a major revival of Guys and Dolls next year with ATG. It is co-producing the London import of the Broadway hit Hairspray next and there are also plans for a revival of The Sound of Music, co-produced with Andrew Lloyd Webber.

“It is still very much mates doing shows together. It’s the same process - but with a level of funding that I could never have afforded or got together by myself.”

DAVID IAN - A SUMMARY

1985 - Plays Rocky in a touring production of The Rocky Horror Show

1987 - Takes over from David Cassidy in Time at the Dominion Theatre

1990 - Plays Frederic in a tour of The Pirates of Penzance and meets Paul Nicholas. They join forces to co-produce a one-night concert performance of Jesus Christ Superstar at the Palace Theatre, and subsequently tour nationally.

1993 - David Ian and Paul Nicholas co-produce a new stage version of Grease at the Dominion Theatre, incorporating songs from the film for the first time

1995 - Co-produces Ain’t Misbehavin at the Lyric Theatre

1995-7 - Produces tours of Evita (starring Marti Webb) and Singin’ in the Rain (staring Paul Nicholas)

1996-1999 - Produces the annual Laurence Olivier Award ceremonies for the Society of London Theatre

1998 - Co-produces Saturday Night Fever at the London Palladium

1999 - Co-produces Defending the Caveman at the Apollo Theatre. Show wins Olivier Award for Best Entertainment.

2000 - Co-produces The King and I at the London Palladium

2001 - Merges his company with Clear Channel Entertainment and takes over running of theatrical division.

2003 - Co-produces transfer of Anything Goes from the National to Drury Lane

2004 - Lead producer of transfer of The Producers to Drury Lane; also launches first UK national tour of Starlight Express 2005 and beyond - co-producing revivals of Guys and Dolls and The Sound of Muic and the transfer of Hairspray from Broadway. Appointed managing director of Clear Channel Europe