Musicality experts condemn TV’s ‘blood sport’ reality shows

Published Wednesday 19 September 2007 at 16:10 by Matthew Hemley

Industry figures from television’s first musical theatre talent show, Musicality, have criticised the lack of training offered by Andrew Lloyd Webber’s subsequent reality TV projects, such as Any Dream Will Do.

Gareth Valentine, who was Musicality’s musical supervisor, and Stacey Haynes, who worked on choreography with the programme’s contestants, have claimed subsequent shows have been more successful in filling theatres than supporting winners with the right training and painted a “miserable and pessimistic” view of the acting profession.

Valentine, who has worked as musical supervisor on West End shows such as Wicked and Chicago, accused Lloyd Webber of being “self-serving” and said: “He got people off the streets to fill his own theatres and used the TV to feed off the theatre and vice versa. It is such a miserable and pessimistic view of the theatre.

“What we did with our show was to make people better, and this is what Musicality did and what TV should do more of. Unfortunately, I don’t believe the general public are discerning enough to know the difference.”

Valentine likened recent talent search shows to “blood sport” because of judges’ “aggressive” handling of contestants.

Haynes, who has worked as a director and choreographer on West End productions such as Five Guys Named Moe, said Channel 4’s Musicality was different from later talent shows because it offered training to contestants that was more representative of the kind offered in drama schools.

Despite having also worked as resident choreographer on ITV’s Grease is the Word, she claimed the winners of recent shows could not sustain eight performances a week, and said: “That is why people in the West End turn around and say, ‘Who are these guys walking in off the street and taking our jobs and they have not done that much training?’. We did not give the contestants on Musicality as much training as they would get in a three-year course, but we gave them a damn sight better chance than these BBC and ITV shows.”

Haynes also claimed the shows where the public vote to find their stars was a trend that would “end very soon”.

Lloyd Webber declined to comment.