6 ★ FINANCIAL TIMES Friday6 March 2020

ARTS

Brio:

from left,

Hannah

Ducharme,

Jemma

Alexander

and Aimie

Atkinson

in ‘Pretty

Woman’

Helen Maybanks

S

he asks for $4,000; he offers

$2,000; they settle for $3,000.

“I would have stayed fortwo

thousand,” she says, impishly.

“I would have paid four,” he

shoots back. Cute, huh? Except that

what he is paying for is her presence by

his side and her body in his bed. But

that’s OK because they’ll do the former

in designer brands and the latter in his

penthouse suite.

Even in 1990, there was something

unsavoury aboutPretty Woman; in the

#MeToo era it feels positively creepy.

A sort ofPygmalion-meets-Cinderella

romcom, with platinum credit cards,

thefilmrecounts how Edward, a billion-

aire vulture capitalist, “rescues” Vivian,

an LA street walker, by scooping her up

and taking her shopping.

Even the radiant loveliness and star

quality of Julia Roberts couldn’t shake

off unease about that storyline. And in

its new incarnation asPretty Woman:

The Musical at the Piccadilly Theatre,(

London; written by Garry Marshall and

J.F. Lawton), all the bright-eyed brio of

the hard-working cast can’t overcome

its tawdry shallowness. Yes, she “res-

cues him right back”, helping him (in six

days) to find his soul, and yes, there is

empowerment: Vivian has integrity; she

also finally declares a level of independ-

ence — though to do what is never

defined. Her friend Kit (a lovely, sharp

performance from Rachael Wooding) is

inspired to become a police officer (this

plot leap needs a musical to itself).

There’s also a smidgen of back story:

Vivian has a song about how she ended

up on the streets. Edward learns that

money can’t make you happy. But even

withPygmalionin 1913 Bernard Shaw

got much further in interrogating the

initial premise. And right now you

surely can’t stage a piece about wealthy

men procuring women without tackling

the basic nastiness of that and the power

structures beneath it.

The musical, however, sticks closely

to the film,down to the costumes and

the quaint 1980s mobile phone. There’s

a new character: an MC called Happy

Man, played by the versatile Bob

Harms, who also pops up as the hotel

manager, and whose mischievous tango

numbers with the bellhop (Alex

Charles) are among the highlights of

Jerry Mitchell’s staging. The songs,

from Bryan Adams and Jim Vallance,

create a suitable rock vibe, best suited to

belters such as Vivian’s defiant “I Can’t

Go Back”.

Aimie Atkinson delivers thiswith

power and pathos, and brings coltish

energy andan appealing sincerity to the

part of Vivian, but she is limited by the

character’s flimsiness. Likewise Danny

Mac,as the weirdly cardboard Edward,

who lurches from ruthless businessman

to kittenish Romeo, rolling barefoot on

the ground as he quotes Shakespeare

sonnets. There might be a version of

PrettyWoman hat you could do now, butt

this isn’t it.AAEEE

We’re back with sex, money and

the tackier excesses of the 1980s in

Women Beware Women t the Sama

Wanamaker Playhouse, London. Direc-

tor Amy Hodge transplants Thomas

Middleton’s acid 17th-century tragedy

from a darklycorrupt Medici Florence

to a brittle 1980s setting and plays it as

pitch-black comedy.

Joanna Scotcher’s design is all smooth

marble, topped off with a gold elevator

(now where have we seen that before?)

and the costumes reek of expensive vul-

garity. Tara Fitzgerald’s husky-voiced

arch manipulator Livia struts about in a

sharp Chanel suit — a version of Iago in

spiked heels — as she pimps out the

virtuous young Bianca to the Duke and

dupes her own niece, Isabella, into an

incestuous relationship. Quite what

drives Livia is unclear, but Fitzgerald

hints that cold cynicism acts as a protec-

tive shield and a way of buying herself, a

middle-aged widow, a degree of power

in a patriarchal society.

The switch in tone works well up to a

point. Thestorytelling is clean and

bright and there is a queasy comedy to

the machinations of the plot. Here inno-

cence is a folly: a commodity to be

bought and sold. Relationships are

transactional and marriage is a trap.

Even love’s young dream swiftly turns

sour when Leantio decides to lock up his

new bride (an early dramatic example

of coercive control). Meanwhile, in a

nauseating scene, Isabella is paraded

like a trophy before her oafish husband-

to-be (played by Helen Cripps as a

boasting buffoon in a blazer).

The toe-curling comedy turns chill-

ing, however, when Bianca is tricked

into a room with the Duke, who then

locks the doors and assaults her — very

hard to watch at any time, but particu-

larly following the Epstein and Wein-

stein cases. Thalissa Teixeira is quite

brilliant, switching from bright-eyed

ease to a state of numb, withdrawn

shock, then to a cool, cynical pragma-

tism when she realises that, if she is

going to be someone’s locked-up toy, she

may as well make money from it.

But overall the production doesn’t

quite balance that mix of comedy and

horror, and the weight of what is at stake

getsmuffled as the action unfolds.The

gory finale comes over as grisly comedy,

rather than a hellish comeuppance for a

thoroughly corrupt society. AAEEA

‘PrettyWoman:TheMusical’toJanuary

021, 2 prettywomanthemusical.com

‘WomenBewareWomen’toApril

shakespearesglobe.com

Pretty creepy in the age of #MeToo

Above:

spectators view

a work by Tom

Wesselmann;

below,

installation by

Dan Graham,

both at Art

Basel 2019

Dealer sales were found to have

increased slightly during the year (2 per

cent), though this is a highly frag-

mented field and there is more margin

for error when compiling macro data for

the private market. In a blow to price

transparency, the already obscure art

market continues its move towards

increasing discretion: the report finds

that auction sales accounted for 42 per

cent and dealer sales for 58 per cent of

the market in 2019.

France proved a rare bright spark geo-

graphically, benefiting from the uncer-

tainty over the UK’s exit from the EU,

accounting for 7 per cent of the global

market’s value (up from 6 per cent in

2018). Here sales were up 7 per cent

during the year to $4.2bn, including a 16

per cent gain at auction.

There was relatively good news for the

middle market, defined as works valued

between $50,000 and $1m, which

performed “least poorly” at auction,

falling 9 per cent. The value of sales at

the high end (above $1m) fell 23 per

cent, and 12 per cent in the market

below $50,000. In the dealer segment —

for which about 1,100 gallerists

responded to McAndrew’s survey — the

best performing businesses were those

with a turnover of between $250,

and $500,000. These reported 2019

sales up 17 per cent, followed closely by

dealers at the highest end (annual turn-

over more than $30m), with a 16 per

cent improvement.

The worst hit were businesses in the

$500,000-$1m turnover range, where

sales fell 9 per cent year on year. Value

continues to shift upwards: the majority

(84 per cent) of private transactions

were made below $50,000 but these

represented just 27 per cent of value,

down 10 per cent from 2018.

The art market’s reliance on travel

and transport to events worldwide

may have fed into the environmental

T

he value of the global art

market shrank 5 per cent to

$64.1bn in 2019, its first fall

in three years, as trade ten-

sions and other economic

issues dragged the numbers down, even

before the impact of Covid-19. So finds

this year’s bellwether industry report

written by the economist Clare McAn-

drew and published by Art Basel and

UBS yesterday.

“People were already concerned

about the macro distractions, but the

coronavirus will have a wider financial

impact that will filter down to the art

market,” McAndrew says.

Sales in China, the third-largest mar-

ket for art and antiques fter the US anda

UK, and worth nearly one-fifth of the

global total, fell 10 per cent last year, the

biggest drop of the three dominant art

market centres. China — which the

report defines as Hong Kong, Macau

and Taiwan as well as the Mainland —

had already fallen 3 per cent in 2018.

Sales in the US, which accounted for 44

per cent of the market, fell 5 per cent as

buyers and sellers were put off by the

negative geopolitical environment. In

the UK, which had a 20 per cent share of

art sales in 2019, values dropped 9 per

cent, hurt by Brexit uncertainty.

“The mega-wealthy are doing better

than ever, but politics affects the mood

and the art being made. We don’t exist in

a glass bubble... These are challenging

times to sell luxury goods... People’s

minds are elsewhere,” says a top-level

dealer quoted in the report.

A raft of regulation globally and the

rise of national protectionism also sti-

fled trade, the report finds. Increased

red tape, including VAT reforms in

China and import tariffs in the US, pro-

duced “negative trickle-down effects on

investor and consumer confidence in

some industries” during the year.

The bulk of the art market’s fall came

from sales at auction: the report sepa-

rates these public sales from the private

dealer market. The number of high-

value works ($10m+) offered at auction

was down 35 per cent from 2018 and

contributed to a year-on-year fall in

value of 17 per cent. In China, auction

sales were down 16 per cent during the

year, dragged by lower prices in the

older fine art and decorative sectors of

the market. Globally, postwar and con-

temporary works (by artists born after

1910) again accounted for the majority

of auction sales, with a 53 per cent share

(50 per cent in 2018). Within this seg-

ment, works created in the past 20 years

accounted for 23 per cent of value, a

steep jump from 14 per cent in 2018.

Art market goes into reverse

narrative in 2019, but not to the extent

that behaviour will change in the near

future, the report finds. A survey of

1,300 high net worth individuals in

seven regions found that, “Despite their

greater reported concerns regarding

sustainability, wealthy millennial col-

lectors [aged 23-38] were most likely to

be planning to travel more.”

Of these millennials, who comprised

nearly half of the survey’s respondents

and who were found by UBS to be the

highest spenders in 2019, 80 per cent

planned to increase their travel in 2020.

Of the 9 per cent of collectors who were

committed to reducing their art-related

travel, only 9 per cent (ie 11 people) said

this was to reduce their carbon foot-

print; 27 per cent put the decision down

to rising costs and the “hassle of travel”.

Dealers, found to average four art fairs

per year in 2019, were also asked about

work-related travel. The average

number of flights per gallery was found

to be 12, comprising seven short-haul

flights (under six hours) and five long-

haul flights. Galleries with annual sales

of more than $10m raised the stakes,

averaging 23 flights a year. “Many deal-

ers viewed art fairs as their main reason

for travelling, and as long as [these] con-

tinued to be their focus for sales and new

collectors, they would continue to have

to travel to them,” McAndrew writes.

Circumstances may, however, force a

reduction in travel in 2020 as health

concerns trump environmental issues.

Covid-19 has already closed this month’s

planned Art Basel Hong Kong and Art

Dubai fairs, while mass events in all

industries around the world are having

to rethink. Despite the optimism

recorded in this year’s report, the art

market looks unlikely to reach its 2014

peak of $68.2bn any time soon.

“There’s a battery of news working

against international trade just now,”

McAndrew says. She adds: “On the plus

side, we saw how quickly the art market

bounced back in 2010 [after the most

recent financial crisis]. People soon tire

of not spending their money.”

artbasel.com/theartmarket

Queasy comedy: Gloria Onitiri in

‘Women Beware Women’

Industry report shows the

first fall in three years, even

before impact of Covid-19,

writes Melanie Gerlis

THEATRE

Sarah

Hemming

‘These are challenging

times to sell luxury

goods. People’s minds

are elsewhere’

MARCH 6 2020 Section:Features Time: 3/20205/ - 17:55 User:david.cheal Page Name:ARTS LON, Part,Page,Edition:EUR , 6, 1