Download Howard Panter, theatrical ambassador Howard Panter, the head of

Howard Panter, theatrical ambassador
Howard Panter, the head of Ambassador Theatre Group, has more clout than
many higher-profile impresarios
David Teather
The Guardian, Friday 10 September 2010
Photograph: Graeme Robertson
Asked what productions he has enjoyed lately, Howard Panter, the joint chief executive of
Ambassador Theatre Group, plumps for one of his own shows and, apparently without guile,
does a bit of name dropping.
"All My Sons I liked," he says, "which, I know, I have got a vested interest in. David [Suchet]'s
performance – you think 'ah, he is really getting up there with Scofield and is really getting
up there with Larry'. I went to drama school with David, so I am a little bit biased, but I
mean, he is really a mature artist now, which is fantastic."
Although virtually unknown among the public compared with Andrew Lloyd Webber or
Cameron Mackintosh, Panter and his wife Rosemary Squire, the co-founder of Ambassador,
are arguably the most powerful figures in the business.
Actor Simon Callow was best man at their wedding and another close friend, Panter says, is
Billy Elliot director Stephen Daldry, whom they worked alongside to raise money for the
Royal Court redevelopment.
Panter evidently has theatre in his veins. He musters his best businesslike self for the
interview, talks about databases and "vertical integration" (owning both theatres and
productions). But as the line of questioning softens into friendly gossip, he veers from
blokey to theatrical camp, dropping in the odd "dear" and "love".
From his neat offices above Leicester Square tube station, Panter can take an easy amble
through the mob of tourists to some of Ambassador's most prized possessions. Among
others, the business owns the Piccadilly, Phoenix, Savoy and Playhouse theatres, as well as
the Donmar Warehouse, and a portfolio of regional playhouses, including the Theatre Royal
in Brighton, the Milton Keynes Theatre and King's Theatre in Glasgow. Panter and Squire
underlined their status as the first couple of theatreland when they completed a £90m deal
last year to buy the stable of venues owned by Live Nation. Recent productions have
included The Misanthrope, featuring Keira Knightley ("wonderful, wonderfully professional")
and the musical Legally Blonde.
On Broadway
A bear of a man, Panter, 62, talks with gusto and has the kind of projection that could reach
the cheap seats, even though he maintains he never wanted to be an actor. Instead, he did
almost everything else: stage management, lighting design and directing. He met Squire 30
years ago, when she was working in the box office at the Queen's Theatre, where Panter
was producing Patricia Routledge in And a Nightingale Sang. It flopped, but they eventually
married. They opened their first theatre in 1992 in Woking, and three years later added the
Ambassadors in London.
The company is now about to open its 40th venue, in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, with a
production of Swan Lake. Panter is eager to talk about the project, the Waterside, which he
has a contract to manage – his company holds a mix of freeholds, leaseholds and
management contracts. He mainly wants to shower praise on the councillors who have
made the venue work despite local sniping and the headwinds of a downturn.
He eschews comparisons with Lloyd Webber and Mackintosh. "They run personal fiefdoms.
They personally both made a fortune. Cameron has made a lot of money out of three shows
– good luck to him. I, effectively, am an employee. I created the business with Rosemary,
but I am an employee. I get on with Andrew well, he is a nice bloke, loves theatre, bonkers
of course, but a nice man."
Panter is unapologetic about the number of musicals Ambassador puts on. "We are more
like the BBC than a niche publisher. We do everything from Panorama to Eastenders,
because we have 400,000 seats a week for sale."
The company, he says, has a vested interest in developing new serious talent and cites a
production of Elling, based on a Norwegian film, commissioned by Ambassador and put on
at Trafalgar Studios. The show is moving to Broadway, with Brendan Fraser and Denis
O'Hare (like a good promoter, Panter never mentions a play without telling you the stars).
"It will be only the second Norwegian play to go on Broadway since Ibsen," he says. He is
also looking for another space in London for companies that don't usually get a chance to
perform in the West End, particularly international companies.
In any case, he adds, the musical is not an example of some kind of artistic bankruptcy. "We
are going to be bringing over the Lincoln Centre's wonderful production of South Pacific –
extraordinary moving piece of work, basically about men at war," he says. Only with some
nice songs? "Mr Hammerstein and Mr Rodgers knew a thing or two about creating
wonderful music, yes, but the core of it is that it is about something. It is wrong to lump all
musicals together."
He says theatre has remained robust during the recession. "Once about every 18 months I
am asked about the death of theatre," he says. "Well I can take you around London if you
like, show you some boarded up factories, show you some boarded up offices, some
boarded up shops – can't actually show you some boarded up theatres. Can't think why that
is, other than from Grecian times onwards, it has been that unique experience of stories
told to us in a darkened space, our stories, and that is something that is in our DNA."
Married to Rambert
He says attendances in the West End in the first half of the year are up 1.75%, while
Ambassador theatres are up 5%. According to published accounts, the firm last year turned
over £72.6m and lost a little over £500,000.
The firm invests around £3m-£5m a year in upkeep of its listed theatres. But the main focus
is developing a distribution network between regional theatres in Britain and North
America, which would host touring productions. Panter is also looking to buy other venues
in New York, Berlin and Sydney. The advantage of owning venues and producing, he says, is
the ability to control the quality of the work. "Of course people like Shakespeare were good
at vertically integrated models, writing, acting and owning the theatre."
He worries about the impact spending cuts will have on the arts – he is also chairman of the
publicly funded contemporary dance group the Rambert Dance Company – but he says the
bigger names are likely to be inventive and chart a way through. "I am more troubled about
– and I make this up because I don't know if such a place exists – the Huddersfield Art
Gallery, because I suspect they are less able to fundraise and create inventive initiatives
than the Donmar [in Covent Garden]."
For now, though, Panter is focused on his own fundraising. "I have become married to
Rambert," he says. "We are building on the South Bank, and we have about £19m to raise,
we are about halfway there. We have a site behind the National Theatre, part of the Coin
Street community [development trust]. Iain Tuckett, who runs Coin Street, happens to be,
by wonderful chance, a contemporary dance fan, and we need a new home because our
studios are falling down in Chiswick.
"I say Rambert is the national theatre of contemporary dance and there isn't a proper home
for contemporary dance on the South Bank and we will be it. So if you've got a few bob
around you, I am looking for £19m," he says, letting out a belly laugh.