“While a West End contract would once have come with a steady pay cheque, those job-secure days have long gone. London has never suffered from the same “smash or flop” psychosis that drives Broadway (where stories abound of actors celebrating first nights at fashionable restaurants, only to have their champagne glasses wrestled from their grasp by waiters just seconds after a duff review has appeared in the first edition of The New York Times), but the indications are that we are rapidly heading down the same road. With rare exceptions, shows today are often either enormous hits or ‘snigger-at-it-while-it-lasts’ shockers.”