Excerpted from TheObserver: January 8, 2006

Transatlantic japes

It's her first visit to Broadway and, aside from the zeal of New York audiences, Susannah Clapp feels completely at home

Sunday January 8, 2006

Spamalot Sam S Shubert Theatre
Doubt Walter Kerr Theatre
A Touch of the Poet Roundabout/Studio 54
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee Circle in the Square
The Light in the Piazza Lincoln Centre Theatre at the Vivian Beaumont

More than eight years as The Observer's theatre critic and I was still a Broadway virgin. But not any more. Just before Christmas, I finally went down the Great White Way. In New York, where drama critics often blog more words than they print, there's an exhilarating appetite for plays. In the week I was there, when Manhattan got locked in by a transport strike, people walked 30 freezing blocks to see Gabriel Byrne perform in Eugene O'Neill's A Touch of the Poet. At the curtain call, Byrne stepped up to thank them for making the trek, creating what for a Londoner was a weirdly cordial moment: when actors address audiences at home, it's usually to rebuke them.

Yet how much does Broadway have to offer a Brit which is top-notch and which isn't - well - British? Half the time, if it wasn't for the zest of the audience, you wouldn't know where you were. It's hard to imagine a show more goonishly English than Spamalot - though the show won't reach London till later this year. Next to it on West 44th Street, a National Theatre poster shows the bright faces of Alan Bennett's The History Boys, due shortly. Mamma Mia! is already a huge hit. David Hare's Iraq War drama, Stuff Happens is transferring in the spring. The tide goes both ways. London will soon have Stephen Schwartz's Wicked, which musicalises the untold stories of the witches of Oz, and the sex-and-puppets show Avenue Q. Nicholas Hytner looks set to bring the Tony Kushner-Jeanine Tesori musical Caroline, or Change to the National.

Let's hope Britain also gets the cocktail firm (Sweet Concessions) which dreams up themed gargles in theatre bars. It has provided an array of whiskey variants for A Touch of the Poet and a sharp, sparkling, yellow concoction for A Light in the Piazza. Nothing, yet, for Spamalot, thank God (aka John Cleese).