First it was Doctor Who and the Daleks. Now revivals and comebacks are everywhere. We can see, or will soon be able to see, revivals of Cabaret and The Sound of Music, of Pravda, Bent and Tom and Viv. Monty Python, or at least Eric Idle, is back with Spamalot, a musical with a cast led by Rocky Horror Show star Tim Curry. A Gilbert and George retrospective is coming to the Tate Modern in the new year. On the big screen, Brian de Palma (The Black Dahlia), Oliver Stone (World Trade Centre) and Martin Scorsese (The Departed) are back. On the small screen, the highlights of the autumn are Robbie Coltrane back as Cracker and Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect. Bob Dylan has a new album (Modern Times), the Stones are on the road and George Michael is touring for the first time in 15 years. There was nothing on the Booker shortlist that got literary editors as excited as the memoirs of Günter Grass, almost 80, and a spat between the rival biographers of John Betjeman. Something seems to be going on here. What is this retrospective moment about?
It is tempting to see this as just part of the endless recycling of fashion and cultural icons, from flares to Noel Edmonds. But this doesn’t explain why there are so many revivals now and why so much of what is being revived is not ephemeral flotsam but acclaimed work by enduring figures.
Is this nostalgia or simply an acknowledgement that we are not producing the shows, the characters or the stars that we once did? ITV today cannot come up with anything as good as Cracker and Prime Suspect from the early 1990s. Today’s rock stars are all very well, but they are not Dylan or the Stones. And when did you last see a new west end musical as good as Cabaret, 40 years old this year? Which new plays would you rather see than Anthony Hopkins in Pravda or Ian McKellen in Bent?
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