RTÉ was delighted to open Toy Show the Musical on Wednesday night this week.
The audience reaction so far has been fantastic. Families and children are really loving the show – with a wonderful cast of child and adult actors, new original songs, beautiful staging, and a uniquely Irish family story really seeming to capture the imagination of children and adults alike. This was always going to be a show led by children for children, in keeping with Toy Show itself.
RTÉ sits at the centre of Irish life, Irish culture, and Irish media. We have a broad public remit and a range of journalistic and cultural obligations. As media fragments more and more, RTÉ, as a dual funded public service media organisation, has an obligation to diversify its commercial activities beyond advertising. We must try new things, to grow and sustain all we are obliged to do.
Inevitably when we do something new, it attracts attention. While the BBC (and other broadcasters) has developed many live shows based on some of its big TV properties (e.g., Top Gear, Strictly Come Dancing, Dr. Who), this new show, developed over the past few years, is a new departure for RTÉ. After a difficult period for the live events industry, RTÉ is very proud to be supporting and investing in Irish creative and theatrical talent, writers, composers, actors, producers, directors, designers and all the production and technical specialists. In total, between the creative team, cast, and crew this show is giving employment to over 100 people during its run, in addition to a front of house team and set up crew.
We are all too aware of how few opportunities there are in Ireland to work on projects of this scale and ambition. We feel very fortunate to be able to offer that opportunity to such a young and talented, almost fully Irish, team. RTÉ supports the arts in many ways, but perhaps the most practical way is in creating meaningful creative opportunities and pathways for new talent. Having been cast by Maureen Hughes, who has unearthed some of Ireland's most prodigious stage and screen talent in the last 20 years, we are sure that anyone who has seen some of the child performers in this show, are looking at future adult stars of the stage and screen. That was a key aim for us in developing this show.
We are also delighted to be bringing a new, original, and uniquely Irish musical to Irish audiences to sit alongside the international musical productions which routinely come to Dublin. While Irish audiences certainly love the best shows from Disney, the West End and Broadway we wanted to offer audiences a show that is rooted here – part of our culture and our imagination, but also with comparable ambition and production values. To do that requires investment in development and in talent and a willingness to take a multi-annual view on a return. It also requires a willingness to take some risk – creative projects like original musicals, movies or TV series are always a risk.
The personal messages of support from the cast and crew of other live shows in Dublin and the practical support of so many from across Ireland’s relatively small theatrical and production world have been very heartening. There really is a wonderful kindred spirit in the world of theatre. People involved in making live theatre know how difficult it is to fund, to develop and produce original high-quality work that audiences will respond to. They also know it has always been a mixed ecology of commercial and publicly funded productions and entities.
The attempts by some to pit Toy Show the Musical against other productions is at odds with the broad support we have received from the theatre world. It is also at odds with the amount of airtime support RTÉ routinely makes available to live events of all kinds through its RTÉ supporting the Arts scheme. Likewise, RTÉ’s commercial airtime is and has always been open to commercial live productions, indeed at present a range of other Christmas shows are being heavily promoted across RTÉ services. There are no restrictions on access to RTÉ platforms for the promotion of commercial productions. Like all broadcasters, we promote our own programmes and are expressly permitted by our regulator to cross promote programme-related projects like Toy Show the Musical outside of commercial airtime.
While this show is a big production, it is a small part of RTÉ’s offer to audiences this November and December. It has not distracted RTÉ from delivering its most successful World Cup ever, or broadcasting news-making documentaries like Quinn Country, launching its enhanced GAAGO partnership, providing live news coverage of a change in the Taoiseach’s office or the RTÉ Concert Orchestra’s Christmas shows. RTÉ has long had to do many things at once, that’s what we’re here to do.
Toy Show The Musical is a fictional story that centres around twelve-year-old Nell Mooney as she, along with the local kids, must find a way to save her family and Toy Show night which is in jeopardy and keep everyone’s favourite TV show alive. How Irish. RTÉ is very proud of this show.Yesterday at our 12.30 showing we had 1,700 kids from local schools at the show and they almost blew the roof off with excitement. Come and see for yourself.
