Aspeaker. A speech. A microphone. A bare stage. And — no expense spared here — a glass of water. As an evening’s entertainment, it does not sound like much: Bruce Springsteen and his E Street extravaganza this is not. And yet when Malcolm Gladwell, a Manhattan-based journalist, turned up last winter to do a monologue at the Lyceum, a London theater that has hosted Led Zeppelin and is now home to the Lion King musical, he filled it — twice.
Despite bitter November temperatures, long lines formed and the first show had to be delayed by half an hour to squeeze in as many punters as possible. All 4,000 tickets, at up to £25 (US$40) a head, sold out.
What were they getting for their money? Gladwell does not do stand-up, is not in exclusive possession of the Lord’s wisdom and cannot tell you how to make millions from buy-to-let. A small, skinny, former business reporter with a towering afro and hands that flutter about as if evading an invisible butterfly net, Gladwell likes to address such pressing issues as the quest for the perfect pasta sauce. (Google the video: It is brilliant.)
That winter evening he talked for just over an hour — about plane crashes. There was no video, no Q&A, and his material was hardly roll-in-the-aisles stuff. Yet Gladwell pulled it off — so much so that he was back in London this week on a mini-tour, playing just enough dates — from Liverpool to Brighton — to fill the back of a concert T-shirt.
“There are hundreds of people like me,” he says.
A decade ago, a scientist, a policy wonk or a writer with a big idea would publish it in books and articles; now they also take to the road and talk about it — in lectures, debates and book readings. The talk is turning into a performing art; the intellectual is becoming a stage act.
“Talks are stand-up without the jokes,” said David Johnson, Gladwell’s tour producer. (Now there is a sign of changed times: a journalist with a tour manager.)
“You get to a certain age and you don’t want to get drunk and be deafened by some rock band or heckle some bad comedian. You’d rather be informed instead,” he said.
Which is presumably why two weeks ago, the Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman packed the London School of Economics for three nights running. Full houses saw a middle-aged man with a graying beard and a blue suit jovially bringing up lecture slides that showed how the current financial crisis has left the world economy in a deep hole. It was the PowerPoint Presentation of Doom, leavened with a fair few jokes — and it was a hit.
That format — light humor and serious talk, delivered live by a big name — can be caught across the country at regional theaters and literary festivals. This week, Barnstaple residents in southern England can spend an evening with former UN high representative in Bosnia Paddy Ashdown and David Frost will visit Ludlow to talk about his life and times. Both appearances will be put on by Clive Conway, who also handles Shirley Williams, Benjamin Zephaniah and Ann Widdecombe.
“It’s a chance for people to see someone they would normally see only on the TV, a charismatic and inspiring personality,” he said. “They come away entertained but also slightly informed.”
Even the highbrows now have established performing names, guaranteed to draw a good crowd. Lectures by Slavoj Zizek — the celebrity Leninist who resembles a cross between a giant bear and Latka from the sitcom Taxi — sell out far faster than any of his philosophy books. And for those who prefer their politics served with more earnestness and less ideology, there is No Logo author Naomi Klein, a warmer, more inclusive speaker whose performances can sound as if she is thinking out loud.
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