If you want to be taken seriously in the arts these days you've got to do things on an epic scale - witness Peter Hall's Tantalus, or the RSC's programme of Shakespeare's history plays. Mark Lawson explains how doing art became an extreme sport. In later life, we continue to assume this simple opposition between book in study and studs in boots. There were astonished articles when it emerged that an England cricket captain, Mike Atherton, read serious modern novels.
Culture is seen as the soft option.
Ernest Hemingway hunted, Norman Mailer boxed, John Irving wrestles. Those in the first group are the Everest men. This seems to be becoming the creed of British theatre. If you still have blood in your buttocks at the final curtain, it isn't a true theatrical experience. Apart from the psychological drive to deny the idea that art is for wimps, there are two reasons for the rise of these dramatic marathons.