Theatre

In January 1587, two businessmen, Philip Henslowe and John Cholmley, agreed to build a playhouse together in Southwark. By October The Rose was up and running and went on to produce plays by Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare. By 1605, it had fallen out of fashion and had been demolished.

We do things rather differently in the twenty-first century. The Rose Theatre in Kingston, loosely inspired by its predecessor, was first put forward as an idea by a group of councillors and local enthusiasts in 1986. Twenty-one years later, the £11 million building will open with a production of ‘Uncle Vanya’ directed by Peter Hall. The Rose’s shell was built by developers St George in a constrained space as part of a planning agreement with the Royal Borough of Kingston for the unlovely Charter Quay residential and commercial development. Kingston University became involved in the person of Frank Whatley, brother of Kevin, and Peter Hall was attracted to the project by the potential of the theatre’s ground plan. But the Kingston Theatre Trust had an epic struggle to raise the additional £6m needed to finish the theatre. Even once the bulk of the money had been raised, additional costs and delays allowed the sceptics and outraged to question why Kingston needed a theatre at all, especially when it is so easy to get from there to Waterloo and the West End. Feature continues

Fortunately, an ad hoc production of ‘As You Like It’ in 2004, performed within what was then a concrete shell, confirmed the impression that this was a space worth fighting for. Most remarkably, it seats the same number of the people as the National Theatre’s Lyttelton and yet is intimate enough to feel more like the Cottesloe. Form follows function in that there are no decorative features; instead it’s the lighting gantries that create an impressive ceiling. The slightly raked, lozenge-shaped stage is in the same wood as the floor of the auditorium making actors and audience feel as if they are in the same room. The space between the front row of seats and the stage has been kept clear in order for the physically flexible members of audience to bring their own cushions and sit on the floor, thus reviving an old tradition of the poorest and often liveliest theatregoers sitting closest to the action. Everything is exposed, suggesting that it will be those companies who acknowledge the presence of the audience that will fare best, although Hall is confident that a naturalistic piece like ‘Uncle Vanya’ will also play well.

There are plans for a masters programme in classical theatre to be run in collaboration with Kingston University. ‘My hope,’ Hall says, ‘is that we can develop a course that is attached to the company with a small group of actors for a two-year course. In the second year they would become part of the company. There’s nowhere that does that in this country and there’s a great need.’ He would also, ambitiously, like the theatre to play matinees and evening performances on Saturdays and Sundays, produced by two small companies each with a repertoire of four or five plays.

As Hall readily admits, that is all speculative. At the moment, there is no in-house company at all, rather a programme of visiting productions. ‘Uncle Vanya’ is being produced by the English Touring Theatre. In order to present the first season, the theatre needs £600,000 and some of that sum has still to be raised. The much larger sums needed to run a permanent company present a huge challenge given that the borough has given as much as it possibly can and that the Arts Council has shown no interest in the project at all.

Hall’s attitude is that they must ‘get it open and see if it stays open’. It was a policy that served him well when he led the actors into the far-from-finished National Theatre in the ’70s. Even if the money isn’t raised for his company, he promises ‘to stay in any way I can and in any way they want me to’.

There are two reasons to be cheerful and to believe that this theatre could have a future. One is that the interior of the building is so appealing with foyers large enough to provide plenty of opportunities for other activities. Secondly, Hall is relying on a survey carried out at the National Theatre when he was artistic director that surprisingly showed that 60 per cent of its core audience came from London’s south-west toe. ‘If we can deliver an exciting programme and keep it cheap enough,’ he says, ‘I think people will respond to the Rose as their theatre, rather than trekking into the centre of London.’

‘Uncle Vanya’ previews from Jan 16. Box office 0871 230 1552/www.rosetheatrekingston.org