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Sidmouth Manor Pavilion Theatre - An Inspector Calls (with James Pellow)

Folks who know me very well often say, kindly I think, that I should get out more. I’m a grumpy old sod at the best of times and in the ...

Tuesday 19 May 2020

Life in Lockdown - a plea for small theatres





I have a number of passions in my life. They have changed positions as I have aged, but the overall list is pretty stable. Horseracing, theatre, old murder cases, cooking, reading, and my lovely wife are all in there somewhere plus a couple I have no intentions of telling you about. With the exception of horseracing, sadly missed, they have all come to the fore in these weird endless weeks of lockdown. For the statistically minded I am now on Day 62 of self isolation. Made bearable by a first class service from Waitrose. And all those lovely delivery drivers. Especially the ones bringing whisky and fags. Benign weather and quiet skies bring birds in abundance to our small garden and acts of kindness, small and large, are witnessed everywhere. Only the daily parliamentary briefings of grim statistics and pictures of rainbows in small terraced windows remind you that there is a battle going on out there.

Theatre is just one of the numerous casualties and for those who perform in it as well as watch it is particularly frustrating. I am trying to do my bit for the professionals, anything I watch of theirs I make a small donation to their cause. The National Theatre’s Twelfth Night was well worth the £10 a sofa seat ticket we paid. I calculated that if everyone who tuned into it did the same they would have raised around £4,000,000. I hope they did. But that does not help those who perform for fun or seasonal visitors, especially the ones that have small theatres to run. From my own small world I am thinking of the lovely Manor Theatre in Sidmouth, our favourite holiday place and the home of England’s only permanent summer professional Rep Company, and, closer to home, Dunstable Rep, Welwyn’s Barn, and St Albans Company of Ten. And further afield Hitchin’s Queen Mother and Toddington’s TADS. Been to them all in my time. How will they survive I ask myself?

It ain’t going to be easy. Even if they can perform, not easy doing a social distancing Romeo and Juliet, will anyone come in the foreseeable future? Hopefully any gloomy prognosis will be thrown into the dustbin of history before long, but commonsense tells me that the next couple of years could be pretty fallow ones in the small time theatrical world. If they do not have strong reserves and, possibly, kindly local authorities, I reckon we lovers of their art will be asked to put our hands in our pockets. I would not blame them. We will need what they offer even more when this pandemic is finally over. If they sink it will be all our loss.

The even smaller companies, those without a permanent base, do not have the same problems. They can’t perform but they do not have a stonking large building to support. And if they are enterprising they can still have theatrical fun. The small company I am involved with, Harpenden High Street Players, have spent the last few weeks doing Zoom play readings and, ambitiously, recording our own version of Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. As I said to the director driving it all, it helps to keep us sane. And it might raise some money for a worthy local cause.

So life in lockdown has not been too bad. Those interests listed above all help with my sanity and as I only walked into town to visit the local betting shop, closed, I can cope with talking to the odd duck on the riverbank every day. I worry, as we all do about all the usual things in these unusual times, wouldn’t be normal if I didn’t. Spent one night fretting that if I had toothache I would have to pull the bloody tooth out myself and spent another fretting about an imagined power cut spoiling all the lovely food I had stocked up in our freezer. And they are just the ones I can tell you about.

I don’t fret about theatre, or not yet. But I do hope they are all still there when the virus is in the history books. The National will survive, as will the Harpenden High St Players and their ilk. But what about those others I have mentioned. The ones with expensive buildings but no high profile and no income. They are scattered all over the country. And in my own small part of the world that means the Company of Tens and Dunstable Reps. So, if asked, add them to your list of ever growing deserving causes. The NHS, God bless em, help us when we are ill and are deservedly at the top. But theatre helps to keep us well. If they fold we will all be the poorer.
Roy Hall