Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’s Child Catcher isn’t the only theatrical character who likes to prey on young kids; so, for the last 58 years, has the Unicorn Theatre, but with far less sinister motives.
Employing professional actors to perform to audiences of children, families and schools, the company was born not so much in a trunk but rather literally a truck, when founder Caryl Jenner started it in 1947 as a touring outfit travelling around the country in two ex-MOD trucks. It has been largely peripatetic ever since, though for 32 years from 1967 to 1999, it shared the Arts Theatre in Covent Garden with a raft of other companies (for many of those years, it as home to the long-running Dirty Linen).
But even as it continued its work by touring to such London venues as the Open Air Theatre, Regent’s Park, the Cochrane, Pleasance, Linbury Studio and The Place, as well as around the country, the last five years have seen it finding a place it can call home.
Yesterday they unveiled the result to the press – as well as giving a first performance to teaming parties of schoolkids – ahead of next Thursday’s official opening, of their new, purpose-built complex off Tooley Street, behind City Hall, on the South Bank. The walkway in front of the theatre that links Tooley Street to the river is called Unicorn Passage – but not, as you would expect, to honour the new building, but because it has been called this ever since 1746: one of those wonderful coincidences that no one could have planned.
Visiting it just two days after the building was officially handed over by the builders – though there’s still some finishing touches being applied – it was amazing to see it coming to life for what it was intended.
But as architect Keith Williams escorted us around the building, it was also wonderful to see the detail and thought that had gone into it: double sets of handrails, for instance, on the staircases, with one of them at kids’ level, and balconies with glass cut-outs so that children would be able to look down onto the foyers, too. In what Williams called “a grown up building for kids”, the keynote to this strikingly beautiful modern building is the simplicity and the cleanness of its architectural lines.
Completed at a cost of £13.7m (of which £9.4m was construction cost), it contains two theatres – the main house Weston (seating 340) and a 120-seater studio, plus rehearsal studio and a purpose-built education space. The Weston offers a flexible thrust-stage configuration with blue bench seating curving round in amphitheatre style, on two levels (with a second circle for technical use only); it reminded me of Hampstead’s new theatre. The studio is simply a versatile black box.
But though they now certainly have one of London’s most handsome new theatres – which is only the third completely new theatre build in the capital since the National opened in 1976, after Hampstead and Stratford Circus – it’s the work that ultimately matters. Though storytelling kids’ theatre that goes beyond the annual panto is in greater supply nowadays, there’s still a question of escalating ticket prices that often puts the theatre beyond the pockets of many families. (Take a family of four to see The Lion King, for instance, and by the time you’ve bought programmes and ice-creams, let alone the pervasive merchandise, there won’t be any change from £200).
By contrast, The Unicorn charges a top price of £12.50 for adults, with children at £8.50 and school prices at £6.50 (with one free teacher place per ten pupils). With a permanent home in the heart of a burgeoning theatrical district on the South Bank that it now completes between Westminster and Tower Bridges and embraces the National, Old Vic, Young Vic (currently also being entirely rebuilt), Shakespeare’s Globe and the fringe Union Theatre and Menier Chocolate Factory, the Unicorn is now finally on the map of major players.
