Last Friday, I went to Leeds, a city I’ve been to on theatre-related business on many occasions, but always to see shows at the West Yorkshire Playhouse — a venue whose opening I can remember. This time, however, I visited a venue I’ve never been to before, even though it has been there far longer than I have, or even Michael Billington!
Yet as I sat in City Varieties — a venue that was built in 1865 and recently underwent a £9.2m refurbishment — reading the programme before the show began, Michael wandered down the aisle and told me that he’d not been there before, either!
So we were both, to quote words from one of the songs in the show we were seeing, all in this together! As the chorus that we were invited to join in singing puts it, “We’re all in this together!/ As equals we will brave the stormy sea/ I will be the captain and you can work the oars/ In our Big Society!”
It is, of course, a big theatrical nation we inhabit, and there are a few captains in it and a lot more people working the oars all over the place. But it’s interesting that a little venue like City Varieties — famous the world over, of course, as the one-time long-term home of the BBC variety show The Good Old Days — has never attracted the captain of our critical ship, never mind oarsmen like myself.
Perhaps one of the problems is its guilt-by-association with that long-running series: it has been pigeon-holed as a variety house that hasn’t merited serious critical attention. And yet, to read the cuttings, it’s a venue much beloved by performers. Dara O’Briain, no less, once dubbed it, “The best venue for standup in the nation.”
In a story in The Guardian last September to mark its re-opening, the paper’s Martin Wainwright wrote, “Before the Good Old Days, the Varieties survived a long dodgy period in which afternoon amateur matinees (including one by Miss Cooke-Yarborough’s Dancing Class in which your correspondent portrayed a dove) were followed by evening shows such as Strip for Action and The Naughtiest Night of Your Life.” Funny the personal revelations you can spot in news stories sometimes!
But even better, he quotes Neville Jopson, who helped mastermind the restoration, saying, “There was a period when the theatre specialised in nude tableaux, which many people now in their 60s and 70s remember fondly. The strippers were not allowed to move and it was the aim of many Leeds schoolchildren to sneak in with a peashooter and make them.”
Despite its long use as a TV studio, it wasn’t in a good state: “Money has always been so tight that only the right-hand half of the theatre was repainted during the 30-year heyday of the Good Old Days TV series because the BBC always filmed the acts from the left-hand box.”
And hugely welcome though it is to now have the City Varieties in such a handsome state of refurbishment, the work isn’t entirely complete yet: Jopson told the Guardian, “No doubt performers will soon pick up on the fact we’ve only been able to afford gold leaf for half the auditorium so far.” Apparently the company supplying the pricey material went bust, and fundraising is still under way for the final £700,000 needed to complete the work, and other final touches.
But at least the future of the building is now safe. I wish we could say the same thing for Wilton’s Music Hall in London, which is Britain’s oldest surviving music hall but last May had its latest application for Heritage Lottery Fund money turned down. As Frances Mayhew, the director of Wilton’s, said at the time, “This is a real blow to Wilton’s. We understand that funds are limited at the Heritage Lottery but it is sad that the last Music Hall of its kind which is literally falling down cannot find favour with the Heritage Lottery. It is particularly frustrating as this cultural gem is in one of the poorest boroughs in London that does not naturally attract funding. The building cannot wait any longer though, we need to take action and raise the £3.8 m now.”
David Suchet, the campaign patron for the venue, told The Stage last June of his disbelief that they’d ben turned down: “I really, sincerely believed that Wilton’s was not only most deserving, but somehow I had no doubt that they would get it, and therefore my disbelief was made stronger by the sheer shock of the choices that were made by the Lottery. I think, and I will say this quite honestly, it is genuinely a wrong decision, and I think it is a decision that is ill-informed.”
The Heritage Lottery Fund’s chief executive Carole Souter, however, commented, “Wilton’s Music Hall is a unique and precious part of our theatrical heritage. The plans were well articulated and ranked highly for our support. However, this was a competitive round of funding - almost three times over-subscribed - and, in spite of huge enthusiasm for the project, we simply did not have enough money to fund it in this round as other projects were even stronger.” But after what I’ve just seen has been achieved with City Varieties in Leeds, it’s time now to revive the case for the same to happen to Wilton’s.
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