With the chill of austerity spending cuts sweeping through the arts, there’s the distinct possibility that the current wealth of theatre improvement projects may be the last for some considerable time. All the more reason then to appreciate the ingenuity behind these, whether it be the huge scale of the RSC’s £112m transformation of its theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon, the tiny Downing College theatre in Cambridge or the challenging refurbishment of a revered Seventies’ theatre, the Crucible in Sheffield.
RSC transformation
Stratford-upon-Avon
Designed by Bennetts Architects
The £112m transformation of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Stratford-upon-Avon theatre is nearing completion in time for a soft public opening at the end of the year. The hugely complex project, designed by Bennetts Architects, has involved remodelling both public and back-of house spaces while retaining the best of the art-deco interiors of the original theatre – designed in 1932 by Elisabeth Scott – which is listed Grade II*, and a Victorian Gothic building on the site.
This layered approach has greatly enhanced the new scheme, according to project Bennetts director Simon Erridge. ‘It gives the new building a real sense of richness and history,’ he says.
Working with theatre consultancy Charcoalblue, Bennetts remodelled the existing main theatre auditorium to accommodate a new thrust stage to replace the previous, cinema-like space. This reduces the distance from the furthest seat to the stage from 27m to 15m for the 1, 000-strong audience.
“With Shakespeare performances people need to get a real sense of connection with the action on stage,” says Erridge.
Backstage facilities, which were particularly grim according to RSC deputy project director Simon Harper, have been hugely improved with a new block for artists with views over the river Avon incorporating catering facilities, rehearsal space, rest rooms, toilets and shower rooms.
“It will make an enormous difference to the quality of life [for actors] to have a really nice back-of house,” says Harper.
As well as greatly upgrading the facilities, the intention was to give the theatre much more presence in Stratford by providing a prominent tower with a public viewing platform and a rooftop restaurant overlooking the river, both of which could help attract new audiences to the theatre throughout the day.
Extensions have been removed to create an improved public riverside walkway and reveal the original artdeco side elevation. An extra storey has been created to help reorganise the interior functions and create a bolder front elevation, while a new covered walkway through the building links the building’s two theatres internally for the first time.
“It’s still a collection of different parts but we’ve made it a bit more coherent,” says Erridge, delighted that despite its complexities the six-year project is finishing on schedule.
Crucible
Sheffield
Refurbished by Burrell Foley Fischer
Popularly best known as the venue for the world snooker championships, the Crucible theatre in Sheffield has recently completed a lengthy refurbishment which brings this RHWL-designed theatre from the Seventies back to its former glories.
Burrell Foley Fischer, a practice with a long pedigree in arts venues, has been involved in the £15.3m project for 10 years. The Grade II listed theatre had suffered over the years from lack of investment in the building fabric and desperately needed more street presence and better circulation and access facilities.
Its original twinkling sky lighting system of hundreds of tiny tungsten lights in the auditorium had gradually failed so that only a few still worked, and had been unsympathetically superseded with new fittings.
In a series of phased work, BFF built a new box office on the ground floor, refurbished the foyers, including a new carpet design less garish than the bold original, relocated the bar to increase the sense of space and provided a new lift serving all levels to make the building truly accessible.
In the auditorium, all the seats were replaced with higher-backed designs, a new thrust stage installed and the trademark starry sky recreated in LED lighting. BFF were careful to maintain the spirit of the much-loved original design scheme.
“It’s in the style of the original but much more comfortable… For theatre people, the auditorium is pretty special. No-one would have thanked us if we’d done a number on it,” says BFF partner Stefanie Fischer.
Outwardly, the theatre has a new roof, cladding, glazing and a more prominent profile on the adjacent Tudor Square.
Howard Theatre
Downing College, Cambridge
Designed by Quinlan and Francis Terry Architects
The Howard Theatre is unusual in several ways. Not only is it part of a college campus in Cambridge rather than being conventionally located in a town centre street, but also from the outside, there’s little sign of its presence.
Inside, it is tiny with just 160 seats, but it makes up for its diminutive scale with stunning, hand-painted classical decoration.
The architect behind the £8m theatre is Francis Terry of Quinlan and Francis Terry Architects, a practice with a long pedigree in classical buildings.
Terry was a former student at Downing College, Cambridge, where his father Quinlan completed a series of additions to the campus. The theatre completes a courtyard, and is outwardly of unassuming, classical form. The fireworks are inside.
Here, Terry has had fun with the classical lineage of the college by making it centre stage of the theatre in the form of a spectacular curtain design which depicts the Acropolis of Athens amended to include buildings by William Wilkins, who designed the first campus building, and Quinlan Terry.
The whole scene – known as the Downing Acropolis – was sketched by Terry and then painted by artist Ian Cairnie. Terry also sketched several pairs of trompe l’oeil griffins –the college emblem – embellished with scrolled foliage decoration, and these are incorporated in the front of the gallery with further classical images above the stage.
The rich decoration and intimate proportion suits the inspiration for the theatre interior – the Georgian Theatre Royal at Bury St Edmunds, also designed by Wilkins.
Working with theatre consultancy Theatre Projects, the architects came up with proportions based on a double square, with the height and width the same measurement and the length of the auditorium twice that amount.
Some 130 seats are downstairs with just 30 in the upper gallery. Seating is sumptuous – sleek salmon-pink chairs in generous proportions were made to order by Poltrona Frau. The same colour is used on the front of the gallery. The walls are covered in rich drapes. The ceiling, which at one point was going to be a decorative scene as well, is kept to a simple painted sky to give the Downing Acropolis and the griffins more impact.
Elsewhere in the theatre are conference facilities and meeting rooms – like all contemporary theatres the Howard needs to multitask to earn its keep.
Profile:
Charcoalblue
Apart from nuclear power stations and hospitals, theatres are often touted as the most complex of building types. Not only is there the business of accommodating, feeding, watering hundreds of patrons twice a day, but also there’s the technical requirements of the staging of the productions, plus all the back-of-house facilities for actors and admin staff alike.
It’s no wonder that quite apart from the architects and designers creating and refurbishing new venues, there’s also the highly specialised, often unsung role of theatre consultant working alongside them with its own architects, designers, acousticians and lighting designers. And of these, one name frequently pops up as being involved in many of the big projects underway – Charcoalblue.
Established in 2004, Charcoalblue is currently theatre consultant for the Shakespeare Theatre transformation at Stratford-upon-Avon, the National Theatre’s NT Future project, the Cube in Corby, the Everyman in Liverpool and many more projects. Its impressive back catalogue includes the Camden Roundhouse, Nottingham Contemporary and the Siobhan Davies Studios.
According to Andy Hayles, one of the four co-founders of Charcoalblue, theatre consultants perform an essential bridge between the theatre clients and the external design team, helping them talk to each other and get the best out of the project. You can normally tell, he says, when you go into an auditorium if the architects have worked with a theatre consultant.
Without them, there’s the risk of ending up with an ‘absolutely disastrous’ design says Hayles, who’d rather not name names but is full of stories of how designers without the benefit of working in theatres themselves have made unwise proposals such as escape doors in daft places such as the back of the stage.
Charcoalblue does have this essential specialist expertise. Many of the 20 staff have previously worked at Theatre Projects, the long-established daddy of theatre consultancy, and many of the staff and associates are still active in theatre. They work differently on each project, sometimes appointed by the theatre, sometimes by the architect, advising to various degrees on the overall brief, and within that the detailed arrangement of sightlines, rake of seating, services, acoustics, means of escape, lighting – everything that goes into front-of-house, on stage and back stage to ensure the theatre works both technically and experientially.
This might lead to new product development – the RSC project involved designing a new type of winch.
“The collaboration with the architect is key to the success of a project. Some tell us what the grand plan is and we’ll be left to draw it. In other cases, the architect wants to be in the room with you working as hard as we are,” says Hayles.
As well as specialist knowledge, the theatre consultant’s role is all about diplomacy and knowing, he says, ‘at what point you have to dig your heels in to say it doesn’t work as a theatre’.
Charcoalblue currently has 15-20 juicy projects on the go and is expecting to see an increase in the recent trend for ‘pop-up’ theatres in temporary venues, such as with the RSC at the Roundhouse in 2008.
It has enjoyed a rich seam of work since starting up but with Government capital spending cuts to arts funding expected Hayles is wary of what the future holds, for not just theatre consultancy, but theatre as a whole.
“I dread it… it’s an uneasy time to be working in arts in the UK,” he says.
But for the moment, there’s little time left to worry. Major Charcoalblue projects such as the Cube with Hawkins Brown, the Hepworth Gallery with David Chipperfield, and the new Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury with Keith Williams, and Bennetts Associates’ newly unveiled theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon.
While the theatre consultants might not have grabbed the headlines amid all the launch hullaballoo this landmark theatre should become the ultimate high-profile showcase not just for Bennetts but for Charcoalblue as well.
