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Seven Dials Playhouse

The announcement that Seven Dials Playhouse is to close because its business model is “unviable” will come as a shock to absolutely no one who has spent the past four years paying attention – with the notable exception, it seems, of the people actually running the place.

For years, the Actor at the Centre campaign, backed by everyone from Simon Callow to the local postman, pointed out the mathematical curiosity of the venue’s “rescue” plan. The strategy was bold, if somewhat counter-intuitive: sell the 963-year peppercorn lease (the “family silver”), clear the debts, and then move back in as a tenant paying £300,000 a year in rent. It’s the fiscal equivalent of selling your house to pay off a credit card, then moving into the spare room and wondering why the rent is so high.

The Charity Commission and the Seven Dials Playhouse Board of Trustees were handed a map of the iceberg years ago, yet they seemed determined to test the hull’s integrity anyway. While the trustees expressed “disappointment” at the commission’s statutory inquiry, the rest of us were simply waiting for the inevitable moment when the “receiving-house” model met the “empty-house” reality of Covent Garden real estate.

It is a tragedy, of course, that a 40-year legacy of actor training has been liquidated. But let’s not pretend this was an unforeseen disaster buffeted by “structural pressures”. This was a slow-motion car crash where the drivers were repeatedly told the brakes weren’t working, only to respond by painting the car a trendier shade of Playhouse.

We are told the Charity Commission is still investigating “misconduct and mismanagement”. Perhaps they could add “blind optimism in the face of basic arithmetic” to the list of concerns.

Daniel Dresner
Bernard O’Sullivan
Chrys Salt
Freddie Stabb
Fiona Watson
Scott Williams
Mark Wing-Davey
Email supplied

Dramatic developments have come to light regarding the closure of Seven Dials Playhouse. The building at 1a Tower Street, home to the Actors Centre for decades, is now dark. The charity is being liquidated by the Charity Commission’s special managers. We understand that young artists who were offered space and money for project development have not been paid. We understand there to be no remaining funds and that a deficit is likely. Millions of pounds have been squandered in a few barren years – the proceeds from the sale of the building (the charity’s major asset) and significant individual donations. A legacy of more than 40 years has been trashed.

We continue to ask serious and urgent questions. Where is the accountability? How were the failing management and trustees of Seven Dials Playhouse able to preside over this collapse for so long when it was clear they were burning through funds at an astonishing rate? And where is the justice for the acting profession, which has lost its building and resources? For four years, the campaign group Actor at the Centre consistently warned the Charity Commission that the likely outcome of the management and trustees’ perverse financial strategy would be permanent closure. Those warnings were ignored. The statutory enquiry came too late and only after the sale of the building – with catastrophic consequences for all to see. To avert this, the campaign persistently offered chief executive Amanda Davey constructive collaboration to restore a sustainable model of membership and training. Our approaches were repeatedly dismissed.

At the end of March, Seven Dials Playhouse closed its doors for good. On 1st April, the New Actors Centre launches a second pilot programme of affordable classes at Marylebone Theatre, following its initial success. The contrast could not be more stark. As one much-loved institution disappears in deeply troubling circumstances, another — artist-led, voluntary, resilient and rooted in the founding principles of accessibility, affordability, professional development and community – is working to rebuild what is so urgently needed.

At a time when so much has been lost and misappropriated, it is crucial that this new initiative is recognised and supported with proper funding. Without that support, the damage to the acting community will be even greater.

Throughout this period, Seven Dials’ Davey was given repeated opportunities by The Stage to promote a “vision" that was clearly financially unsound and ultimately doomed. We believe it is now vital that The Stage undertakes a rigorous investigation to examine and expose the causes of this failure. We urge you to cover this story with the seriousness and scrutiny it demands.

The New Actors Centre Team
Louise Bangay
Harry Burton
Kate Maravan
Ayvianna Snow

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Memories of Robert Fox

I am very sad to hear of Robert Fox’s death.

I was lucky to work with him a number of times and enjoyed his company immensely. I have huge admiration for his producing skills, style, charm, humour, honesty, openness and generosity.

He was truly the supreme creative diplomat. Whenever I saw him, his default expression was always a warm and wry smile, as if to say – especially during previews and on first nights – “I think I might be about to get rumbled.”

RIP Robert – and thank you. You will be sorely missed

Martyn Hayes
Email supplied

Edinburgh Lyceum blocking critics

The rare combination of circumstances means that this is arguably an isolated mess-up rather than saying something about the ‘state of things’ (‘Everyone’s a critic – until theatres don’t want you to be’).

If they were doing a month in Edinburgh at the Lyceum followed by an immediate, already-announced London transfer, I think more people would accept that the Edinburgh weeks were functioning as a preview period (and at £50 top price, significantly cheaper tickets than you’d see for West End previews).

Usually, you’d either have already announced London dates, or wouldn’t announce a transfer unless/until it proves to be a hit in its original venue. The situation here is somewhere in between. Perhaps they haven’t managed to combine a Lyceum slot with West End availability so they’ve got in a muddle with it and made a weird call. Add to it that it’s Edinburgh, a devolved capital at the centre of a big Scotland-based media ecosystem, parts of which are connected to UK-wide media outlets, rather than an English city where the delineation between local and national media is clearer, and you’ve got a doubly unusual way of opening a London-bound show. My hunch is that the theatre’s co-producers would have been resistant to having a national opening in Edinburgh in order to save the big PR moment for London, rather than this being a Lyceum-led decision, but that’s just based my experience of working on multi-venue shows.

Incidentally, my Edinburgh-based sister saw it and thought it was excellently done.

Jon Bradfield
Via thestage.co.uk

One of the misconceptions expressed on this subject is that critics (or reviewers as many of us prefer) are a bunch of bitter people waiting to destroy and denigrate the work of others. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I reviewed more than 175 productions last year, and if anyone believes that reviewers commit that level of time and effort in travelling to, watching and evaluating work in the hope of seeing something dreadful every evening, they are living in cloud cuckoo land.

Reviewers are largely theatre enthusiasts, often drawn from the wider theatre profession, who have an understanding of the art, craft, the graft and the business of making and presenting theatre. When we award four and five stars, the PR people go wild to include our ratings and review quotes in promoting the shows. It is very much a symbiotic relationship.

Stuart King
Via thestage.co.uk
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