Significant Events: The First Night
This article was published in the July 2020 edition of the SJT Circular to mark the 65th anniversary of Theatre in the Round at the Library Theatre opening on 14 July 1955.The First Night
by Simon MurgatroydOn 14 July, the Stephen Joseph Theatre celebrated - or would have celebrated had it not been for the unfortunate circumstances of Lockdown we all find ourselves in - its 65th birthday.
Given the uncertainty as to when we will be returning to enjoy performances at the SJT, I thought we’d take a trip back in time and reflect upon what it would have been like to attend the opening night of Theatre in the Round at the Library Theatre on 14 July 1955.
To attend, you would either have been a member - or a friend of a member - of Scarborough Theatre Guild or been specially invited by Stephen Joseph.
The Theatre Guild - which had played a vital role in establishing the theatre - was responsible for distributing the majority of tickets for the evening which was promoted in a newsletter alongside an application form for ‘invitation cards’.
Tickets were free but would normally have cost 5/- (approximately 25p or £6 adjusted for inflation) or 2/6 if you were under 18 (approximately 13p or £3 adjusted for inflation).
Of course, you’d probably have had no experience of theatre-in-the-round previously given it was virtually unknown at this time in the UK and, anticipating doubters and nay-sayers, the Theatre Guild had provided a taste of what was to come: ‘Theatre-in-the- round adds a flavour of excitement which should satisfy this who expect from the theatre something more than what is often termed ‘mere entertainment.’ Not terribly informative, to be honest.
The performance would have started at 8pm (‘You are particularly requested to be on time’ stated the invitation card) and the invitation included the post-show opening of a theatre-in-the-round exhibition organised with the support of the Arts Council of Great Britain.
Theatre in the Round at the Library Theatre was located on the first floor of Scarborough Library in the Concert Room - and which still appears largely as it did back in 1955 - but which would have been more familiar at the time as the Harrison Room.
Upon entering the ‘auditoirum’, what would you have seen? Stephen Joseph described the layout in his book, Theatre In The Round.
“The concert room was reasonably suitable for conversion into a theatre in the round; in plan nearly square, 40 ft X 50 ft approximately. Perhaps a bit on the small side. Ceiling height about 24 ft, with a good deal of complicated plaster work above a heavy cornice. The room was on the first floor and its main disadvantage was that of its three doors one was an emergency exit leading directly to an outside fire escape, and the other two were both in the same wall, 12 ft apart. Thus all the entrances would have to be made from one side of the acting area. Two adjacent rooms were to be made available to us; one for a dressing room (big enough to be simply partitioned off as two rooms and the other for an exhibition and refreshment room. On the whole, a very good place in which to make experimental first steps.”
In contrast, Alan Ayckbourn - although he would not join the company for another two years - has slightly different recollections...
“It was a makeshift auditorium. Borrowed seats on a rickety rostra in a small airless room of the public library. On hot evenings, senior citizens would be supported from the theatre gasping for fresh sea air. Small children would, when carried away by the action, occasionally slip through the gaps in the seating and require rescuing. The stage floor was parquet and treacherously polished; the walls covered in untouchable, light green flock wallpaper. All in all an unpromising venue to present - as we saw at the time - new work in new ways to new audiences.”
It wasn’t an ideal theatre-in-the-round as the seating block on the side with the two entrances was very small and limited to just four rows with 36 seats, but - of course, no- one had anything to compare it with as theatre-in-the-round in 1955 was virtually non-existent outside of Scarborough.
The rest of the auditorium had five rows on rostra with a total seating capacity of 24 seats. The layout would not be unfamiliar to what we see today. It would, however, have also been quite uncomfortable given the town was in the grip of a blistering heatwave at the time - apparently the hottest for five decades - and the Concert Room containing no air-conditioning or fans.
There was no numbering of the seats, so it was very much first-come, first-served as to your choice of seating. The opening night was well-attended, but for the next two weeks would consistently dip well below 100 people. This almost led to the closure of the Library Theatre before it has even been established; what saved the company was, as many of you know from my talks, the heatwave breaking and the Scarborough weather returning to its default position of rain!
Programmes were free - something which Stephen Joseph had experienced whilst studying in North America and would be the norm at the Library Theatre during its first decade.
You’d also have been advised to use the somewhat limited facilities as there was no interval in the play (although the programme notes very specifically, there would be a two minute break between the two acts!). Stephen was notoriously not fond of intervals and this hit its eventual apex when the company performed a four-hour unbroken production of Hamlet whilst on tour in 1962.
The play - like all those in the inaugural season - was a new play, Circle of Love by Eleanor D Glaser; who Stephen had encountered during playwriting classes he held in London. The combination of a new work and a female writer would have been extraordinarily rare in the UK at the time - even in London - and Scarborough audiences were, in a sense, pioneering for the time.
The British Drama League described the play in advance as ‘highly entertaining’ and a ‘romantic drama, with a great emotional theme’. A more balanced description can perhaps be ascertained from the reviewers who attended the first night, which included The Guardian, the Northern Echo, the Yorkshire Post and The Stage. Presumably the Scarborough Evening News attended but no review is held in archive.
Circle of Love was described by the Northern Echo as ‘a moving play’ and by the Yorkshire Evening Press as ‘good theatre’ More in-depth commentary came from The Stage which noted: ‘This is a workmanlike play.... [Glaser] draws her story out too long and comes to a rather abrupt ending which lacks dramatic force.’ The Guardian was not a fan of theatre-in-the-round and felt it gave the ‘somewhat embarrassing feeling that we were eavesdropping on actuality.’ This is ironic given that the sense of intimacy - even voyeurism - is now regarded as one of the great strengths of theatre-in-the-round.
The cast consisted of Kara Aldridge, Joan Cibber, Shirley Jacobs, Ralph Nossek, Morris Perry, John Sherlock and Helen Towers with Stephen Joseph as director. None of the actors had had any prior experience of acting in the round, although the reviews suggest they acquitted themselves well and many would return for the company’s second season. Come the climax of the play, you might have had the luck of spotting a genuinely famous face attending the opening night as Stephen’s mother, the actress Hermione Gingold, had been invited.
Famously, she enjoyed both the performance and the town - which she had never visited before - and was reported to have said “Oh, but it’s just like the Mediterranean.... It’s perfectly wonderful. I think I shall stay a day or two.”
Post-show, you would have had the opportunity to meet Stephen Joseph and the cast as Stephen was very keen on breaking down barriers between audience and actors and impromptu post-show discussions were frequent occurrences during the theatre’s formative years.
The theatre-in-the-round exhibition - which still survives in archive at the SJT - would also have been of interest. Curated by Stephen and featuring many of his own photographs and drawings, it explained the history of theatre-in-the-round and its present state in theatres across Europe and North America.
And what would you have thought of this exciting new theatre venture? Of course, we have no idea what the vast majority of audiences thought other than the inaugural season was successful enough to lead to a second. And a third. And so on. But we do have some reactions from the letters page to the Scarborough Evening News.
“The mistake made by this young company is not their choice of new plays rather than old, nor young actors rather than stars. It is in their theatre. Not only is the Library a stern and forbidding edifice hidden in a side street, but it has no proper stage, and the seats are arranged like at a boxing ring. We are not used to this sort of thing.”
While that letter writer obviously struggled with the concept of theatre-in-the-round, the next writer seemed to have a struggle with imagination - or perhaps the economics of theatre - and for him, at least, the play is obviously not the thing.
“When, as in the current production, I note from my theatre programme that the action of a play is to take place in living room, I expect to see a living room, with doors and windows that open and shut. If the social status of the residents is sufficiently high, wallpaper does not come amiss. Yet here we are presented with a miscellany of furniture and expected to use our imaginations! To enter a theatre and to be told to create the décor for ourselves is equivalent to entering a restaurant, being presented with a dish of raw vegetables, and being told to imagine the cooking.”
However, among the criticism there was some hope and in the case of one letter, a remarkable amount of prescience - arguably what is written can be applied to attitudes still found today.
“I am surprised by your correspondents have felt it necessary to criticise Theatre in the Round as they have. There is nothing wrong with the choice of plays, or of actors, or of theatre – and certainly not with the idea of Theatre in the Round (which has happily been accepted in every country in Europe, and in America). Indeed, outside Scarborough an extraordinarily (sic) amount of attention is being paid to this little theatre, It is being talked about in London, in Paris, and in New York. Scarborough alone seems to be unaware of the importance to the theatre world of what is happening at the Library Theatre.”
There probably aren’t that many people left today who attended that first night at Theatre in the Round at the Library Theatre, but how lucky they were even if they’d didn’t realise that evening was history in the making.
Article by and copyright of Simon Murgatroyd. Please do not reproduce this article without permission of the copyright holder.