Significant Events: Year In Focus - 1961

This article was first published in the SJT Circular during 2011

Year In Focus: 1961

by Simon Murgatroyd

By 1961, Theatre in the Round at the Library Theatre had been established in Scarborough for six years. Based in the current Concert Room at Scarborough Library, the country’s first professional theatre in the round company presented a 14 week summer season alongside a short winter season and touring programme.

This was also the most ambitious season Theatre in the Round at the Library Theatre in Scarborough had yet staged.

The number of productions in repertory increased from five the previous year to eight (consisting of 11 plays in total), which included world premieres of two full length and three one act plays. These included plays by both of the theatre’s resident writers, Alan Ayckbourn and David Campton.

The company consisted of seven actors: Alan Ayckbourn, Hazel Burt, Philip Clifford, Rosamund Dickson, David Jarrett, Terry Lane and Stanley Page with occasional cameos by Artistic Director Stephen Joseph. Directing duties were split between Stephen Joseph, Terry Lane and Alan Ayckbourn. The company manager was Joan Macalpine with Terry Lane and Philip Clifford also stage managing. All members of the company received £10 a week (if married, this increased to £15) with no overtime paid. All front of house staff were volunteers overseen by the Honorary Secretary Ken Boden.

An insight into this company was offered by Theatre World magazine.

“Theatre in the Round at the Library Theatre seats 250, and although all seats are by no means constantly filled, supporters among townspeople and visitors are becoming attached to this new approach to dramatic presentation... This is a young and talented company, and includes in its number at least two playwrights who write especially for this medium... Plays are produced with no intervals and a]er the final calls there is a concerted exodus to an adjoining room where refreshments are served and discussions invariably take place about the play just performed. There is an atmosphere in this theatre that it would be hard to find anywhere else; enthusiasm, endeavour and friendliness.”

The summer season consisted of 11 plays: Victoria Regina, Five Finger Exercise, Four Minute Warning (comprising Mutatis Mutandis, At Sea and Little Brother, Little Sister), Gaslight, Standing Room Only, Stranger In The Family, Two For The Seesaw and a double bill (comprising We’ve Minds Of Our Own and The Bed Life Of A Mad Boy). Of these, five were world premieres with three written by the resident writers Alan Ayckbourn and David Campton and rehearsals for each play generally lasted a fortnight.

The season began with an ambitious attempt to stage Laurence Housman’s epic Victoria Regina, during which Stephen Joseph attempted to pack in 60 years of Queen Victoria’s life into one evening. Given Stephen’s status as a theatre radical, it’s surprising this most traditional of plays was apparently amongst his favourites! The Yorkshire Post praised the ‘great versatility’ of the company, but more significantly, the positive tone of all the critics gave the theatre credibility in being comfortable both with traditional repertory fare as well as the ‘experimental’ theatre it was known for.

Peter Shaffer’s Five Finger Exercise was followed by a collection of one act plays by David Campton entitled Four Minute Warning. By 1961, David Campton was building a fine reputation for his short plays, which had already received reviews comparing him favourably with Harold Pinter (who had directed the second production of The Birthday Party with the Scarborough company only two years earlier). The three plays, all broadly Theatre Of Menace pieces unusually drew the attention of both The Guardian and The Times, both of which praised Campton and his ear for dialogue.

A more conventional world premiere followed with Norman Horner’s Stranger In The Family, a relatively conventional comedy about a daughter marrying beneath herself, but shown from the perspective of the mother.

Alan Ayckbourn was not only acting but also, significantly, directing professionally for the first time with a production of Patrick Hamilton’s Victorian chiller Gaslight. The reviews were positive and with theatre in the round still being a relatively novel concept, Gaslight notably was praised by The Stage for the ‘claustrophobic intimacy’ the round staging leant it.

Alan Ayckbourn’s second directorial effort was William Gibson’s Two For The Seesaw (coincidentally in 1964, this was the last play Alan performed professionally in). The Stage described it as ‘absorbing and memorable’ but another publication was less interested in the play than American colloquiums, apparently damning the play for its presumptions: “why is it assumed English people will know what the ‘fall’ means.”

The season ended with two experimental one act plays, which drew very little attention, unlike the break-through play of the season, Standing Room Only by Alan Ayckbourn. His fourth play was set in 2010 when the country has been gridlocked for years and was very well received with the Scarborough Evening News calling it ‘extraordinary, highly fantastic and wholly enjoyable.’ But it was the glowing review in The Stage which pleaded “[Alan Ayckbourn] has imagined his bus in Shaftesbury Avenue: is there no management to drive it there?”

There apparently was, as the excellent review drew the attention of emerging West End impresario Peter Bridge who optioned the play for the West End; the first Theatre in the Round at the Library Theatre play to have been directly optioned from Scarborough; although it was never actually produced in the West End.

What went unnoticed – or perhaps - was the review was not all it seemed. Written by Theatre in the Round at the Library Theatre’s stage manager Joan Macalpine, it had been submitted as The Stage’s critic had been unable to attend the play. Joan, neglecting to mention her role in the company, and wrote what was arguably the best review the theatre received that year.

Still it had the desired effect of pulling in the crowds and getting some serious notice from the broadsheets for its attention from Peter Bridge and, more importantly, making it very clear Theatre in the Round at the Library Theatre was not just a flash in the pan fad, but a serious enterprise producing notable work.

Article by and copyright of Simon Murgatroyd. Please do not reproduce this article without permission of the copyright holder.