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Kingston's Rose - a Subjective ViewDateline: 28th January, 2008"This is the theatre I have dreamed of all my life." So said Sir Peter Hall in 2004, contemplating the new Rose Theatre in Kingston upon Thames, a space that the architectural writer Hugh Pearman recently hailed in the Sunday Times as “a near perfect auditorium.” But at the press night interval of the opening show — Peter Hall’s excellent touring revival of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya for ETT (reviewed by Philip Fisher: I was there for The Stage) — it was a different story. Several critics with seats in the circle and upper circle complained of structural masking of the stage action. Indeed one critic managed to get herself moved to another part of the theatre in the hope of seeing more of the play in performance. I was seated in the front stalls, which might have seemed a better option. But the front four or five rows are unraked, and with the stage floor a bare 18 inches above the auditorium floor, I could see less than half the action. My side views, left and right, were totally obscured by a forest of heads, tricky when, for the Chekhov play, one needs to know whether other characters are eavesdropping on the intimate central exchanges. The simplest solution could be to raise the stage to match the floor level of, as, for example, at Wilton’s Music Hall or Shakespeare’s Globe. I suggested as much to Sir Peter at an informal meeting for the press before his “in the raw” staging of As You Like It at the Rose in 2004, although I neglected to follow it up in correspondence with the local press and the Rose development team. This problem may have arisen because of an intention to re-create Philip Henslowe’s historic Rose Theatre in Southwark, which first opened for business in 1587 — but in modern guise. Thus, instead of installing seating up to the edge of the stage, there is a central floored area of polished oak for students sitting on cushions. But while we have various ground floor plans of the original Rose, we do not have isometric details of the structure. And I am totally unconvinced that Elizabethan bums would have squatted on the damp earth. More likely they would have stood as ‘groundlings’, as at the Globe and other Elizabethan theatres. Indeed historic wisdom suggests that, like the Globe, the Rose stage would have been raised about five feet above the pit floor to discourage audience members from joining the action. Until more historical evidence comes to light, no-one knows the truth one way or the other. But with a raised stage (perhaps providing additional trap-door space) the arrangement would be more comfortable for students and could certainly provide improved sight lines for the front stalls and the two upper tiers, as well as giving the actors a more dynamic point of command. In gratitude to the burghers of Kingston I should add that the acoustics are first rate — I heard every word of dialogue, even when the actors were facing up stage — and as a member of the long-legged clan I was delighted with the generous knee-room offered to tall playgoers. John Thaxter
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