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2003: The Year in the North East2003 was a good year for Newcastle's Live Theatre. It celebrated its thirtieth birthday during the year with two major events: in September it received the Peggy Ramsay Award for achievment in new writing, which dropped £30,000 into its lap to develop its new writing policy further, and in November it had its first co-production with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Sean O'Brien' Keepers of the Flame, directed by Live's artistic director Max Roberts and featuring a cast drawn from Live and the RSC, was a popular and critical success, drawing full houses. Other new works during the year included a double bill by O'Brien and former writer-in-residence Julia Darling, Double Lives, and Smack Family Robinson by Richard Bean, and the theatre played host to the pre-London tour of David Hare's The Permanent Way. Also in Newcastle, the Theatre Royal, a 1300-seater receiving house, celebrated its 166th year with very impressive audience figures for 2002/3, showing an average attendance of 68%, as against a national average of 59%. Its most successful period was undoubtedly - as always - the annual RSC season, with packed houses for Richard III, Titus Andronicus and Measure for Measure. At the mouth of the Tyne, the riverside-based Customs House had a remarkable smash-hit on its hands in the form of Ed Waugh and Trevor Wood's comedy Dirty Dusting, which not only played on two occasions at the Customs House but transferred to the Newcastle Theatre Royal where it again played to full houses. New writing was a strong feature of the theatre's programme throughout the year, including a musical based on the Eagle comic's spaceman hero, Dan Dare, written by local writer Tom Kelly with music by John Miles. The Customs House also received a rather unsual kind of accolade during 2003. A year or so ago, when it made an application to the Arts Council's recovery plan, it was described, by ACE, as a theatre or no national or regional significance: now it is being held up, by the same organisation, as an example of best practice. "If you want to see how to run your recovery plan," ACE now tells entrants to the scheme, "go to look at the Customs House." Moving south a few miles, Sunderland's Empire Theatre, now reaping the full benefit of its programming by Clear Channel Entertainment, also had a good year, which was brought to a close with the announcement of a £4m refurbishment of its stage area, which will enable it to take the biggest touring shows. It will be the only theatre between Leeds and Edinburgh capable of hosting big shows such as Miss Saigon, which will be the first major touring production at the theatre when the refit is finished. In August, for the first time since the Clear Channel operation began, the theatre dipped its toe into the straight drama waters, with Godber's Bouncers, starring Nigel Pivaro and John Altman, a gamble with paid off in terms of audience numbers. The theatre also featured in the Radio 4 documentary series, Palaces of Laughter - which just happened to include an interview with this writer! Across in Durham, however, things were looking a little brighter. The Gala Theatre, which opened with great fanfares at the beginning of the year, had crashed ignominiously by the end of 2002, the operating company going into liquidation with debts of over £700,000, whilst the venue's deficit for the year was £900,000. By December, when its panto opened, and after some scare stories about huge debts and "inappropriate" use of the theatre, the city council was announcing its confidence that the theatre is slowly emerging from its problems and has a viable future. Further south, on Teesside, the Billingham Forum continues to operate, although under sentence of death in a town centre redevelopment which will replace it with a supermarket, and Stockton's Arc reopened with support from the Borough Council and ACE NE after its previous incarnation went into liquidation. Articles Indices: |
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