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Dateline: 22nd September, 2010
Arts Theatre Facing Closure London's Arts Theatre has been served with a notice of termination of its lease on 13th December. Landords, Consolidated St Giles LLP, last week served a break notice on the tenants, Brasrat Ltd. The lease, which was for three years from November 2008, would have allowed the theatre to operate until November 2011 but included a three month break clause to allow for redevelopment. A statement from Brasrat says, "This notice was served without any prior warning, nor any indication that it was being considered. The Landlord has stated that the lease is being terminated for the purpose of putting in a new tenant, which the Landlord states has been prompted principally by their bank, which believes the theatre has been dark since May 2010 and is not being run as a theatre, and that Westminster City Council has made similar comments. Yet the Landlord was fully informed by the managers of the theatre of the extent of the programming, including a six-week run of Lillies on the Land in June and July and confirmed programming for the autumn of 2010 and up to April 2011 in an email on 3rd September, 2010, which also confirmed that refurbishment was being undertaken. There was no response to that email, other than the notice seeking to terminate the lease served the following week." In 2008 a planning application to Westminster City Council was made by Laurence Kirschel, the principal owner of Consolidated St Giles LLP, to develop the site of 3-11 Great Newport St and 1 Upper St Martin’s Lane into a 65-room hotel. This redevelopment would have included a 317-seat theatre (the Arts Theatre has 350 seats) but the application was rejected. The Arts Theatre opened on 20th April, 1927, as a members only club for the performance of unlicensed plays, thus avoiding theatre censorship by the Lord Chamberlain's office. In August 1955 the 24 year old Peter Hall directed the English-language premiere of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot at the theatre. Subsequently, from 1956 to 1959, Hall ran the Arts Theatre and directed the UK premieres of Eugene O'Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra and Jean Anouilh’s Waltz of the Toreadors. In addition the theatre has premiered Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker, Joe Orton’s Entertaining Mr Sloane, O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh and Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly Last Summer and was, for a short time, the first London home of the RSC. The Arts is a member of the Society of London Theatre (SOLT) and is thus regarded as a West End theatre.
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