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Dateline: 16th February, 2007
Summer at Chichester Artistic Director Jonathan Church, having restored the ailing Birmingham Repertory Theatre to a state of healthy solvency, decided “My work here is done,” left the company in the safe hands of Rachael Kavanagh and flew off “like Mary Poppins” to wave his magic wand over the troubled Chichester Festival Theatre which, with alarmingly dropping attendance figures, was in imminent danger of closing down altogether. At a press briefing in the Arts Club in London (together with collaborators David Jones, Mark Rylance and Philip Franks) he looked back over the past year – his first in a four year contract – and also gave a synopsis of what we are to expect this year, a mixture of old and new, two Shakespeares, a musical and a farce, not to mention some intriguingly new input from Rylance.
His first year has been extremely promising and, after hoping just to break even, there is even a small surplus at the end of the year. “We’re not out of the woods yet, though,” says Church, but just the same things are looking very good indeed.
Asked how he assesses his potential audience in order to decide on his programme for the year, he replied that the people of Chichester (who originally built the theatre in the sixties) are not slow to give their opinion and they stop him in the street to discuss his choices, so he has first hand a very good idea of how well he is doing. Last year’s epic production of Nicholas Nickelby, played over two performances, was so successful that it will be the final offering again this year and will go on a National Tour before London and Toronto.
The season opens in the intimate Minerva Theatre with Chichester resident Patricia Routledge in a double bill of two short plays, Office Suite by Alan Bennett, originally written especially for her. The last, Confession, is a world premiere of a new thriller, about which Church says, “Really it’s The Sopranos but it all takes place in the Vatican”, and stars David Suchet. It concerns the mysterious death of Pope John Paul I: “On one level a political thriller, but also a very serious play about the Catholic Church and whether protecting the Church is more important than the truth”.
One company will be performing two Shakespeare plays: Patrick Stewart will play Macbeth in the Minerva before, in total contrast, taking the role of Malvolio in Twelfth Night in the Festival Theatre.
Mark Rylance, despite being Artistic Director of Shakespeare’s Globe for the first ten years of its rebirth, has always been sceptical of the true authorship and his contribution to the programme is an intriguing one where, courtesy of the World Wide Web and a bolt of lightening, numerous characters are interviewed, all laying claim to the bard’s work. Also in the programme are the musical Babes in Arms, Ranjit Bolt's translation of Anouilh's Waltz of the Toreadors, Hobson's Choice, and numerous one-night events. Sheila Connor Please note that all three Archive indices are very long and will therefore take some time to download.
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