A specially established charitable trust has bought the Old Vic from Ed and David Mirvish for £3.5m, £4 less than the asking price. The Mirvishes turned down bids closer to the original price (including, it is rumoured, one from a company wishing to turn the theatre into a lap dancing venue) in order the preserve it as a theatre.
The Old Vic Theatre Trust has paid £1.5m and a public appeal has been launched to find an additional £4m to pay the balance and for essential refurbishment.
The 1000-seater venue will be a receiving house for productions from smaller subsidised venues such as the Royal Court, Donmar Warehouse and Almeida, who will have cheap or rent-free use of the theatre, while running costs will be met by renting out rehearsal rooms and contracting out bars and catering.
It is expected that one of the first productions to play in the Old Vic will be Sir Peter Hall's production of Amadeus, starring David Suchet, in October.
An all-American cast will take over Art later this month, following an agreement with American Equity over cast exchanges. The US cast will include Stacy Keach. A British cast will take over at New York's Royale Theatre in the Autumn.
A meeting of Welsh theatre companies, meeting at Cardiff's Sherman Theatre, have agreed to set up a group to lobby the new Welsh National Assembly directly, by-passing (and thus snubbing) the Arts Council of Wales. Relations between the companies and ACW have been strained for some time, as was clearly shown by Michael Bogdanov's call to invite representatives of the other art forms to join the theatrical groups in the new lobby. The call was supported by the meeting.
BECTU members at the RSC are angered by a pay rise of £7 a week (equivalent to 1.5%). In response, General Manager Will Weston points out that the RSC's funding is static and they actually have a deficit. He said that, at one point, they had even considered a pay freeze. BECTU had asked for a three year agreement consisting of inflation plus 2% this year, and inflation plus 1% for the next two.
1997 was a good year for the West End, figures from the Society of London Theatre show: