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The story
History of the theatre
The theatre is situated on King Street, a few yards from the Floating Harbour. From 1972 until 2016, the public entrance was through the Coopers' Hall, the earliest surviving building on the site. The Coopers' Hall was built in 1744 for the Coopers' Company, the guild of coopers in Bristol, by architect William Halfpenny. It has a "debased Palladian" façade with four Corinthian columns. It only remained in the hands of the Coopers until 1785, subsequently becoming a public assembly room, a wine warehouse, a Baptist chapel and eventually a fruit and vegetable warehouse.
The theatre was built between 1764 and 1766. The design of the auditorium has traditionally been taken to have been based, with some variations, on that of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London. Although Bristol architect Thomas Paty supervised construction, the theatre was built to designs by James Saunders, David Garrick's carpenter at Drury Lane. Saunders had provided drawings for the theatre in Richmond, Surrey, built in 1765. A long section (1790, at Harvard University Theatre Collection) and a survey plan (1842, at the Local Studies Library) of the Richmond theatre show close similarities with the Bristol theatre in the proportions and in the relationship between the actors on stage and the spectators surrounding them on three sides. The site chosen was Rackhay Yard, a roughly rectangular empty site behind a row of medieval houses and to one side of the Coopers' Hall. Two (and possibly three) new passageways built through the ground floor of the houses fronting King Street gave access to Rackhay Yard and the "New Theatre" inside it.
Fifty numbered silver tickets were issued to shareholders, granting them unlimited free access to shows at the theatre, in return for each of them donating £50 to fund its construction. Two special golden tickets were issued to cabinet maker Edward Crump and his wife Ann Crump, for "the great trouble and expense" they had gone to convince the landowners to allow the construction of the theatre.
The theatre opened on 30 May 1766 with a performance which included a prologue and epilogue given by David Garrick. As the proprietors were not able to obtain a royal licence, productions were announced as "a concert with a specimen of rhetorick" to evade the restrictions imposed on theatres by the Licensing Act 1737. This ruse was soon abandoned, but a production in the neighbouring Coopers' Hall in 1773 did fall foul of this law.
Legal concerns were alleviated when the royal letters patent were eventually granted following the passing of the Bristol Theatre Act 1778 (18 Geo. 3. c. 8), and the theatre became a patent theatre and took up the name "Theatre Royal". At this time the theatre also started opening for the winter season, and a joint company was established to perform at both the Bath Theatre Royal and in Bristol, featuring performers such as Sarah Siddons, whose ghost, according to legend, haunts the Bristol theatre. The auditorium was rebuilt with a new sloping ceiling and gallery in 1800.
From 1819 the theatre was managed by William M'Cready the elder, with little success, and then, following his death in 1834 by his widow, the actress Sarah M'Cready. Following her death in 1853 the M'Creadys' son-in-law James Chute took over.
However, he became overcommitted, running the Bath Theatre Royal, the Theatre Royal Bristol and the new Prince's Theatre, opened in 1867. In 1881 the lease on the theatre was taken up by popular actor George Melville, who invested heavily in it, carrying out heavy refurbishment. Despite the popularity of his pantomime performances, he struggled to make a profit and gave up the lease in 1893. Failures to invest in the decaying fabric of the building in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, legal battles between the proprietors and the managers, as well as the shifting nature of popular entertainment, saw the theatre struggle up to the time it was taken over by the Old Vic in 1943.
Historic documents from the history of the Theatre Royal and Bristol Old Vic can be found at Bristol Archives and University of Bristol Theatre Collection.
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Formation of the Bristol Old Vic
In 1942, the lease owners put the building up for sale. The sale was perceived as a possible loss of the building as a theatre and a public appeal was mounted to preserve its use, and as a result a new Trust was established to buy the building. The Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA) leased the building from the Trust and in 1946 CEMA's successor, the Arts Council, arranged for a company from the London Old Vic to staff it, thus forming the Bristol Old Vic.
Early members of the company included Peter O'Toole (making his first appearance in Major Barbara in 1956), John Neville, Timothy West, Barbara Leigh-Hunt and Dorothy Tutin. The first artistic director was Hugh Hunt.
An early triumph for the Bristol Old Vic occurred when the 1954 première production of Salad Days transferred to the West End and became the longest-running musical on the London stage at that time. The Arts Council remained involved until 1963 when their role was taken over by the City Council. In the same year, the London Old Vic was disbanded and the Bristol company became fully independent. The Bristol Old Vic also put plays on in the council-owned Little Theatre (now the Lantern Hall, part of Bristol Beacon) from then until 1980.
A new theatre complex, designed by Peter Moro, was completed in 1972. The 1903 entrance building was demolished, as were a number of surrounding buildings and, more controversially, the stage area of the 1766 theatre. A new stage and fly tower were built along with technical facilities and offices. The 150-seat New Vic studio theatre (later known as the Studio) was built in place of the old entrance, and the Coopers' Hall provided the theatre with the grand façade and foyer area it had previously lacked.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Bristol Old Vic productions were well received both locally and on tour, but by the late 1980s faced significant underfunding. A revival under the leadership of Andrew (Andy) Hay brought an increase in audience numbers; there followed a new Arts Council funding package, and in 2003 the appointment of joint artistic directors David Farr and Simon Reade. They briefly branded the organisation the "new bristol old vic".
In 2005, Reade became the sole artistic director. Artistic highlights during these times included the production of A. C. H. Smith's Up The Feeder, Down the Mouth and Back Again during Andy Hay's tenure, and some well-received Shakespeare productions under David Farr and Simon Reade.
From Wikipedia’s article on Bristol Old Vic, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3