A Theatre for all Seasons: The History of the Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham by Michael Hasted, and: Liverpool Playhouse: A Theatre and its City ed. by Ros Merkin (review)

These two lavishly illustrated books have many things in common, although the theatres they celebrate are very different animals. They set out to tell the stories of two regional theatres that, in different guises and sometimes under different names, have survived, thrived, faltered and reinvented themselves through the twentieth century and into the present. Between them they provide fascinating glimpses of the aspirations and achievements, sometimes against all odds, as well as the failures of regional theatre in Britain over the past one hundred years. Both volumes are well produced. The selection and range of photographs – of interiors and exteriors of the buildings, of performances and programmes, and of the personalities involved – are excellent, as is the quality of reproduction. There are substantial differences of approach, reflecting, appropriately enough, the differences between the theatres themselves. Hasted’s task is the more straightforward: to present a chronological account of the inception of one of Frank Matcham’s smaller theatres (opened in 1891) and its subsequent, oscillating history that is much less well known than that of the Liverpool Playhouse. He draws on archival material and the words of actors, directors and trustees to convey a vivid portrait of a theatre that has undergone major and minor transformations through to its impressive restoration, refurbishment and reopening in 2011. The key turning points are related in some detail: the near-permanent closure of the theatre in 1959 and its reopening as a regional repertory theatre (renamed The Everyman) in 1961 following an energetic local campaign to save it; the subsequent three decades of undulating success as a two-weekly, then three-weekly rep, before the weight of mounting debts made the model unsustainable; and its further metamorphosis in 1995 back into a receiving house for toured-in productions. Hasted does not shy away from telling the story, warts and all. The frequent ebb and flow of public support, the battles over high-brow versus low-brow entertainment, and the struggles between artistic directors and their theatre boards (and so often, invisibly, behind them, the Arts Council), all illustrate something of the tussles that were typical of many such repertory ventures in the period.

Given the more fully documented history of the Liverpool Playhouse already in the public domain, Merkin’s approach has been to organise her book almost wholly around verbatim testimony and archival documents, interspersed with occasional linking passages to clarify and fill in the chronology as needed. She begins, not with the origins of the building (in 1866 as the Star Theatre), but with the formulation of the “repertory idea” and early campaigns to establish in Liverpool a true repertory theatre to emulate Miss Horniman’s enterprise at The Gaiety in Manchester and Alfred Wareing’s in Glasgow. Opening extracts from supporting statements from such early advocates as Basil Dean, the Playhouse’s first director, and the playwright John Galsworthy, set the tone for most of what follows: an account of the birth, rise, and development of rep at one of the country’s leading regional theatres. But these testimonies remind us, too, often in intensely felt terms, what a struggle keeping a regional theatre afloat has always been. Even the exciting years of “the Gang of Four” (when the theatre was run, 1981-84, by that extraordinary quartet of writers, Chris Bond, Alan Bleasdale, Willy Russell and Bill Morrison) were not enough to stabilise the theatre’s finances; and just two years later, the then-current director, Jules Wright, tendered her resignation, finding the tensions between artistic director and the new breed of career administrator no longer bearable. Again, the echoes here of similar battles waged in Cheltenham and dozens of other reps through the 1980s and ’90s...