The Theatre Royal Haymarket, now up for sale, is grade I listed and London’s third oldest theatrical venue, both of which risk making it simultaneously a cultural asset to the nation and a not terribly pleasant place to see a play.
In London, in Bristol, in Margate, in Bath, in Glasgow, Leeds and elsewhere, many of our most prestigious theatres are hundreds of years old. Perhaps Edwardian, Victorian or even Georgian bottoms fitted comfortably into their seats, but there’s a good chance that today’s well-upholstered ones would not. Their foyers tend to be mean and cramped, not having been designed with loitering in mind, or a stand where you can buy Maltesers, and their lavatories, particularly women’s lavatories, tend to be similar to those you might find on a prison ship. Even so, they are expected to compete with all other entertainments that the modern world has to offer, including the multiplex cinema, and the delights of staying at home with a tub of ice cream and The Crown.
Andrew Lloyd Webber has long been lobbying for a change in the law that allows conservation bodies to impose the strictest conditions of historical preservation on those who run Britain’s ageing theatres. He has always been right. Roughly a thousand new theatres were built in the reign of Queen Victoria alone. Few were listed until the 1970s. Many were lost in developments after the Second World War. The wish to preserve those that survive is of course laudable.
Yet theatres should not be preserved in aspic. They should be living hubs of the performing arts. A theatre that can no longer afford to function benefits nobody. Whoever buys the Theatre Royal Haymarket will be doing a service to the nation by keeping it open, and should be permitted to revamp its auditorium. If audiences find attendance a trial, it’s curtains.