Connaught Theatre
Encyclopedia
The Connaught Theatre is a Streamline Moderne
-style theatre in the centre of Worthing
, in West Sussex
, England. Built as the Picturedrome cinema in 1914, the venue was extended in 1935 and became the new home of the Connaught Theatre (established nearby in 1931). The theatre houses touring West End theatre
productions, musicals
, thrillers, drama
s and children's productions. Since 1987 it has been a dual use cinema/theatre with two screens, and has a seating capacity of 512. When it opened, it was a rare example of a conversion from a cinema to a theatre: the reverse was much more common in 1930s Britain, when many theatres became cinemas. The Ritz cinema (also known as Screen 2) at the Connaught is a venue for The End of the Pier International Film Festival
.
was octagonal. In 1926, Swiss impresario Carl Adolf Seebold
, who owned other cinemas in Worthing and who had been the Picturedrome's musical director since it opened, bought it.
In 1916, Connaught Buildings were built next to the cinema, and an entrance passageway was built from the street to the Picturedrome through the new building. The Connaught Buildings (and later Connaught Hall and Theatre) seem to have taken its name from Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathern and Earl of Sussex
. The new premises housed the Connaught Hall, which in 1917 became a venue for vaudeville
entertainment. It was licensed as a theatre in April 1931 by Walter Lindsay, formerly a theatre director in London; the first full season of repertory
theatre began in the autumn of 1932. Terence De Marney
became director of Connaught and Bill Fraser
became involved in the theatre.
The two venues coexisted until 1935; in that year the Worthing Repertory Company, which had been outgrowing the Connaught Buildings, moved next door to the Picturedrome, renamed the building the Connaught Theatre and commissioned an architect to extend the façade of the building in an Art Deco style. Carl Seebold contributed £60,000 (£ as of ) towards the cost of the work. The first production, a play called Theatre Royal, was given on 30 September 1935; it formed the centrepiece of a special opening week programme, and was very successful.
The establishment of the Connaught in former cinema premises represented an unusual reversal of the contemporary tendency for theatres to be converted into cinemas—a trend seen throughout Britain in the 1930s.
A temporary closure during World War II
was followed by a period in which the theatre was managed on Seebold's behalf by a group associated with the J. Arthur Rank Organisation
, who pursued a policy of blooding young actors who later became important figures in film, television and theatre. Glenda Jackson
, Susannah York
, Charles Morgan and several others appeared at the theatre during this period. In the 1950s, Alan Ayckbourn
appeared in several plays at the Connaught. In 1956 Winston Churchill
visited the theatre to see his daughter Sarah
perform in Terence Rattigan
's play Variation on a Theme. Harold Pinter
acted at the Connaught under the stage name David Baron, moving to a house just a few yards from the theatre in Ambrose Place in the 1960s. Pinter's first wife, actress Vivien Merchant
acted at the Connaught during this period. Giles Cooper
worked with Pinter at the Connaught. Robin Maugham wrote several plays which he directed and premiered at the Connaught, including The Claimant (1962) and Winter in Ischia (1964). Actress Marina Sirtis
, perhaps best known for her role in Star Trek: The Next Generation
, began her career in rep at the Connaught in 1976. Actor Robert Blythe has also worked in repertory
theatre at the Connaught.
Ownership passed from Seebold to other commercial interests in April 1950, when he sold the lease
for £35,000 (£ as of ). The theatre began to struggle, and closed in 1966, but campaigners successfully petitioned Worthing Borough Council to buy and run it instead. Productions began again in 1967— one of the first performances was The Beggar's Opera
, the first opera
seen in Worthing for 136 years— and the capacity was increased to its present 512 seats when the auditorium was revamped in 1972. The council agreed to provide more funding for the theatre after it was forced to close temporarily on two more occasions in the 1970s. The remodelling in 1972 introduced film projection facilities, which have been used regularly since 1987.
bar and lounge area to the original Picturedrome auditorium. Two years later the entrance foyer on Union Place was rebuilt in Moderne style, with two rendered
storeys, parapeted, in three bays.
Streamline Moderne
Streamline Moderne, sometimes referred to by either name alone or as Art Moderne, was a late type of the Art Deco design style which emerged during the 1930s...
-style theatre in the centre of Worthing
Worthing
Worthing is a large seaside town with borough status in West Sussex, within the historic County of Sussex, forming part of the Brighton/Worthing/Littlehampton conurbation. It is situated at the foot of the South Downs, west of Brighton, and east of the county town of Chichester...
, in West Sussex
West Sussex
West Sussex is a county in the south of England, bordering onto East Sussex , Hampshire and Surrey. The county of Sussex has been divided into East and West since the 12th century, and obtained separate county councils in 1888, but it remained a single ceremonial county until 1974 and the coming...
, England. Built as the Picturedrome cinema in 1914, the venue was extended in 1935 and became the new home of the Connaught Theatre (established nearby in 1931). The theatre houses touring West End theatre
West End theatre
West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...
productions, musicals
Musical theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
, thrillers, drama
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...
s and children's productions. Since 1987 it has been a dual use cinema/theatre with two screens, and has a seating capacity of 512. When it opened, it was a rare example of a conversion from a cinema to a theatre: the reverse was much more common in 1930s Britain, when many theatres became cinemas. The Ritz cinema (also known as Screen 2) at the Connaught is a venue for The End of the Pier International Film Festival
The End of the Pier International Film Festival
The End of the Pier International Film Festival is a not-for profit independent film festival based in West Sussex, England. The festival began in 2002 and showed work by local film makers, but it has since grown to showcase shorts and features from all over the world...
.
History
The Connaught Theatre occupies the former Picturedrome cinema, which was built in 1914 on the site of Stanmore Lodge and opened in July of that year. Its seating capacity was 850 in a single tier, with four boxes at the rear, and the auditoriumAuditorium
An auditorium is a room built to enable an audience to hear and watch performances at venues such as theatres. For movie theaters, the number of auditoriums is expressed as the number of screens.- Etymology :...
was octagonal. In 1926, Swiss impresario Carl Adolf Seebold
Carl Adolf Seebold
Carl Adolf Seebold was a Swiss impressario who commissioned and ran the Dome Cinema in the English coastal town of Worthing in West Sussex....
, who owned other cinemas in Worthing and who had been the Picturedrome's musical director since it opened, bought it.
In 1916, Connaught Buildings were built next to the cinema, and an entrance passageway was built from the street to the Picturedrome through the new building. The Connaught Buildings (and later Connaught Hall and Theatre) seem to have taken its name from Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathern and Earl of Sussex
Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn
Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn was a member of the shared British and Saxe-Coburg and Gotha royal family who served as the Governor General of Canada, the 10th since Canadian Confederation.Born the seventh child and third son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and...
. The new premises housed the Connaught Hall, which in 1917 became a venue for vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
entertainment. It was licensed as a theatre in April 1931 by Walter Lindsay, formerly a theatre director in London; the first full season of repertory
Repertory
Repertory or rep, also called stock in the United States, is a term used in Western theatre and opera.A repertory theatre can be a theatre in which a resident company presents works from a specified repertoire, usually in alternation or rotation...
theatre began in the autumn of 1932. Terence De Marney
Terence De Marney
Terence De Marney was a British film, stage, radio, and television actor, as well as theatre director and writer.-Actor:...
became director of Connaught and Bill Fraser
Bill Fraser
-External links:* *...
became involved in the theatre.
The two venues coexisted until 1935; in that year the Worthing Repertory Company, which had been outgrowing the Connaught Buildings, moved next door to the Picturedrome, renamed the building the Connaught Theatre and commissioned an architect to extend the façade of the building in an Art Deco style. Carl Seebold contributed £60,000 (£ as of ) towards the cost of the work. The first production, a play called Theatre Royal, was given on 30 September 1935; it formed the centrepiece of a special opening week programme, and was very successful.
The establishment of the Connaught in former cinema premises represented an unusual reversal of the contemporary tendency for theatres to be converted into cinemas—a trend seen throughout Britain in the 1930s.
A temporary closure during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
was followed by a period in which the theatre was managed on Seebold's behalf by a group associated with the J. Arthur Rank Organisation
Rank Organisation
The Rank Organisation was a British entertainment company formed during 1937 and absorbed in 1996 by The Rank Group Plc. It was the largest and most vertically-integrated film company in Britain, owning production, distribution and exhibition facilities....
, who pursued a policy of blooding young actors who later became important figures in film, television and theatre. Glenda Jackson
Glenda Jackson
Glenda May Jackson, CBE is a British Labour Party politician and former actress. She has been a Member of Parliament since 1992, and currently represents Hampstead and Kilburn. She previously served as MP for Hampstead and Highgate...
, Susannah York
Susannah York
Susannah York was a British film, stage and television actress. She was awarded a BAFTA as Best Supporting Actress for They Shoot Horses, Don't They? and was nominated for an Oscar and Golden Globe for the same film. She won best actress for Images at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival...
, Charles Morgan and several others appeared at the theatre during this period. In the 1950s, Alan Ayckbourn
Alan Ayckbourn
Sir Alan Ayckbourn CBE is a prolific English playwright. He has written and produced seventy-three full-length plays in Scarborough and London and was, between 1972 and 2009, the artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, where all but four of his plays have received their...
appeared in several plays at the Connaught. In 1956 Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
visited the theatre to see his daughter Sarah
Sarah Churchill (actress)
Sarah Millicent Hermione Tuchet-Jesson, Baroness Audley, usually known as Sarah Churchill , was a British actress and dancer.- Early life :...
perform in Terence Rattigan
Terence Rattigan
Sir Terence Mervyn Rattigan CBE was one of England's most popular 20th-century dramatists. His plays are generally set in an upper-middle-class background...
's play Variation on a Theme. Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...
acted at the Connaught under the stage name David Baron, moving to a house just a few yards from the theatre in Ambrose Place in the 1960s. Pinter's first wife, actress Vivien Merchant
Vivien Merchant
Vivien Merchant was a British actress.-Career:Merchant performed in many stage productions and several films, including Alfie and Frenzy...
acted at the Connaught during this period. Giles Cooper
Giles Cooper
Giles Stannus Cooper was an Anglo-Irish playwright and prolific radio dramatist, writing over sixty scripts for BBC radio and television. He was awarded the OBE in 1960 for "Services to Broadcasting"...
worked with Pinter at the Connaught. Robin Maugham wrote several plays which he directed and premiered at the Connaught, including The Claimant (1962) and Winter in Ischia (1964). Actress Marina Sirtis
Marina Sirtis
Marina Sirtis is a British-American actress of Greek descent. She played the role of the human/Betazoid Commander Deanna Troi, ship's counselor, on the television and film series Star Trek: The Next Generation.-Life:...
, perhaps best known for her role in Star Trek: The Next Generation
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Star Trek: The Next Generation is an American science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry as part of the Star Trek franchise. Roddenberry, Rick Berman, and Michael Piller served as executive producers at different times throughout the production...
, began her career in rep at the Connaught in 1976. Actor Robert Blythe has also worked in repertory
Repertory
Repertory or rep, also called stock in the United States, is a term used in Western theatre and opera.A repertory theatre can be a theatre in which a resident company presents works from a specified repertoire, usually in alternation or rotation...
theatre at the Connaught.
Ownership passed from Seebold to other commercial interests in April 1950, when he sold the lease
Lease
A lease is a contractual arrangement calling for the lessee to pay the lessor for use of an asset. A rental agreement is a lease in which the asset is tangible property...
for £35,000 (£ as of ). The theatre began to struggle, and closed in 1966, but campaigners successfully petitioned Worthing Borough Council to buy and run it instead. Productions began again in 1967— one of the first performances was The Beggar's Opera
The Beggar's Opera
The Beggar's Opera is a ballad opera in three acts written in 1728 by John Gay with music arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch. It is one of the watershed plays in Augustan drama and is the only example of the once thriving genre of satirical ballad opera to remain popular today...
, the first opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
seen in Worthing for 136 years— and the capacity was increased to its present 512 seats when the auditorium was revamped in 1972. The council agreed to provide more funding for the theatre after it was forced to close temporarily on two more occasions in the 1970s. The remodelling in 1972 introduced film projection facilities, which have been used regularly since 1987.
Architecture
Originally designed by Eastbourne architect Peter Dulvey Stonham, the building was refurbished in 1933 to the plans of A.T. Goldsmith. His design added a new first-floor cocktailCocktail
A cocktail is an alcoholic mixed drink that contains two or more ingredients—at least one of the ingredients must be a spirit.Cocktails were originally a mixture of spirits, sugar, water, and bitters. The word has come to mean almost any mixed drink that contains alcohol...
bar and lounge area to the original Picturedrome auditorium. Two years later the entrance foyer on Union Place was rebuilt in Moderne style, with two rendered
Stucco
Stucco or render is a material made of an aggregate, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as decorative coating for walls and ceilings and as a sculptural and artistic material in architecture...
storeys, parapeted, in three bays.