As the theatre world mourns the loss of Sir Peter Hall, his biographer Stephen Fay reflects on the director’s struggle to found the Rose Theatre
Nobby Clark
Sir Peter Hall and Dame Judi Dench at rehearsal of the 2010 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Rose Theatre
Sir Peter Hall was justly credited with founding the Royal Shakespeare Company and overseeing the National Theatre’s successful move to the South Bank, by Waterloo. Little was said about a third company founded by Sir Peter. It was in Kingston; he did not stay long, but long enough to become the Chancellor of Kingston University, and, on retirement from that job, the University’s Patron.
Sir Peter’s project was a theatre built as part of the Charter Quay development with an entrance on the High Street. In 2003, he had been persuaded by Frank Whately, who taught drama at Kingston University, to take on the job of artistic director and bring the theatre to life. But first they had to furnish the shell that was the extent of the developer’s contribution. Then they had to found a company to play in it.
What Sir Peter did for a start was to give the theatre a name. It was to be the Rose, after the Elizabethan theatre on the South Bank of the Thames, and it was to be designed along the same principles as the first Rose, with a wide, thrust stage, and a pit in front of the seats. The Stage newspaper said: “It wraps itself round 900 people as if they were sitting at a pub table.”
All this would cost millions of pounds and the Board informed Sir Peter that the cupboard was as bare as the theatre. There is substantial wealth in Kingston, but none of the wealthy were willing to contribute the large sums that were needed. Sir Peter lobbied the Arts Council, hoping they would help fund an ensemble company of actors. He was left empty-handed; he had been given the impression that if he wished to finance a theatre in a tin shed in Essex that did plays about the slave trade, money would be available. A theatre in a wealthy outer London suburb did not qualify.
Kingston University was anxious to adopt the theatre for its students of drama, and Kingston Council was embarrassed by the presence of a promising but vacant theatre. Between them, they came up with £6m to fit it out and the Council also lent the cost of mounting the first performances. The Rose opened informally in 2004, with Sir Peter’s production of As You Like It. The problem was not commitment, it was cash. There was none.
It took three more years before the formal opening with Sir Peter’s production of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. It was a great occasion for the town and the council celebrated with a grand dinner, where one speaker said the Rose should have been built in Wandsworth instead of Kingston. But the really serious problem was still the money. There was not enough to pay the wages.
The Board announced that layoffs and salary cuts would be necessary. Sir Peter is reported to have said that he hoped he would not be expected to take a cut: “I’ve got alimony to pay,” he said, and handed over his role to Stephen Unwin. He did, however, return in 2010, to direct Judi Dench in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a play they had famously done together in the glory days in Stratford in the 1960s. It was a memorable performance, selected in the Daily Telegraph after his death, as one of the 10 finest productions of Sir Peter’s career.
He might have quit abruptly, but The Dream was his legacy. It did such good business that a despairing Board judged that it had saved the Rose. After a decade, the theatre has found an audience for its own work and for touring companies, and it plays a significant role in the University. The Rose is worth more than a footnote in the life of a great man.
Stephen Fay is a former deputy editor of The Independent. His biography, Power Play: The Life and Times of Peter Hall, was first published in 1995. Arlott, Swanton and the Soul of English Cricket by Stephen Fay and David Kynaston will be published in May 2018 by Bloomsbury.
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