Callow Campaigns for Theatrical Disneyland???

In an Evening Standard feature this week about the demise of the Theatre Museum, actor Simon Callow put forward some bold suggestions about where to go from here. “What is needed is a grand – and theatrical – New Theatre Museum in the centre of town, a kind of theatrical Disneyland, filled with dramatised exhibitions, full of sound and light and sensations, plus demonstrations of the latest theatre technology, with major themed shows featuring regularly.” He believes the Hippodrome – a former theatre-turned-nightclub in Leicester Square, which is now earmarked to become a casino in 2007 – would have been perfect. His New Theatre Museum could, he writes, become “an attraction to rival and even outstrip the Eye, Madame Tussaud’s and the Tower of London” as well as “a bastion against the casinoisation of London”. He offers the powers that be – the Mayor’s office, the City of Westminster, VisitLondon and the Society of London Theatres (SOLT) – the deadline of the 2012 Olympics to get the job done. In the meantime, the current, Covent Garden-based Theatre Museum is still due to shut its doors in January (See News, 25 Sep 2006).

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