Peter Hall Attacks Government as Greenwich Theatre Closes
Date: 23 January 1998
Consequences of the Arts Council's £1.5m budget cut last week are now being felt on the capital's local arts scene as the London Arts Board yesterday announced the allocation of its reduced £14.15m share. The biggest loser is the Greenwich Theatre which had all of its £191,000 withdrawn. The fringe venue, located in the shadow of the £750m Greenwich Millenium Dome which is being heavily subsidised through the National Lottery, has announced that it will now close at the end of March.
Theatre director Sir Peter Hall attacked the Government's arts policy at an awards ceremony held yesterday at the Savoy Hotel which was attended by Culture Secretary Chris Smith. Hall, whose unsubsidised repertory company is now homeless and possibly defunct following the announced sale of the Old Vic theatre, said that successive years of cuts under the Conservative government had crippled arts companies and that he was dismayed to see it happening again under Labour.
The London Arts Board has granted increases to the Lyric Theatre, the Battersea Arts Centre and the Sadler's Wells dance company. Other fringe casualties to the funding cuts - the The King's Head Theatre in Islington and the The Gate Theatre in Notting Hill, west London - have won partial reprieves thanks to grants of £25,000 from the Cameron Mackintosh foundation.
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