Bailiffs Close Players' Music Hall After 65 YearsDate: 28 March 2002
London's "world famous" Players' Theatre, believed to be the longest-running Victorian Music Hall, has closed its doors. At 6.00am this past Monday, 25 March 2002, bailiffs entered the historic theatre, based in the Hungerford Arches under Charing Cross rail station, changed the locks and shut it down.
According to a spokesman for the landlords' managing agent, Jones Lang Lasalle, the drastic move was a final resort after the Players' lessees, Domonic Le Foe and Geoffrey Brawn, had failed to pay rent for several "years" despite "plenty of opportunities" and efforts to organise payment plans. In the end, debts amounted to an estimated £500,000.
Though the landlord regretted bringing the Players' legacy to an end, the spokesman said, "This is not a free world." The Players' will now be shut until further notice and is unlikely to reopen in its current form and certainly not under existing management, who were unavailable for comment.
The Players' was founded as a private Covent Garden club by Leonard Sachs and Peter Ridgeway in 1936. The following December the proprietors, seeking a Christmas show, presented an evening of traditional Music Hall entertainment. That became Ridgeway's Late Joys which has been running, offering a new programme fortnightly, ever since.
During its 65-year (wholly unsubsidised and unsponsored) existence, the Players' has prided itself on never closing. It even remained open throughout the Blitz during the Second World War, taking refuge in the basement of a concrete building in Albermarle Street. It was soon after the war that the Players' moved into its premises in Hungerford Arches. This 'arch and a half' of venue, had itself been a music hall, dating back to 1865, before, in the 20th century, becoming first a theatre and then a cinema and storage facility for the Army.
In its 1950s heyday, the likes of Hattie Jacques, Bill Owen, Ian Carmichael, Clive Dunn, Ian Wallace and John Hewer appeared regularly on the Players' bill. A show inspired by Late Joys was produced for the Festival of Britain, taken on a long UK tour and then spun off into the enormously popular long-running television show, The Good Old Days, which remained part of the BBC light entertainment for more than three decades. In 1996, the Players' celebrated its Diamond Jubilee, at which Sir Peter Ustinov was installed as honorary president.
In addition to Late Joys - which is led by a master of ceremonies and features well-rehearsed audience participation and sing-along Victorian ditties concluding with "Dear Old Pals", sung at every performance for 64 years - the Players' also mounts a traditional pantomime every Christmas.
- by Terri Paddock
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