As You Like It Inaugurates Hall’s Rose at KingstonDate: 2 July 2004
A major new theatre, modelled on the Elizabethan Rose and under the artistic direction of Sir Peter Hall (pictured), will be unveiled on 3 December 2004 at Kingston-upon-Thames in Surrey, south of London. Following construction and funding delays, the £8.5 million Rose of Kingston’s official opening is now expected for autumn 2005, but this will be preceded by the three-week, pre-Christmas season of Hall’s production of Shakespeare’s As You Like It, performed in the half-finished building’s shell.
In a letter this week to arts journalists, encouraging them to support the new venue, which still needs to raise £3.3 million for completion, Hall explained: “The story of the Rose of Kingston is extraordinary and particularly English. It wasn’t planned by Government or Arts Council, but evolved because of the enthusiasm of a group of local people, in alliance with the local authority. Some years ago, they began a campaign to build a theatre. They decided not to build something conventional but to aim for the unique.”
The main Kingston auditorium is housed within a modern building, designed by architects Michael Holden Associates, but follows the ground plan of the Rose, which was built in 1587 and premiered many of Shakespeare’s early plays. Archaeological remains of the actual Rose were discovered in the London borough of Southwark in 1989 and are still being excavated (See News, 29 Jan 1999). Like the Elizabethan original, the 1,100-capacity Rose of Kingston comprises a promontory stage surrounded by three tiers of seating and a pit for audience ‘groundlings’.
According to Hall, “The special season of As You Like It performances in December is an attempt to show the world what the theatre will be capable of when it is fully fitted out and opened.” The production - first seen last summer as part of Hall’s first annual summer residency at Bath’s Theatre Royal (See News, 2 Dec 2002) – stars Philip Voss, Michael Siberry, James Laurenson and the director’s daughter, Rebecca Hall. After the Rose run, the production returns to the US to play in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Once building work is completed at Kingston, the plan is to establish a permanent 20-strong company, presenting a repertory of eight plays, running annually from September to June and complementing a programme of education work alongside Kingston University’s two-year Master of Fine Arts post-graduate course. Students – actors as well as directors and designers - will join the theatre company in their second year of study.
The first director of both the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre’s South Bank complex, Peter Hall celebrated 50 years as a professional director last year. In 1977, he was knighted for services to theatre and, in 1999, was presented with an Olivier for Lifetime Achievement. His second annual ten-week repertory season has just begun at Bath’s Theatre Royal, where the programme comprises the world premiere of Timberlake Wertenbaker’s Galileo's Daughter and revivals of George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman, Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit and Simon Nye’s Don Juan, based on Moliere’s original (See News, 26 Feb 2004).
- by Terri Paddock
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