A Local Theatre for Local People
Terry Coleman, The Old Vic: The Story of a Great Theatre from Kean to Olivier to Spacey
Faber, 288pp, £25.00, ISBN 9780571311255
reviewed by Belinda Webb-Blofeld
A couple of months ago I watched Tree at the Old Vic, a two-man play that was a taut 90 minutes without intermission. The hubby and I were seated in the Stage Dress Circle, a few narrow rows towards the back of the theatre. And I recalled the note in Terry Coleman’s informative and well paced history of this theatre, that even though the Vic is today the same size as it was in its earliest days, it had once accommodated more than treble the audience. There were no stalls then, only a pit, with the masses seated on wooden backless benches. I’m fairly certain many of today’s theatre aficionados wouldn’t be so keen – even for Spacey.
Milling around the Old Vic’s lobby, we surveyed the portraits of Gielgud and Olivier. But having lapped up Coleman’s welcome history of the Old Vic, I wonder why there couldn’t be a few of its stories too. Such mini-histories could let us theatre-goers know how it was once termed ‘The People’s Palace of South London’. I had no idea. It is also a reminder that whilst theatre today is overwhelmingly white and middle class, those who kept the ‘Old ‘wic’ going were the poor. Just as the ‘porters and carters’ had kept Shakespearean theatre alive.
The Old Vic started in 1818 as the Royal Coburg Theatre, and owes its existence to James Jones, James Dunn and Thomas Serres; the last of whom served as marine painter to the King, and who used this regal connection to secure the patronage of an impoverished German Prince, His Serene Highness Leopold, Prince of Saxe-Coburg, and his wife, Princess Charlotte. The nation loved Charlotte. Perhaps because she was ‘self-willed and loud-voiced’ and loved the theatre.
Like most building jobs, the initial budgeted £4,000 costs for the theatre trebled to £12,000. ‘The 140 workmen then went on strike and even removed the scaffolding,’ leaving Jones, Dunn and Serres to frantically search for investors. A Soho tallow chandler by the name of Francis Glossop emerged, whose son Joseph had theatrical ambitions. Joseph Glossop quickly bought himself a controlling interest, and like Narcissus himself, installed a spellbinding glass curtain. The glass, in which the audience could watch themselves until the performers took the stage, weighed five tonnes and was ‘impossible to clean’. In that revolutionary year for the rest of Europe, 1848 at least presented the prospect of more theatregoers courtesy of the new Waterloo station. But the local population had trebled since 1820, and it was they who made up the Vic’s audience. It was a local theatre for local people.
The history of the Old Vic, or more accurately, the history of its audiences, dispels myths – because they still abound – that the poor had no appetite, sentiment, or intellect for Shakespeare and the like. The Old Vic’s history disproves the notion ten fold – Dickens even uses the theatre to refer to one of his characters, in Household Words, of ‘Joe Whelks, of the New Cut who has few books and little inclination to read...’
Hundreds of young boys and girls would also rush to claim a space on one of the theatre’s narrow backless benches as soon as the theatre opened at three, even though a show didn’t begin until six. It was such a stampede, on Boxing Day 1848, that led to the death of two boys, who were crushed to death when 400 boys crowded on the staircase. Ten years later – to the day, Boxing Day being one of theatres’ busiest – someone shouted fire, and another stampede – this one far worse, with bodies dragged out onto The Cut – and 16 dead. All young boys; four aged just nine to 12. Unbelievably, 'the evening performance was given as if nothing had happened.’ The Morning Chronicle reported that this was the soundest decision under the circumstances given the full house.
The madness of London crowds certainly seemed to be a force of nature. The decision was even explained by the then owner, Mr Towers, to the readers of The Times, who said: ‘had I been able to consider my own feelings I should certainly have closed the theatre ... but I found it impossible ... the gallery stairs were lined with people eager to see the pantomime ... to force a passage through them... would have been attended with a more serious accident than even the tragedy of the morning’. Towers paid for the funerals of the boys. And strengthened the gallery stairs.
The audience, Coleman tells us, got rougher, as did the entertainment; most of which seemed go be going on in the pit or the gods. At a performance of Oliver Twist, ‘Fifteen hundred were packed in upstairs, the men sweating in shirtsleeves, the women with coloured bandanas around their shoulders... and the women’s scarves were sometimes tied together to form a rope used to haul stone bottles of beer up from the pit.’ Frampton and Fenton followed Towers as owners but they soon filed for bankruptcy. The next lessee was a Mr J. Arnold Cave and he seemed to tame somewhat the crowd, in return for more didactic plays – and more wholesome food – but in 1871, he put the theatre up for sale. It was to be demolished. But only so that a bigger, better theatre could be built in its place.
Despite being only 50, the Vic had become a cherished institution to the population around New Cut, and the theatre’s last night was a sentimental one, and included Rob Roy, and Macbeth, and in a nod to its first night’s performance, 'Trial by Battle' was on – an old tale of smugglers and abduction. Between its original side walls and roof, the new Vic was built to seat 2,300. In just 12 weeks. And it was now called The New Victoria Palace. The Observer wrote that ‘from beginning to end all was transformation’. The Daily News called it the most magnificent in the world’. Despite the transformation, a few more owners sank into bankruptcy, and oblivion, until, in early 1880, a group of gentlemen took over with the aim of providing ‘temperance sing-song’.
For the next 57 years, temperance was the star billing. Instead of a theatre, it became a hall of clean, wholesome entertainment – well-behaved dancing dogs and not a word of smutty innuendo. The committee of temperance gents put in place a Miss Emma Cons, a Christian reformer, who would preside over the Old Vic for the next 32 years. The Old Vic became not just an entertainment hall, but a large coffee house with moderately priced food. Although smoking was permitted, whereas it hadn’t been previously. Cons didn’t just favour dancing dogs, but goats and cats too – and on some days penny lectures were held, of the sort that Manchester had been offering for over 50 years already. Thursday ballad concerts would become the most popular entertainment.
The Old Vic’s new incarnation was supported in high places. Its first annual general meeting under temperance was attended by the Duke of Westminster and Cardinal Manning. Samuel Morley, after whom London’s Morley College is named, the Bristol MP and textiles tycoon, also attended. And it was here that its foundation seemed to begin, with Tuesday lectures turning into weekly classes. Former students even put 'OVS' after their names to denote 'Old Vic Student'.
By 1905, the Hall was putting on cinema nights, attracting its biggest audiences. Miss Cons’s niece and young protege, Lilian Baylis, would be next to take over, and the first thing she did was to apply for a theatre license, her aunt having refused whilst she was in charge, and in November 1912, the Old Vic had a theatre license granted once again.
Within 18 months the Vic’s tradition of staging Shakespeare began. Ben Greet stepped in and offered to do a season. The son of a naval captain, Greet had already toured around the UK, and the US 12 times, before arriving to offer his services at the Old Vic. Shakespeare was performed right through World War I, by women players, in a twist of the all male casts of Shakespeare’s day. Hamlet was even performed in its five-hour-long entirety. In 1924, Morley College had to move out of the theatre when £30,000 was donated by showman George Dance, which paid for restoration back to a ‘proper theatre’. The Charity Commissioners took the opportunity to rewrite the theatre’s Constitution, which was to ‘provide in the theatre, high-class drama, especially the plays of Shakespeare... suited for the recreation and instruction of the poorer classes…’ Harcourt Williams brought the Old Vic into modern times, with Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, and Peggy Ashcroft.
By the early 1930s, no longer were the audiences the great unwashed, but, as Harcourt Williams described them, ‘middle-class schoolteachers, the intellectual new poor, young women who worked in the City…’ Tyrone Guthrie became the new drama producer in 1933, which represented another step into modern times. He brought with him the up-and-coming Charles Laughton, whom Baylis saw as an upstart; he saw her as a shrew. Guthrie’s season was a commercial success, which seemed to do him no favours with Baylis.
The arrival of Laurence Olivier – then a Hollywood actor and seen as a west end matinee idol – coincided with Baylis’s last season. Olivier used the Vic as part of his calculated decision to become what he saw as a proper actor – a Shakespearean actor – and with his performances, the crowds would flock to the New Cut. On 5 January 1937, Olivier opened as Hamlet. It is during Olivier’s time at the Old Vic that Coleman’s history is at its most compelling – no wonder, since Coleman has previously penned a biography on Olivier.
In 1937, after 25 years at the helm, Baylis died. In 1938, Princesses Elizabeth, and Margaret Rose were brought to the Old Vic by their mother for their first theatre visit. In May 1941 the Old Vic was bombed. The theatre’s players went on tour, setting up headquarters in Burnley, Lancashire, and also the Liverpool Rep. From there, they toured 38 northern cities and Wales. Ironically enough, they did better commercially than they would have back at home on the Cut. The Old Vic theatre remained closed from 1940-1950, and whilst the actors and performers toured, Coleman makes clear that these tours represent a separate history, as his work is centred on the actual physical building as theatre. Tyrone Guthrie made clear his opposition to Baylis’s ideals by claiming the Old Vic as a theatre concerned with drama of the highest order, and not merely as a form of social service to the poor of Lambeth.
From 1953-58, only Shakespeare was performed. The first of that run was Hamlet, with Richard Burton in star role, and his leading lady was also his lover, Claire Bloom. Coleman follows Olivier’s five-year stint as Director of the National Theatre, housed at the Old Vic. For the new National, Olivier wanted all new. Anthony Hopkins, Michael Gambon, Maggie Smith, Derek Jacobi, and Geraldine McEwan. Its first season featured Shaw’s Saint Joan and Chekov’s Uncle Vanya. Peter O’Toole, fresh from his role as Laurence of Arabia, should have been the star of the National’s first performance, as Hamlet. But O’Toole departed from the directions plotted by Olivier, and this, it was claimed, is what caused the performance to flop. Olivier, however, was a diligent leader. He commuted to his long days at the Old Vic from Brighton. He insisted on knowing not just the name of each and every stage hand, but their nicknames also.
The most touching section of this book is in Coleman’s description of Olivier’s battle with prostate cancer. The National Theatre was the ‘chief labour’ of his life. One of his last roles was Shylock in the Merchant of Venice. There was concerned talk as to who would be his successor, and Olivier wanted another actor, and named Albert Finney; but he did not want it. Olivier ended his role at the National in 1973, succeeded by Peter Hall. Kenneth Tynan was scathing of Olivier, writing in his diary that, because he failed to recommend anyone, he had dismissed them all, leading the Board to choose Hall, whom Tynan called a ‘burned out conservative’ and a ‘traitor’. Hall wasn’t so enamoured with Tynan either – and one of his conditions for accepting the directorship of the National was that Tynan should go.
Olivier’s last role at the Old Vic was playing a Glaswegian Trotskyite in a new play by Trevor Griffiths called The Party. It wasn’t the lead role, but one in which Olivier could demonstrate his mastery of an accent, and included a 20-minute speech. The last play presented by the National the Old Vic – in January 1976 – was John Osborne’s Watch it Come Down.
In 1982, the Old Vic changed ownership. Ed Mirvish, a little-known theatre owner from Toronto, managed to outbid no less a figure than Andrew Lloyd Webber himself. Mirvish’s era was one of generosity – he was said to have lost around £1m a year on the Old Vic. Keen to hark back to Baylis’s era in the midst of modernisation, upon taking over Mirvish had a banner hung which read ‘Lilian Baylis, you’re going to love this – Honest Ed’. Coleman suggests she probably wouldn’t have. But once it opened, without the starry lights Ed wanted, it was the building itself that the critics focused on. Then, instead of being a receiving house, putting on other companies' plays, Mirvish employed Jonathan Miller as its artistic director.
Peter Hall came next, under instruction not to lose money; it would be OK as long as he broke even. Hall put on Beckett, Gorky, and Shakespeare and his actors included Felicity Kendal, Ben Kingsley, and Geraldine McEwan. It was all going well, until one day in 1997, the Mirvishes decided to sell. Ed said it deserved a full-time owner; his son, David, said it had been a privilege to have been caretakers of the theatre for as long as they had. The following year they received an Olivier award for their work at the Vic.
The well-connected It Girl, Sally Greene, came next, getting together with Stephen Daldry to form a Board of Trustees for the Vic. She was then responsible for turning Kevin Spacey into our very own theatreland darling. They bought the Old Vic from the Mirvishes, who again proved their amazingly generous spirit by selling it much lower than what they would get for it elsewhere, and even accepted it on the equivalent of a layaway scheme. Spacey transferred the American Classic, The Iceman Cometh by Eugene O’Neill, to the Old Vic – and thus started his long relationship with the place. To say that Spacey has put the Old Vic on the map would be wrong; it’s always been on the map – albeit for some, on the wrong side of the river. Spacey has worked immensely hard for the Old Vic, taking every opportunity to raise money for it, getting everyone he knows involved – including Bill Clinton.
The Old Vic has continued the tradition of involving the local community, a firm belief of Lilian Baylis; most recently to mark the centenary of the start of the First World War. Spacey and the Old Vic have been in this intimate relationship for over a decade; but whilst Spacey has been an adoring lover of this most beloved of theatres, and has brought a new generation – from near and far – through its doors, he has only ever complemented it, never compromised it. And as he leaves, many eyes will be on Warchus, his successor, and the directions he will have it take.
London theatre is so alive – albeit with a distinct shortage of those poor kids who sat on the wooden backless benches of the Old Vic’s early days. But it does attempt to reach out – it is conscious of what it lacks and attempts to make spaces for new voices. Coleman has, in his book, traced the Old Vic’s history more than admirably. He has done so in a way that is truly compelling, painting each era in its own distinctive colours and tones. Kevin Spacey has provided the introduction, and copies can be purchased in the theatre’s lobby, where it is strategically fanned around the place, ready to be purchased with a small tub of ice-cream.
Milling around the Old Vic’s lobby, we surveyed the portraits of Gielgud and Olivier. But having lapped up Coleman’s welcome history of the Old Vic, I wonder why there couldn’t be a few of its stories too. Such mini-histories could let us theatre-goers know how it was once termed ‘The People’s Palace of South London’. I had no idea. It is also a reminder that whilst theatre today is overwhelmingly white and middle class, those who kept the ‘Old ‘wic’ going were the poor. Just as the ‘porters and carters’ had kept Shakespearean theatre alive.
The Old Vic started in 1818 as the Royal Coburg Theatre, and owes its existence to James Jones, James Dunn and Thomas Serres; the last of whom served as marine painter to the King, and who used this regal connection to secure the patronage of an impoverished German Prince, His Serene Highness Leopold, Prince of Saxe-Coburg, and his wife, Princess Charlotte. The nation loved Charlotte. Perhaps because she was ‘self-willed and loud-voiced’ and loved the theatre.
Like most building jobs, the initial budgeted £4,000 costs for the theatre trebled to £12,000. ‘The 140 workmen then went on strike and even removed the scaffolding,’ leaving Jones, Dunn and Serres to frantically search for investors. A Soho tallow chandler by the name of Francis Glossop emerged, whose son Joseph had theatrical ambitions. Joseph Glossop quickly bought himself a controlling interest, and like Narcissus himself, installed a spellbinding glass curtain. The glass, in which the audience could watch themselves until the performers took the stage, weighed five tonnes and was ‘impossible to clean’. In that revolutionary year for the rest of Europe, 1848 at least presented the prospect of more theatregoers courtesy of the new Waterloo station. But the local population had trebled since 1820, and it was they who made up the Vic’s audience. It was a local theatre for local people.
The history of the Old Vic, or more accurately, the history of its audiences, dispels myths – because they still abound – that the poor had no appetite, sentiment, or intellect for Shakespeare and the like. The Old Vic’s history disproves the notion ten fold – Dickens even uses the theatre to refer to one of his characters, in Household Words, of ‘Joe Whelks, of the New Cut who has few books and little inclination to read...’
But put Joe in the gallery of the Victoria Theatre...and Joe will unravel a story through all its entanglements, and sit there as long after midnight as you have anything left to show him. (Households Words, Dickens)
Hundreds of young boys and girls would also rush to claim a space on one of the theatre’s narrow backless benches as soon as the theatre opened at three, even though a show didn’t begin until six. It was such a stampede, on Boxing Day 1848, that led to the death of two boys, who were crushed to death when 400 boys crowded on the staircase. Ten years later – to the day, Boxing Day being one of theatres’ busiest – someone shouted fire, and another stampede – this one far worse, with bodies dragged out onto The Cut – and 16 dead. All young boys; four aged just nine to 12. Unbelievably, 'the evening performance was given as if nothing had happened.’ The Morning Chronicle reported that this was the soundest decision under the circumstances given the full house.
The madness of London crowds certainly seemed to be a force of nature. The decision was even explained by the then owner, Mr Towers, to the readers of The Times, who said: ‘had I been able to consider my own feelings I should certainly have closed the theatre ... but I found it impossible ... the gallery stairs were lined with people eager to see the pantomime ... to force a passage through them... would have been attended with a more serious accident than even the tragedy of the morning’. Towers paid for the funerals of the boys. And strengthened the gallery stairs.
The audience, Coleman tells us, got rougher, as did the entertainment; most of which seemed go be going on in the pit or the gods. At a performance of Oliver Twist, ‘Fifteen hundred were packed in upstairs, the men sweating in shirtsleeves, the women with coloured bandanas around their shoulders... and the women’s scarves were sometimes tied together to form a rope used to haul stone bottles of beer up from the pit.’ Frampton and Fenton followed Towers as owners but they soon filed for bankruptcy. The next lessee was a Mr J. Arnold Cave and he seemed to tame somewhat the crowd, in return for more didactic plays – and more wholesome food – but in 1871, he put the theatre up for sale. It was to be demolished. But only so that a bigger, better theatre could be built in its place.
Despite being only 50, the Vic had become a cherished institution to the population around New Cut, and the theatre’s last night was a sentimental one, and included Rob Roy, and Macbeth, and in a nod to its first night’s performance, 'Trial by Battle' was on – an old tale of smugglers and abduction. Between its original side walls and roof, the new Vic was built to seat 2,300. In just 12 weeks. And it was now called The New Victoria Palace. The Observer wrote that ‘from beginning to end all was transformation’. The Daily News called it the most magnificent in the world’. Despite the transformation, a few more owners sank into bankruptcy, and oblivion, until, in early 1880, a group of gentlemen took over with the aim of providing ‘temperance sing-song’.
For the next 57 years, temperance was the star billing. Instead of a theatre, it became a hall of clean, wholesome entertainment – well-behaved dancing dogs and not a word of smutty innuendo. The committee of temperance gents put in place a Miss Emma Cons, a Christian reformer, who would preside over the Old Vic for the next 32 years. The Old Vic became not just an entertainment hall, but a large coffee house with moderately priced food. Although smoking was permitted, whereas it hadn’t been previously. Cons didn’t just favour dancing dogs, but goats and cats too – and on some days penny lectures were held, of the sort that Manchester had been offering for over 50 years already. Thursday ballad concerts would become the most popular entertainment.
The Old Vic’s new incarnation was supported in high places. Its first annual general meeting under temperance was attended by the Duke of Westminster and Cardinal Manning. Samuel Morley, after whom London’s Morley College is named, the Bristol MP and textiles tycoon, also attended. And it was here that its foundation seemed to begin, with Tuesday lectures turning into weekly classes. Former students even put 'OVS' after their names to denote 'Old Vic Student'.
By 1905, the Hall was putting on cinema nights, attracting its biggest audiences. Miss Cons’s niece and young protege, Lilian Baylis, would be next to take over, and the first thing she did was to apply for a theatre license, her aunt having refused whilst she was in charge, and in November 1912, the Old Vic had a theatre license granted once again.
Within 18 months the Vic’s tradition of staging Shakespeare began. Ben Greet stepped in and offered to do a season. The son of a naval captain, Greet had already toured around the UK, and the US 12 times, before arriving to offer his services at the Old Vic. Shakespeare was performed right through World War I, by women players, in a twist of the all male casts of Shakespeare’s day. Hamlet was even performed in its five-hour-long entirety. In 1924, Morley College had to move out of the theatre when £30,000 was donated by showman George Dance, which paid for restoration back to a ‘proper theatre’. The Charity Commissioners took the opportunity to rewrite the theatre’s Constitution, which was to ‘provide in the theatre, high-class drama, especially the plays of Shakespeare... suited for the recreation and instruction of the poorer classes…’ Harcourt Williams brought the Old Vic into modern times, with Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, and Peggy Ashcroft.
By the early 1930s, no longer were the audiences the great unwashed, but, as Harcourt Williams described them, ‘middle-class schoolteachers, the intellectual new poor, young women who worked in the City…’ Tyrone Guthrie became the new drama producer in 1933, which represented another step into modern times. He brought with him the up-and-coming Charles Laughton, whom Baylis saw as an upstart; he saw her as a shrew. Guthrie’s season was a commercial success, which seemed to do him no favours with Baylis.
The arrival of Laurence Olivier – then a Hollywood actor and seen as a west end matinee idol – coincided with Baylis’s last season. Olivier used the Vic as part of his calculated decision to become what he saw as a proper actor – a Shakespearean actor – and with his performances, the crowds would flock to the New Cut. On 5 January 1937, Olivier opened as Hamlet. It is during Olivier’s time at the Old Vic that Coleman’s history is at its most compelling – no wonder, since Coleman has previously penned a biography on Olivier.
In 1937, after 25 years at the helm, Baylis died. In 1938, Princesses Elizabeth, and Margaret Rose were brought to the Old Vic by their mother for their first theatre visit. In May 1941 the Old Vic was bombed. The theatre’s players went on tour, setting up headquarters in Burnley, Lancashire, and also the Liverpool Rep. From there, they toured 38 northern cities and Wales. Ironically enough, they did better commercially than they would have back at home on the Cut. The Old Vic theatre remained closed from 1940-1950, and whilst the actors and performers toured, Coleman makes clear that these tours represent a separate history, as his work is centred on the actual physical building as theatre. Tyrone Guthrie made clear his opposition to Baylis’s ideals by claiming the Old Vic as a theatre concerned with drama of the highest order, and not merely as a form of social service to the poor of Lambeth.
From 1953-58, only Shakespeare was performed. The first of that run was Hamlet, with Richard Burton in star role, and his leading lady was also his lover, Claire Bloom. Coleman follows Olivier’s five-year stint as Director of the National Theatre, housed at the Old Vic. For the new National, Olivier wanted all new. Anthony Hopkins, Michael Gambon, Maggie Smith, Derek Jacobi, and Geraldine McEwan. Its first season featured Shaw’s Saint Joan and Chekov’s Uncle Vanya. Peter O’Toole, fresh from his role as Laurence of Arabia, should have been the star of the National’s first performance, as Hamlet. But O’Toole departed from the directions plotted by Olivier, and this, it was claimed, is what caused the performance to flop. Olivier, however, was a diligent leader. He commuted to his long days at the Old Vic from Brighton. He insisted on knowing not just the name of each and every stage hand, but their nicknames also.
The most touching section of this book is in Coleman’s description of Olivier’s battle with prostate cancer. The National Theatre was the ‘chief labour’ of his life. One of his last roles was Shylock in the Merchant of Venice. There was concerned talk as to who would be his successor, and Olivier wanted another actor, and named Albert Finney; but he did not want it. Olivier ended his role at the National in 1973, succeeded by Peter Hall. Kenneth Tynan was scathing of Olivier, writing in his diary that, because he failed to recommend anyone, he had dismissed them all, leading the Board to choose Hall, whom Tynan called a ‘burned out conservative’ and a ‘traitor’. Hall wasn’t so enamoured with Tynan either – and one of his conditions for accepting the directorship of the National was that Tynan should go.
Olivier’s last role at the Old Vic was playing a Glaswegian Trotskyite in a new play by Trevor Griffiths called The Party. It wasn’t the lead role, but one in which Olivier could demonstrate his mastery of an accent, and included a 20-minute speech. The last play presented by the National the Old Vic – in January 1976 – was John Osborne’s Watch it Come Down.
In 1982, the Old Vic changed ownership. Ed Mirvish, a little-known theatre owner from Toronto, managed to outbid no less a figure than Andrew Lloyd Webber himself. Mirvish’s era was one of generosity – he was said to have lost around £1m a year on the Old Vic. Keen to hark back to Baylis’s era in the midst of modernisation, upon taking over Mirvish had a banner hung which read ‘Lilian Baylis, you’re going to love this – Honest Ed’. Coleman suggests she probably wouldn’t have. But once it opened, without the starry lights Ed wanted, it was the building itself that the critics focused on. Then, instead of being a receiving house, putting on other companies' plays, Mirvish employed Jonathan Miller as its artistic director.
Peter Hall came next, under instruction not to lose money; it would be OK as long as he broke even. Hall put on Beckett, Gorky, and Shakespeare and his actors included Felicity Kendal, Ben Kingsley, and Geraldine McEwan. It was all going well, until one day in 1997, the Mirvishes decided to sell. Ed said it deserved a full-time owner; his son, David, said it had been a privilege to have been caretakers of the theatre for as long as they had. The following year they received an Olivier award for their work at the Vic.
The well-connected It Girl, Sally Greene, came next, getting together with Stephen Daldry to form a Board of Trustees for the Vic. She was then responsible for turning Kevin Spacey into our very own theatreland darling. They bought the Old Vic from the Mirvishes, who again proved their amazingly generous spirit by selling it much lower than what they would get for it elsewhere, and even accepted it on the equivalent of a layaway scheme. Spacey transferred the American Classic, The Iceman Cometh by Eugene O’Neill, to the Old Vic – and thus started his long relationship with the place. To say that Spacey has put the Old Vic on the map would be wrong; it’s always been on the map – albeit for some, on the wrong side of the river. Spacey has worked immensely hard for the Old Vic, taking every opportunity to raise money for it, getting everyone he knows involved – including Bill Clinton.
The Old Vic has continued the tradition of involving the local community, a firm belief of Lilian Baylis; most recently to mark the centenary of the start of the First World War. Spacey and the Old Vic have been in this intimate relationship for over a decade; but whilst Spacey has been an adoring lover of this most beloved of theatres, and has brought a new generation – from near and far – through its doors, he has only ever complemented it, never compromised it. And as he leaves, many eyes will be on Warchus, his successor, and the directions he will have it take.
London theatre is so alive – albeit with a distinct shortage of those poor kids who sat on the wooden backless benches of the Old Vic’s early days. But it does attempt to reach out – it is conscious of what it lacks and attempts to make spaces for new voices. Coleman has, in his book, traced the Old Vic’s history more than admirably. He has done so in a way that is truly compelling, painting each era in its own distinctive colours and tones. Kevin Spacey has provided the introduction, and copies can be purchased in the theatre’s lobby, where it is strategically fanned around the place, ready to be purchased with a small tub of ice-cream.