Taking a bow at ‘50’


John Urquhart looks at the history of Bury’s Theatre Royal and hears how they plan to celebrate a special landmark this year


T


he Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year which is a little puzzling - surely it is considerably older than 50 years? Turns out what is being celebrated is the first of two major renovations completed in 1965. Local figures, led by


Air Vice Marshall Stanley Vincent, raised £37,000 and transformed the building from a barrel store lacking a stage and without seating, into as close as could be to the original 1819 design. Jean Corke peeled away seventeen layers of wall paper with her palette knife; her husband, Martin, persuaded Greene King to grant them a 21-year lease on the Theatre for a peppercorn rent.


It occurs to me that, for 45 years of its 196, or one quarter of its life, the theatre has been unused, or “dark” in theatre speak. Not just dark but virtually derelict. Its survival is remarkable when put in that context. To what does it owe its survival? Two things stand out. First, however incongruous it might seem for a Georgian theatre to be used as a barrel store, had it not found use in that way it might very well have been destroyed to make way for a building of more utility. Secondly, of the two renovations in its history, the first, driven by local passion and


determination using funds raised in the town and in the region, was of arguably more significance than the second. The latter although driven by necessity was funded nationally as well as locally and benefited from the support of national figures such as Sir Peter Hall, Dame Judi Dench and Stephen Fry, under the patronage of Timothy West.


16


Cinderella and Fairy Godmother, Aimee Barrett and Sarah Louise Young


The second renovation was conducted under the auspices of architects Levitt Bernstein, whose Axel Burrough had at his disposal far more developed resources than the people involved in the


1965 renovation. He says in an article on the theatre’s website that those people in the 1960s had got dimensions, angles, and measurements right far more often than might be expected given the


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