The $250 Million Theatre
Last week, a performance of Coriolanus was the last in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 1930s era theatre before it closed this week. Now the company moves to temporary quarters in Stratford-upon-Avon while its new home is built nearby.
Australian actors and theatre functionaries will faint on learning that the new complex is budgeted at close to $A250,000,000 (yes, that is six noughts). It will be a state-of-the-art techno palace, sans proscenium arch, with 1000 rather than 1400 seats and designed by celebrated Pom architect Elizabeth Scott.
The walls won’t ooze the collected DNA of the likes of Dame Edith Evans, Laurence Olivier, Michael Redgrave, John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, Peggy Ashcroft, Judi Dench et al, but they’ll definitely ooze money when the fabled company opens for business in its new HQ.
