The oldest lamp in the building
There is one bulb we have never let go out, and one member of staff whose job includes keeping a spare for it.
In rotation 3 plays
Next performance Sat 29 Aug · 14:30
The company 12 people
Access performances 6
The house 412 seats · Thrust
The rotation
4 Aug – 2 Oct
44 nights
61 performances
Three plays
kept alive
at once
A repertory company does not run one play at a time. The same 12 people carry all of them, turned over between a Wednesday matinée and a Thursday evening. It is the hardest way to run a theatre and the only one that builds a company.
The ghost light · burning on an empty stage since 1974
The same nine weeks, three times over
The vertical mark is today. The bars are drawn from the performances themselves — no production carries an opening date or a closing date as a field, because a field is a number somebody has to remember to change.
What you will see from your seat
412
seats
in 17 rows
1.8 m
nearest seat
row A, centre
17.5 m
furthest seat
back of the gallery
237
see the whole stage
58% of the house
75
lose the top of a tall set
rows K, L and M, under the gallery
38
are on the flat
rows B and C, priced accordingly
Every theatre sells you a seat and shows you a coloured blob on a plan. This house is a thrust stage built in 1974 with two faults it has never been able to design out, and both of them are arithmetic rather than opinion.
The first three rows are on the flat, so from rows B and C the floor at the very front edge sits behind the head in front of you. The gallery is deep, so the back three rows of the stalls lose the top of a tall set. Both are computed from the section drawing, per seat, and printed before you pay rather than discovered on the night.
One consequence is worth stating plainly: for a tall set, the cheapest seats in the gallery see more of it than the dearest seats in the rear stalls. Row M loses 3.0 m off the top of the upstage wall. Row S loses nothing.
The section, in one line
- Stage
- 9.0 × 7.5 m
- Stage height
- 0.90 m
- Upstage wall
- 9.5 m
- Gallery leading edge
- 5.2 m
- Best clearance in the house
- 172 mm
These five numbers produce every figure on this site about every one of the 412 seats. Change one and the whole house recomputes.
Why row C has the flattest view in the house
The first three rows are on the flat, and the geometry of that has a consequence nobody expects.
Ninety minutes between two plays
What actually happens on the stage between a Wednesday matinée coming down and a Thursday evening going up.