Cambridge Arts Theatre is a 666-seat theatre on Peas Hill and St Edward's Passage in central Cambridge, England.[1] The theatre presents a varied mix of drama, dance, opera and pantomime. It attracts touring productions, as well as many shows direct from, or prior to, seasons in the West End. Its annual Christmas pantomime is an established tradition in the city. From 1969 to 1985, the theatre was also home to the Cambridge Theatre Company, a national touring company. The Cambridge Arts Theatre was founded in 1936 by the Cambridge economist and statesman John Maynard Keynes.
ON Monday night, the Vic-Wells Ballet Company made a flying visit to appear at the opening performance of the new Cambridge Arts Theatre, which has been built to provide the town with plays, films, ballet, and music. The theatre has been completely equipped by the Strand Electric and Engineering Company. Any kind of stage play or revue can be presented. The whole of the apparatus is controlled by a modern stage lighting switchboard, unique in design. It is portable, and can be removed when the apron front stage used. The two battens are of magazine type, the first being divided into sections with Strand’s electric 1,000- watt spot lanterns fitted between the sections. The second is of similar design to throw light downwards, and has an angle dispersion of twenty-four degrees. A complete movable flat canvas cyclorama is being installed, and this is illuminated by the Strand Electric three-colour process—at the top, by fourteen 1,000-watt Cyclorama Lanterns, which give a beam angle of 105 degrees, and at the bottom by the Cyclorama Ground Row, which has been let into a permanent pit below the stage level, for horizon lighting. The front and fore-stage lighting is provided by means of a specially designed spot-box concealed in the ceiling, and in numerous openings at either side of the theatre adjacent to the boxes. The usual system of signals, stage floods, wing floods, perch arc lamps, etc., have also been installed. Altogether, this is one of the best and most efficiently equipped theatres in the country.[2]
The theatre was paid for by a share scheme supervised by its founder John Maynard Keynes, at a cost of £15,000. When only £2,300 was raised by subscription of the town, Dr Keynes underwrote the rest himself. Intending to represent both "town and gown", the Trust included the Provost of King's College, its English and Music professors, the mayor and the deputy mayor. Keynes' wife, the renowned dancer Lydia Lopokova was also key to the theatre's foundation. The first manager was Norman Higgins.[3]
CAMBRIDGE Arts Theatre (M.N. Openshaw Higgins). A London company are presenting a season of Ibsen at this theatre, which opened on Monday night, and will continue until Saturday, February 29. The plays selected are A Doll's House, Rosmersholm, Hedda Gabler, and The Master Builder. The company include Lydia Lopokova and Jean Forbes-Robertson who share the leading female roles and on Monday Lydia Lopokova gave a fine rendering of the part of Nora. She was capably supported by Geoffrey Edwards as Torvald; and the Dr. Rank of A. Clarke-Smith was a most effective study. Betty Hardy and Wilfrid Grantham as Mrs. Linden and Nils Krogstad were outstanding for consistent good work, and the smaller parts were capably sustained. The play was produced by Michael Orme and the costumes of the period and the scenery were by Motley. Yesterday (Wednesday) Rosmersholwas presented, with Jean Forbes- Robertson as Rebecca West, and John Laurie in the part of Johannes Rosmer. Irene Hentschel produced the play.[4]
In 2013 the front of house and bar facilities were remodelled and an extra entrance created.[5] This work was awarded to Burrell Foley Fischer and the work commended in the sustainability category of the 2014 Cambridge Design and Construction awards.[6]
Cambridge Theatre Company
The Cambridge Arts Theatre was home to the Cambridge Theatre Company (established in 1969). Formed as a sister company to Toby Robertson's Prospect Theatre Company and Ian McKellen's Actors' Company (presented as part of CTC),[7] the Cambridge Theatre Company enjoyed enormous loyalty in its home town, and many excellent emerging actors were featured in its wide repertoire.
Like the Prospect Theatre Company and the Actors' Company, CTC initially operated a repertory system of a company of around 14 actors. For example, the 1974 six-play season featured Zoë Wanamaker, Oliver Ford Davies, Roger Rees and Ian Charleson. Sheila Hancock was a regular under Lynn, becoming Associate Director. Maureen Lipman starred in her husband Jack Rosenthal's play Smash! based on the ill-fated West End musical Bar Mitzvah Boy, itself based on the smash hit 1976 television play of the same name in which Lynn and Lipman had featured.
During the 1970s and early 1980s a primary function of the Cambridge Theatre Company, along with the Oxford Playhouse Company, was to provide middle-scale theatres such as in Harlow, Swindon, Darlington, Mold, Southampton, Croydon, Peterborough, Cardiff, and Stirling with good quality touring drama. The company's Arts Council of Great Britain grant was dependent on this.[8]
The directors of the company were Richard Cottrell (1969–1975), Robert Lang (1975–1976), Jonathan Lynn (1976–1981), Bill Pryde (1981–1988), Robin Midgley (1988–1991), and Mike Alfreds (1991–1999). The company's headquarters were moved to London and its name was changed to "Method and Madness" in 1995.[9][10] In 1999 the company dissolved in the face of declining interest in quality drama in the provinces.[11]
Sir Ian Murray McKellen is an English actor. With a career spanning more than seven decades, he is noted for his roles on the screen and stage in genres ranging from Shakespearean dramas and modern theatre to popular fantasy and science fiction. He is regarded as a British cultural icon and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1991. He has received numerous accolades, including a Tony Award, six Olivier Awards, and a Golden Globe Award as well as nominations for two Academy Awards, five BAFTA Awards and five Emmy Awards.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to theatre:
Lydia Lopokova, Baroness Keynes was a Russian ballerina famous during the early 20th century.
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Thomas Kirby Walls was an English stage and film actor, producer and director, best known for presenting and co-starring in the Aldwych farces in the 1920s and for starring in and directing the film adaptations of those plays in the 1930s.
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The Marlowe Society is a Cambridge University theatre club for Cambridge students. It is dedicated to achieving a high standard of student drama at Cambridge. The society celebrated its centenary over three years (2007–2009) and in 2008 there was a production by the society of a version of Comus written by Australian poet and playwright John Kinsella.
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Strawberry Theatre Workshop is a Seattle theatre company founded in 2003 by Greg Carter, associated with a movement in that city to improve wages for professional theatre artists. Its name "is derived from the Strawberry Fields of popular music, and the Beatles, who used their recording studio as a daily laboratory of expression."
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Façade is a ballet by Frederick Ashton, to the music of William Walton; it is a balletic interpretation of items from Façade – an Entertainment (1923) by Walton and Edith Sitwell. The ballet was first given by the Camargo Society at the Cambridge Theatre, on 26 April 1931. It has been regularly revived and restaged all over the world.
Sholto David Maurice Robertson, known as Toby Robertson, was the artistic director of the Prospect Theatre Company from 1964 to 1978. He was recognised as having "re-established the good name and reputation of touring theatre in the UK after it had become a byword for second-rate tattiness in the 1950s".
The Camargo Society was a London society which created and produced ballet between 1930 and 1933, giving opportunity to British musicians, choreographers, designers and dancers. Its influence was disproportionate to its short life. Dame Ninette de Valois, founder of The Royal Ballet, saw it as "having done much for the cause of English ballet", and Encyclopædia Britannica Online credits it with "keeping ballet alive in England during the early 1930s". The society was named after the eighteenth-century French dancer Marie Anne de Cupis de Camargo.
The Prospect Theatre Company was an English company founded, as Prospect Productions, in 1961. Based at the Arts Theatre, Cambridge from 1964 until 1969, the company, with Toby Robertson as artistic director and Richard Cottrell as associate director, toured both nationally and internationally with a mainly classical repertoire, providing notable appearances of such actors as Ian McKellen and Timothy West. The company became closely associated with the Edinburgh Festival after its first appearance there in 1967. Separating from the Arts Theatre in 1969, the company, renamed The Prospect Theatre Company, survived without a permanent base for the next eight years under the direction of Toby Robertson, mounting productions in which Derek Jacobi and Dorothy Tutin made significant appearances. Eventually the company found a new home at London's Old Vic in 1977: two years later it became the Old Vic Theatre Company. Though noted for its exemplary ensemble playing, the company lost its Arts Council of Great Britain funding in 1980 after Timothy West's first season as Robertson's successor, leading to Prospect's demise.
Fyodor Vasilyevich Lopukhov was a Soviet and Russian ballet dancer and choreographer. People's Artist of the RSFSR (1956).
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Stanislas Idzikowski was a Polish dancer and ballet master, active in England, and with such historic companies as Pavlova's, Ballets Russes, and Vic-Wells. During his performance career, 1910-1933, he became famous for his brilliant classical technique, and for the development of ballet roles. With Beaumont he co-authored an influential book on the Cecchetti Method, still in print. He later taught dance in London.
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