by Below through the hustle and bustle and the Piccadilly Circus lime bike, where confused tourists hike to the lights of your preferred West End blockbuster, there is a harmless small door that leads to one of the best theater in London. Hidden jewel? The sentence was practically invented for Jermyn Street Theater.
It is not impossible to find – the hint is in the name – but he does not write exactly for attention. No, this is a place for those who know. Not that it is indeed away from him. It’s all about delivering a pure theater hit than hard sale. And part of his cult complaint is its size: this is a theater in which the audience is basically in the play. “I saw how someone has his drink and the actor, who is still in character, has taken it in and gave it back to them,” says the artistic director Stella Powell-Jones, “There is a mischief here, it is so alive here and actor surfing this wave with the audience.”
Tiny theater, big names
So you will find the door, then take a steep staircase down to the box office, go through a door, get a drink from a bar-only a hatch and take one of the 70 seats and find Powell-Jones and David Doyle, the executing producer who also sits there. At least I did it. And right in front of them is the stage set in which the actors stand to drink.
Powell-Jones and Doyle, a creative Powerhouse couple, have been in their role for two years, but longer in the theater. They are clearly in love with the place, as is just anyone else who comes through here. And in the theater world they really all went through here. Simon Russell Beale, Sam Mendes, David Threlall, Adjoa Andoh, and on.
“It is really like the Studio Theater from West End, the last of its kind,” says Doyle. “I think this is proof of the vision of this small space, in which there is an astonishing relationship between the audience and the work on stage. That is what the audience has returned and people like Stephen Sondheim have brought to stay as a master of all these megastars, which are often only part of the audience.”
This basement vibrates with a certain magic, simply from the expectation, which are generated by the set, the lights, classic seating and the strange silence under the streets. It was a night club during the Second World War and then became a changing room for an Italian restaurant on the upper floor. Until Penny Horner, the co -founder and managing director, handled with businessman Howard Jameson and somehow saw it as the ideal place for a theater. All the more strange, since it wasn’t a theater either.
“Penny worked in publication,” says Powell-Jones. “But they had a lot of buddies in the theater and they kept hearing how none of them could afford to work in the center of the city. You had to do it far, and then nobody would see it. They had the idea that there should be somewhere in the heart of the city where artists could afford to afford the tickets and since then a tuiding principle.” “Since.”
It is not based on the financing of the Arts Council, but works through cash sales, donations and the support of customers (including Sir Michael Gambon). And their approach is now of particular importance in a theater scene in which the prices for the most sought-after A-Lister shows are hundreds of pounds. The Jermyn Street Theater, in which the most expensive tickets are £ 35 and the cheapest £ 10, are democratized in a way that is more valuable than ever.
This basement vibrates with a certain magic, simply from the expectation, which are generated by the set, the lights, classic seating and the strange silence under the street
“We are the only place here where you can get an inexpensive ticket and on which a drink does not cost a million pounds,” says Powell-Jones. “And you do not know who you will sit as than side by side, it could be a great theater person or a 12-year-old with her grandma. It is fun with it. And you are never more than four rows away from what happens on the stage.”
However, it is not just this closeness that makes it special. It is the possibility for writers and directors to experiment and thrive. Powell-Jones continues: “What we loved is to your favorite artists and say:” What do you want to do? “Then we can actually do it.” Like happy theater alchemists, they will combine new directors with established actors or brand new actors with dramatists who have excavated an old script from the back of a closet. And they often come gold. Like the Lonely Londoner by Roy Williams by The Lonely Londoner from The Light Year, an adaptation of Sam Selvon’s novel that was the first to be the Windrush generation in its own words. This has now been moved to the Kiln Theater.
Puns take a punt
Next comes the little brother, Timberlake values bakers adaptation of Amets Arzallus Antia and Ibrahima Baldes Memoiren. It is about soon epic journey through North Africa to save his younger brother from a camp in which he is kept by human dealers. It promises a kind of spectacular and apparent theater that flourishes down here.
There is nothing to lose for the audience, even if you don’t know what you will get, and you see very much that you change some life. “It makes theater so society again,” says Powell-Jones. “You can come with a group of friends and affect everyone and try something new. If you go to a large expensive west end show at this price, you want a banker.
16b Jermyn Street, sw1y 6st, Jermynstheatre.co.uk
