THE third summer rep season at the Marine Theatre, Lyme Regis, begins on Thursday 23rd July, with the thriller The Late Edwina Black. Meanwhile, about 25 miles west along the Jurassic Coast, Sidmouth’s Manor Pavilion Theatre is already well into its three-month summer season.
The repertory theatre programme, often in a seaside theatre, used to be a staple of this otherwise quiet part of the theatrical calendar. But over the years – war, political turbulence, changing taste in entertainment – the support declined and the genre almost died.
At Lyme, as she prepares to launch this year’s five-play season, director Su Gilroy, whose eponymous company stages the Marine’s rep, relishes the challenges for actors and back-stage team of putting different plays on every week and stresses the importance of choosing plays that audiences will want to come and see.
Putting on a summer season of five plays is a lot of work, she says, and it wouldn’t be possible without the help of so many people – “from the actors and stage management team on the season to everyone who works at the theatre, who helps us technically, and with ensuring everyone knows the plays are on, the volunteers, who sell the tickets and greet our audiences every evening; and the good people of Lyme, who have been so incredibly welcoming and appreciative, and very helpful in lending us props, furniture, and costumes for our plays!”
Su is a dramaturg and freelance theatre director, working in theatre for more than 30 years, with more than 50 productions to her credit, from short rehearsed readings to full scale productions in number one venues. Her early career included time spent as a runner for a film production company, a blue-coat on a holiday camp, a drama counsellor on an American summer camp and a background artist on TV.
In a rep season, each play is rehearsed for a week, and at the Marine performances are on Thursdays, Fridays, Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. “We try and make sure that the season has something for everyone, so there is a variety of plays on offer,” she says. “We also try to make it so that if someone is on holiday for a week, there are two plays that they can see in that week, and that those plays are very different, so hopefully they’ll like at least one of them. I love stories, and each of the plays has a very different story, so as you go from play to play, you’re going from story to story, and the stories keep it fresh.”
Weekly rep, with its severely restricted rehearsal time, means there is “a practical limit on what you can do in the rehearsal process. There is much less time for anything to evolve, but the actors always bring so much to it, ways to make the characters into real people.” Actors usually come to rehearsal more or less knowing their lines and Su as director will have worked out the moves (called “blocking”). “Sometimes this can be taken from the script – the French’s acting editions of the scripts have the moves from the original production written in. Following those directions used to be known as acting ‘en français’!”
Choosing the plays is “one of the really tricky parts of the season,” she says. “I think of it as being a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle – there are so many things to take into consideration. First and foremost, they have to be plays that people will want to come and see – plays that have popular appeal. That generally means comedies, thrillers and some drama, and some that cross genre – this year the Alan Ayckbourn play we’re staging, Communicating Doors, is a time-travelling comedy thriller.”
Designing the sets is complicated – closing one play on a Wednesday and opening the next on Thursday means the set has to be simple, so some have minimal scenery, while the thriller Dead Guilty will have a traditional box set. The final play, the very funny Ladies Day will be performed in-the-round, on the auditorium floor with the audience all around.
The numbers of actors and stage management team are the biggest element in the budget for the season. The largest cast (seven) this year is for George Bernard Shaw’s Arms & the Man, “but as there will be no royalties to pay on that, I can afford a slightly larger cast.”
For a director, a rep season offers the chance to work on many different plays. “Every time you do a new play you learn something new, which is always exciting.”
For the audience, there is not only the opportunity to enjoy several plays over a short time, but also to see the same actors in different roles – one actor, Victoria Porter, is in all five.
Su is a theatre person to the heart of her being – she loves directing, even under the pressure of summer rep, and she enjoys the ability as a producer to choose the actors and the plays: “Arms & the Man is a play I’ve always wanted to work on, so I’m really looking forward to that.
“The Marine is such a lovely theatre, in such an idyllic spot, and who doesn’t want to spend their summer by the seaside? Lyme itself is such a pretty town, and I never get tired of that view as you come down the high street with Lyme Bay in the background.”
The Marine’s rep season starts with The Late Edwina Black, by William Dinner and William Morum, followed by Communicating Doors, Arms and The Man, Dead Guilty and Ladies Day.
Sidmouth’s summer season continues with The Good Life, Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite, Charles Dickens’ The Haunting, Marc Camoletti’s Changing Rooms, James Cawood’s Stone Cold Murder, Richard Harris’s Outside Edge, Joe Orton’s Loot, Daphne du Maurier’s September Tide, ending with Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit.
For dates see the Arts Diary, and for more information and bookings visit the theatre websites, marinetheatre.com and manorpavilion.com
* The oldest surviving summer play festival is believed to be Frinton Summer Theatre, founded in 1934, staging a new play weekly over eight weeks. Sheringham Little Theatre in Norfolk has been going for 65 years, and Oxford’s Creation Theatre, founded in 1996, goes on the road in the summer taking classic stories to beautiful open air venues. Sidmouth’s summer-long rep began in 1958.
Photograph of Su Gilroy at the Marine by Edward Baxter