Centenary Theatre Company is an award winning theatre company based in Warrington

Warrington

Warrington is a town, borough and unitary authority area of Cheshire, England. It stands on the banks of the River Mersey, which is tidal to the west of the weir at Howley. It lies 16 miles east of Liverpool, 19 miles west of Manchester and 8 miles south of St Helens...

, Cheshire

Cheshire

Cheshire is a ceremonial county in North West England. Cheshire's county town is the city of Chester, although its largest town is Warrington. Other major towns include Widnes, Congleton, Crewe, Ellesmere Port, Runcorn, Macclesfield, Winsford, Northwich, and Wilmslow...

 and are one of the longest established theatre companies in North West England. The name of the Company has changed several times over the years, with the original company being established in 1901.

Centenary perform four productions each performance season including musicals

Musical theatre

Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...

 and plays. The company also performs concerts in aid of local charities.

Centenary Theatre Company is a registered charity in the U.K. Membership is not based on artistic ability. Only if members wish to perform in productions is any audition

Audition

An audition is a sample performance by an actor, singer, musician, dancer or other performing artist.Audition may also refer to:* The sense of hearing* Adobe Audition, audio editing software...

 required. The Centenary is also affiliated to the National Operatic and Dramatic Association

National Operatic and Dramatic Association

NODA has a membership of 2500 amateur theatre groups and 3000 individual enthusiasts throughout the UK, staging musicals, operas, plays, concerts and pantomimes in a wide variety of performing venues, ranging from the country’s leading professional theatres to tiny village halls.Founded in 1899,...

 (NODA). The group performs at The Brindley Theatre in Runcorn

Runcorn

Runcorn is an industrial town and cargo port within the borough of Halton in the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. In 2009, its population was estimated to be 61,500. The town is on the southern bank of the River Mersey where the estuary narrows to form Runcorn Gap. Directly to the north...

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History of Centenary

The origins of the Company can be traced back to 1901 and the forming of a Ladies Choral Society, which was augmented by a Drama Group in 1904. By 1907 the Operatic and Dramatic Society took the form seen today, with the Crosfield family taking a very active part. The Society’s first full scale musical was in 1907 with the presentation of Gilbert and Sullivan

Gilbert and Sullivan

Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan . The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S...

's Trial by Jury

Trial by Jury

Trial by Jury is a comic opera in one act, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It was first produced on 25 March 1875, at London's Royalty Theatre, where it initially ran for 131 performances and was considered a hit, receiving critical praise and outrunning its...

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Earlier choral and dramatic productions were performed in the then newly built Crosfield Assembly Hall, which now forms part of the ground floor of the Crosfield General Office Building. In later years, musical shows were transferred to the Parr Hall

Parr Hall

The Parr Hall is the only surviving professional concert hall/theatre venue in Warrington, England.-Location:The Parr Hall and Pyramid Arts Centre are located in the Cultural quarter of Warrington town centre, in Palmyra Square.-History:...

, and then on to the Royal Court Theatre, now lost with its site being occupied today by the Warrington Information Offices. Crosfields celebrated their 100 years of soap

Soap

In chemistry, soap is a salt of a fatty acid.IUPAC. "" Compendium of Chemical Terminology, 2nd ed. . Compiled by A. D. McNaught and A. Wilkinson. Blackwell Scientific Publications, Oxford . XML on-line corrected version: created by M. Nic, J. Jirat, B. Kosata; updates compiled by A. Jenkins. ISBN...

 making (1815–1915), and marked this several years later by building the Centenary Theatre. The Society’s first production, in the main body of the hall (the stage had not been built yet!), was The Princess of Kensington. One year later in 1925, came the first full stage production in the theatre, The Geisha Girl.

The Company's activities were suspended for World War II, as indeed it had been for World War I. Prior to 1940 the musical productions had consisted primarily of one, two or three main scenes incorporating a large chorus that remained on stage for up to 75% of the time. In the late 1940s a change came about with the arrival of bigger, more glamorous, and ever costlier shows – demanding more efficient detail and stage effects.

One such show was The Desert Song

The Desert Song

The Desert Song is an operetta with music by Sigmund Romberg and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, Otto Harbach and Frank Mandel. It was inspired by the 1925 uprising of the Riffs, a group of Moroccan fighters, against French colonial rule. It was also inspired by stories of Lawrence of...

, performed by the Society in 1947, which proved to be one of the group's greater successes, particularly in terms of attendance figures, playing to full houses – including the Saturday afternoon matinee

Matinée

Matinee or Matinée may refer to:* A showing of a movie or theatrical performance in the afternoon. More generally, a musical, social or other public event held at a time other than in the evening and occasionally stretched to include the early A.M. hours, e.g., "midnight matinee"...

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During this period amateur theatre

Amateur theatre

Amateur theatre is theatre performed by amateur actors. These actors are not typically members of Actors' Equity groups or Actors' Unions as these organizations exist to protect the professional industry and therefore discourage their members from appearing with companies which are not a signatory...

 in general was booming and continued to do so for many years. The Company flourished and was able to support various charities with donations amounting to many thousands of pounds.

Shows have become ever more sophisticated and elaborate with costs steadily rising – but they still to play to full houses today. It will always be the aim of the Company to provide the best possible entertainment for the watching public.

The company has now completed in excess of 130 musical shows since the first one back in those early days of 1907 – with two shows every year from 1961 onwards. They also produce two plays each year and these have included a wide variety of plays including classic drama; farce

Farce

In theatre, a farce is a comedy which aims at entertaining the audience by means of unlikely, extravagant, and improbable situations, disguise and mistaken identity, verbal humour of varying degrees of sophistication, which may include word play, and a fast-paced plot whose speed usually increases,...

; comedy

Comedy

Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...

 and ‘whodunit

Whodunit

A whodunit or whodunnit is a complex, plot-driven variety of the detective story in which the puzzle is the main feature of interest. The reader or viewer is provided with clues from which the identity of the perpetrator of the crime may be deduced before the solution is revealed in the final...

s’.

In 1984 the Society changed its name from 'Crosfields' to 'Centenary Operatic and Dramatic Society' – named after the theatre where all productions were then staged. The Centenary Theatre closed in 1991. The last musical there was Cabaret

Cabaret (musical)

Cabaret is a musical based on a book written by Christopher Isherwood, music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb. The 1966 Broadway production became a hit and spawned a 1972 film as well as numerous subsequent productions....

and the last play was Hindle Wakes. Later on that year the group returned to the Parr Hall – after decades away – with Carousel

Carousel (musical)

Carousel is the second stage musical by the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II . The work premiered in 1945 and was adapted from Ferenc Molnár's 1909 play Liliom, transplanting its Budapest setting to the Maine coastline...

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In 2005 Centenary moved again to a brand new purpose built theatre - Runcorn's Brindley Theatre. To coincide with the move to a professional venue, Centenary Operatic and Dramatic Society changed its name to Centenary Theatre Company.