Orange Tree Theatre
Encyclopedia
The Orange Tree Theatre is a 172-seat theatre at 1 Clarence Street, Richmond in south west London, built specifically as a theatre in the round
Theatre in the round
Theatre-in-the-round or arena theatre is any theatre space in which the audience surrounds the stage area...

.

Exclusively presenting its own productions (and occasional co-productions with the Stephen Joseph Theatre
Stephen Joseph Theatre
The Stephen Joseph Theatre is a theatre in the round in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England that was founded by Stephen Joseph and was the first theatre in the round in Britain....

 in Scarborough), it specialises in staging new plays and neglected classics. It also operates an educational programme called Shakespeare for Schools, part of the Primary Shakespeare Project first devised by Sarah Gordon (director) and Christopher Geelan in 1989. which tours fully costumed adaptations, given by professional actors, in school halls around south west London and Surrey.

Since 1986 the theatre has run a Trainee Director scheme, each year appointing two young assistant-directors, who direct and present a showcase production at the end of their term. Graduates of this arrangement have included Rachel Kavanaugh, Timothy Sheader, Sean Holmes
Sean Holmes
Sean Holmes is a British theatre director and, from spring 2009, artistic director of London’s Lyric Hammersmith.-Early career:Sean Holmes took a masters degree at King's College, London and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in text and performance...

, Dominic Hill and Anthony Clark.

The first Orange Tree Theatre

As a company the Orange Tree Theatre, then known as the Richmond Fringe, was founded on 31 December 1971 by its present artistic director, Sam Walters
Sam Walters
Sam Walters MBE is a British theatre director and Artistic Director of the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond, London, specialising in theatre-in-the-round productions...

, and his actress wife Auriol Smith
Auriol Smith
Auriol Smith is an English actress and theatre director. She is a founder member and associate director of the Orange Tree Theatre. She started her career as an actor, but now divides her time between acting and directing.-Early years:...

, in a small room above the Orange Tree pub, close to Richmond railway station.

Six former church pews, arranged around the performing area, were used to seat an audience of up to 80 in number.

Initially productions were staged in daylight and at lunchtimes. But when theatre lighting and window-blinds were installed, matinee and evening performances of full-length plays also became possible. The London critics regularly reviewed its productions and the venue gained a reputation for quality and innovation, with theatregoers queuing on the stairs, waiting to purchase tickets.

The new Orange Tree Theatre

As audience numbers increased there was pressure to find a more accommodating space, both front and backstage. On 14 February 1991, the company opened its first production across the road in the current premises, the new Orange Tree Theatre housed within a converted primary school.

Meanwhile the original theatre continued to function as a second stage for shorter runs and works in translation until 1997, renamed The Room (above the pub).

Design and conversion

The school conversion and construction design were undertaken by Iain Mackintosh
Iain MacKintosh
Iain MacKintosh was a Scottish singer and songwriter. His father was from the Outer Hebrides, a watchmaker and goldsmith who owned a pawnshop in Glasgow, his mother came from Northern Ireland. At the age of seven he started learning the Highland pipes and played in a pipe band in his youth...

 as head of the Theatre Projects Consultants team. The design intent was to retain the same sense of intimacy as the old theatre, thus calling for an unusually small acting area.

The solution was to create, at stage level, no more than three rows of shallow raked seating on any side of the acting area, plus an irregular, timber-clad gallery above of only one row (which helps to 'paper the wall with people') under which actors could circulate on two sides to reach the stage entrances at all four corners of the playing space.
Foyers and dressing rooms were sited in the rebuilt house of the former headmaster, while the theatre space itself is built where once were the assembly hall and school playground.

Any fears that the special atmosphere of the old theatre would be lost have proved totally unfounded, and close links have been formed with the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, also founded as an in-the-round theatre by Sir Alan Ayckbourn
Alan Ayckbourn
Sir Alan Ayckbourn CBE is a prolific English playwright. He has written and produced seventy-three full-length plays in Scarborough and London and was, between 1972 and 2009, the artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, where all but four of his plays have received their...

.

Costs of development

The total construction and conversion cost including shell. fitting out, fees etc., was estimated at £1,750,000. The developers County and District Properties and Grosvenor Developments provided the shell structure, worth £1,000,000, as a "planning gain" for a development which also includes the European headquarters of Pepsi-Cola International. This left £750,000 to be raised by a Theatre Appeal, launched in 1988 by Richmond residents Sir Richard and Lady Attenborough
Sheila Sim
Sheila Beryl Grant Attenborough, Lady Attenborough , known professionally by her maiden name Sheila Sim, is an English film and theatre actress and the wife of actor and director Richard Attenborough.- Career :...

.

2003 extension

In 2003 the former Royal Bank of Scotland building next door to the new theatre was modified and re-opened as a dedicated space for rehearsals, set-building and costume storage, significantly expanding and improving its operation.

Repertory

As well as producing the first six plays by Martin Crimp
Martin Crimp
Martin Andrew Crimp is a British playwright.Sometimes described as a practitioner of the "in-yer-face" school of contemporary British drama, Crimp though rejects the label...

, plays by Susan Glaspell
Susan Glaspell
Susan Keating Glaspell was an American Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, actress, director, novelist, biographer and poet. She was a founding member of the Provincetown Players, one of the most important collaboratives in the development of modern drama in the United States...

 and developing a reputation for theatrical 'rediscoveries', the Orange Tree repertory has also included many special seasons for the work of James Saunders, Michel Vinaver
Michel Vinaver
-Works:* Les Coréens * Iphigénie Hotel * A la renverse * 11 septembre 2001 / 11 September 2001 -References:...

, Rodney Ackland
Rodney Ackland
Rodney Ackland was an English playwright, actor, theatre director and screenwriter.He was educated at Balham Grammar School in London...

, Václav Havel
Václav Havel
Václav Havel is a Czech playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and politician. He was the tenth and last President of Czechoslovakia and the first President of the Czech Republic . He has written over twenty plays and numerous non-fiction works, translated internationally...

, Harley Granville Barker and Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...

 and his contemporaries, including John Galsworthy
John Galsworthy
John Galsworthy OM was an English novelist and playwright. Notable works include The Forsyte Saga and its sequels, A Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter...

.

For the core repertory, see separate articles on the Artistic Director Sam Walters
Sam Walters
Sam Walters MBE is a British theatre director and Artistic Director of the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond, London, specialising in theatre-in-the-round productions...

 and Associate Director Auriol Smith
Auriol Smith
Auriol Smith is an English actress and theatre director. She is a founder member and associate director of the Orange Tree Theatre. She started her career as an actor, but now divides her time between acting and directing.-Early years:...

. But many other directors have made notable contributions, including:
  • The Lady or the Tiger (a musical by Nola York, Jeremy Paul and Michael Richmond) directed by Michael Richmond, August 1975, Fortune Theatre
    Fortune Theatre
    The Fortune Theatre is a 432 seat West End theatre in Russell Street, near Covent Garden, in the City of Westminster, built in 1922-4 by Ernest Schaufelberg for impresario Laurence Cowen. The façade is principally bush hammered concrete, with brick piers supporting the roof...

     1976
  • The Nest (Franz Xavier Kroetz) directed by Anthony Clark, April 1981
  • Wild, Wild Women (a musical by Nola York and Michael Richmond) directed by Michael Richmond, December 1981, Astoria Theatre 1982
  • The Bacchae
    The Bacchae
    The Bacchae is an ancient Greek tragedy by the Athenian playwright Euripides, during his final years in Macedon, at the court of Archelaus I of Macedon. It premiered posthumously at the Theatre of Dionysus in 405 BC as part of a tetralogy that also included Iphigeneia at Aulis, and which...

    (Euripides
    Euripides
    Euripides was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him but according to the Suda it was ninety-two at most...

    ) directed by Anthony Cornish, February 1983
  • Brotherhood (Don Taylor) directed by Oliver Ford Davies
    Oliver Ford Davies
    -Biography:From the King's School, Canterbury, he won a scholarship to Merton College, Oxford, where he read History and became President of the Oxford University Dramatic Society . He was awarded the Laurence Olivier Award in 1990 for Best Actor in a New Play for Racing Demon...

    , November 1985
  • Definitely the Bahamas (a trilogy of short plays by Martin Crimp, including A Kind of Arden and Spanish Girls) directed by Alec McCowen
    Alec McCowen
    Alexander Duncan "Alec" McCowen CBE is an English actor. He is known for his work in numerous film and stage productions. He was awarded the CBE in the 1985 New Year's Honours List.-Personal:...

    , September 1987
  • Mrs Warren's Profession (Bernard Shaw) directed by Brian Cox, starring Natasha Parry and Irina Brook
    Irina Brook
    Irina Brook is a British stage actress, director and producer. The daughter of film and theatre director Peter Brook and actress Natasha Parry, she was named a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in 2002 by the French Ministry of Culture...

    . September 1989
  • Adam Bede
    Adam Bede
    Adam Bede, the first novel written by George Eliot , was published in 1859. It was published pseudonymously, even though Evans was a well-published and highly respected scholar of her time...

    (George Eliot
    George Eliot
    Mary Anne Evans , better known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, journalist and translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era...

    's novel, adapted by Geoffrey Beevers) directed by Geoffrey Beevers
    Geoffrey Beevers
    Geoffrey Beevers is a British actor who has appeared in many different television roles.Beevers has worked extensively at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames, both as an actor ; and as an adaptor/director of George Eliot's novel Adam Bede , for which he won a Time Out Award, and Balzac's...

    , February 1990, Time Out award
  • Pere Goriot (Balzac's novel, adapted by Geoffrey Beevers) directed by Geoffrey Beevers, February 1994
  • Private Fears in Public Places
    Private Fears in Public Places
    Private Fears in Public Places is a 2004 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. The bleakest play written by Ayckbourn for many years, it intimately follows a few days in the lives of six characters, in four tightly-interwoven stories through 54 scenes.In 2006, it was made into a film Cœurs,...

    (Alan Ayckbourn
    Alan Ayckbourn
    Sir Alan Ayckbourn CBE is a prolific English playwright. He has written and produced seventy-three full-length plays in Scarborough and London and was, between 1972 and 2009, the artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, where all but four of his plays have received their...

    ) an extended version of his play directed for the Orange Tree by the author, May 2005 http://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/review.php/7761/private-fears-in-public-places
  • The Linden Tree
    The Linden Tree
    The Linden Tree is a 1947 play by the English dramatist J. B. Priestley. It makes use of the Elgar Cello Concerto.It was revived at the Orange Tree Theatre in 2006 and at the Pentameters Theatre in 2011...

    (J B Priestley) directed by Christopher Morahan
    Christopher Morahan
    Christopher Thomas Morahan CBE is an English stage and television director and producing manager.-Training and career:Morahan was born in London in 1929, and was educated at Highgate School...

    , February 2006http://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/review.php/11655/the-linden-tree
  • Shakes versus Shav
    Shakes versus Shav
    Shakes versus Shav is a puppet play written by George Bernard Shaw. It was Shaw's penultimate dramatic work. The play runs for 20 minutes in performance....

    (Bernard Shaw
    Bernard Shaw
    Bernard Shaw may refer to:* George Bernard Shaw, Irish playwright* Bernard Shaw , English footballer of the 1960-70s* Bernard Shaw , journalist and longtime CNN anchorman* Bernie Shaw, singer for the band Uriah Heep...

    ) and The Tinker's Wedding
    The Tinker's Wedding
    The Tinker's Wedding is a two-act play written by Irish playwright J. M. Synge. The author's only comedy, it is set on a roadside near a chapel in rural Ireland...

    (John Millington Synge
    John Millington Synge
    Edmund John Millington Synge was an Irish playwright, poet, prose writer, and collector of folklore. He was a key figure in the Irish Literary Revival and was one of the cofounders of the Abbey Theatre...

    ) directed by Henry Bell
    Henry Bell
    Henry Bell was a Scottish engineer who is famed for introducing the first successful passenger steamboat service in Europe.-Early career:...

    , June 2007 http://www.britishtheatreguide.info/reviews/OTyngdirectors-rev.htm
  • The Years Between (Daphne du Maurier
    Daphne du Maurier
    Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning DBE was a British author and playwright.Many of her works have been adapted into films, including the novels Rebecca and Jamaica Inn and the short stories "The Birds" and "Don't Look Now". The first three were directed by Alfred Hitchcock.Her elder sister was...

    ) directed by Caroline Smith
    Caroline Smith
    Caroline Smith was an American diver who competed in the 1924 Summer Olympics.In 1924 she won the gold medal in the 10 metre platform competition.-External links:*...

    , September 2007 http://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/review.php/18169/the-years-between
  • Next Door's Baby
    Next Door's Baby
    Next Door's Baby is a musical with music and lyrics by Matthew Strachan and book by Bernie Gaughan , based on Gaughan's radio play of the same name. Set in 1950's Dublin, it tells the story of two neighbouring families who attempt to reconcile their lives with secrets they have kept to avoid facing...

    (Matthew Strachan
    Matthew Strachan
    Matthew Strachan is an English composer and songwriter.His best known work is the music for the television game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? with his father Keith...

     and Bernie Gaughan) a musical play directed by Paul Prescott
    Paul Prescott
    Paul Prescott is an English rugby league player. He plays prop for the Wigan Warriors. Paul is also known in celebrity circles for being the son of former UK deputy prime-minister and now lifelong Labour peer, John Prescott...

    , February 2008 http://www.britishtheatreguide.info/reviews/nextdoorsbaby-rev.htm.
  • Chains of Dew (Susan Glaspell
    Susan Glaspell
    Susan Keating Glaspell was an American Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, actress, director, novelist, biographer and poet. She was a founding member of the Provincetown Players, one of the most important collaboratives in the development of modern drama in the United States...

    ) directed by Kate Saxon
    Kate Saxon
    Kate Saxon is a British freelance theatre director who lives in London. She is Associate Director of Shared Experience Theatre.- Theatre :Kate Saxon's productions include the premiere of Mark Healy's adaptation of Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd , for English Touring Theatre and of Fowles' The...

    , March 2008 http://www.britishtheatreguide.info/reviews/chainsdew-rev.htm
  • De Monfort (Joanna Baillie
    Joanna Baillie
    Joanna Baillie was a Scottish poet and dramatist. Baillie was very well known during her lifetime and, though a woman, intended her plays not for the closet but for the stage. Admired both for her literary powers and her sweetness of disposition, she hosted a brilliant literary society in her...

    ) directed by Imogen Bond, April 2008 http://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/review.php/20617/de-monfort
  • The Story of Vasco (Georges Scherade in a verse adaptation by Ted Hughes
    Ted Hughes
    Edward James Hughes OM , more commonly known as Ted Hughes, was an English poet and children's writer. Critics routinely rank him as one of the best poets of his generation. Hughes was British Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death.Hughes was married to American poet Sylvia Plath, from 1956 until...

    ) directed by Adam Barnard, March 2009 http://www.britishtheatreguide.info/reviews/storyvasco-rev.htm
  • Alison's House
    Alison's House
    Alison's House is a drama in three acts by American playwright Susan Glaspell.It was first produced at Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Theatre on 14th Street, New York, on 1 December 1930 where it was given 25 performances in the regular repertory season when, unexpectedly, it was awarded the...

    (Susan Glaspell
    Susan Glaspell
    Susan Keating Glaspell was an American Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, actress, director, novelist, biographer and poet. She was a founding member of the Provincetown Players, one of the most important collaboratives in the development of modern drama in the United States...

    ) directed by Jo Combes, October 2009 http://www.britishtheatreguide.info/reviews/alisonshouse-rev.htm
  • The Promise
    The Promise (2010 play)
    The Promise is a 2010 play by Ben Brown. It premiered from 17 February to 20 March 2010 at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond-upon-Thames. It is set early in World War I and deals with the lead-up to the Balfour Declaration of 1917, via the relationship between Herbert Samuel, Edwin Samuel Montagu...

    (Ben Brown
    Ben Brown (playwright)
    Ben Brown is a British playwright. When interviewed about The Promise, his 2010 play about the Balfour Declaration, he said that he had grown up in North London with a non-observant Jewish father.-Works:...

    ) directed by Alan Strachan, February 2010 http://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/review.php/27293/the-promise
  • Taking Steps
    Taking Steps
    Taking Steps is a 1979 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It is set on three floors of an old and reputedly haunted house, with the stage arranged so that the stairs are flat and all three floors are on a single level...

    (Alan Ayckbourn) directed by the author, March 2010 http://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/review.php/27689/taking-steps
  • The Ruffian on the Stair
    The Ruffian on the Stair
    The Ruffian On the Stair is a play by British playwright Joe Orton first broadcast on BBC Radio in August 1964. It is an unsympathetic yet comedic one-act portrayal of working class England, as played out by a couple and a mysterious young man who toys with their lives...

    (Joe Orton
    Joe Orton
    John Kingsley Orton was an English playwright.In a short but prolific career lasting from 1964 until his death, he shocked, outraged and amused audiences with his scandalous black comedies...

    ) directed by Emma Faulkner, June 2010 http://www.britishtheatreguide.info/reviews/tomsacold-rev.htm
  • Tom's a-cold (David Egan) directed by Lora Davies, June 2010 http://www.britishtheatreguide.info/reviews/tomsacold-rev.htm
  • Autumn and Winter (Lars Norén
    Lars Norén
    Lars Norén is a Swedish playwright, novelist and poet. He is considered Sweden's most prominent contemporary playwright of today.Born in Stockholm, Norén wrote his first play at age 19...

    , translated by Gunilla Anderman, May 2011 http://www.britishtheatreguide.info/reviews/autumnwinter-rev.htm http://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/review.php/32081/autumn-and-winter
  • Three Farces (John Maddison Morton
    John Maddison Morton
    John Maddison Morton was an English playwright who specialized in one-act farces. His most famous farce was Box and Cox . He also wrote comic dramas, pantomimes and other theatrical pieces.-Biography:...

    ), directed by Henry Bell, June 2011 http://www.britishtheatreguide.info/reviews/3farces-rev.htm
  • Winter (Jon Fosse
    Jon Fosse
    Jon Fosse is a Norwegian author and dramatist.Fosse was born in Haugesund, Norway and currently lives in Bergen. He debuted in 1983 with the novel Raudt, svart . His first play, Og aldri skal vi skiljast, was performed and published in 1994. Jon Fosse has written novels, short stories, poetry,...

    ), directed by Teunkie van der Sluijs, June 2011
  • Then the Snow Came, inspired by Oscar Wilde
    Oscar Wilde
    Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...

    's short story The Happy Prince, written and directed by Jimmy Grimes, June 2011


Chris Monks has twice brought his particular vision of Gilbert & Sullivan, The Mikado
The Mikado
The Mikado; or, The Town of Titipu is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert, their ninth of fourteen operatic collaborations...

 (2005) and The Pirates of Penzance
The Pirates of Penzance
The Pirates of Penzance; or, The Slave of Duty is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. The opera's official premiere was at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York City on 31 December 1879, where the show was well received by both audiences...

 (2006), which break away from the Savoyard tradition.

In September 2008 the Orange Tree presented the English language premiere of Leaving (play) by Václav Havel, which had its Czech premiere in Prague in May 2008. This is the first play Havel has written since the events of 1989 propelled him into political office. The play, which has echoes of King Lear and The Cherry Orchard, concerns the leaving of office of Chancellor Rieger and his eviction from the state villa which has been his home. Although the theme may appear to have an autobiographical element, Havel began writing it in the late 1980s with no idea that he would soon be his country's leader.

External links

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