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A Guided Tour of Bristol Old Vic (the Theatre Royal)

Posted on 11th November, 2024 in Bristol, Theatre

A few days ago I went on a Bristol Old Vic Guided Theatre Tour. As it’s an eighteenth century theatre I hoped it might be useful research for a story I’m writing. At the least, I thought it would be an interesting morning. It turned out to be both, a brilliant tour led by an excellent guide who exuded enthusiasm for this most wonderful of theatres.

The Old Vic opened in 1766, became the Theatre Royal in 1778, and since 1946 has been home to the Bristol Old Vic Theatre Company. It is in King Street, a pedestrianised street which seems to consist mainly of bars and restaurants. The Old Vic is next door to Cooper’s Hall, bult in 1744 for the Bristol Guild of Coopers. The Coopers left in 1785, when the building became an assembly hall, a chapel, a wine warehouse, and finally sank into use as a fruit and vegetable warehouse. The Old Vic has owned it since the 1970s, has since restored it, and now lets it out for conferences and events.

Coopers Hall

Construction work started on the Old Vic in 1764. Originally it was behind a row of terraced houses, and theatre goers had to access it via a passage between the houses. We were told that audience behaviour was very different from that of modern audiences (though I’ve had some experiences in the theatre that suggest the difference is not very great). In the eighteenth century people didn’t sit quietly to watch a performance: they strolled around, chatted, played games, and snacked on oranges and pigs’ trotters – remains of their snacks were found during excavations. Human skeletal remains were also found, possibly from a plague pit.

The Old Vic opened on 30 May 1766 with a concert, a performance of The Conscious Lovers, and The King and the Miller of Mansfield. Both plays were first performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, appropriate choices for a theatre modelled on Drury Lane. The Conscious Lovers was written by Richard Steele in 1723. Steele’s play was not universally liked: in a detailed critique, John Dennis dismissed it as improbable, absurd, inconsistent, incoherent, frivolous, false, awkward, clumsy…they don’t write reviews like that any more!   The King and the Miller of Mansfield was written by R Dodsley in 1737. It’s interesting that two old plays were chosen to inaugurate the new theatre.

The auditorium

The auditorium is amazing. It was refurbished in 2012 and if you ever go to a play you can get some sense of being in a Georgian theatre – except of course then it was lit by candle light. They dripped down from a huge chandelier in the centre of the ceiling, and at the front of the stage were floats, candles set in water which served as footlights. However, as Sophie Nield pointed out, a night at an eighteenth-century theatre might not be an experience you really want to have. There were no toilets (I wonder what use was made of that entrance passage…); it was crowded – where 580 are seated today, they crammed in over 1,000; and the audience didn’t just eat their snacks. If they didn’t like the play, they’d pelt the actors with fruit (and whatever else came to hand). (Sophie Nield, ‘Flying fruit and no loos – fancy a trip back to 18th-century theatre?’, The Guardian, 16 May 2011).

The refurbished theatre reopened in 2012 with a performance of Richard O’Keefe’s 1791 comedy, Wild Oats – and I was there for a wonderful production!

Backstage

The Old Vic is a working theatre and it was fantastic to see some of that work going on. In the Weston Studio we walked in on actors and crew filming dance show Little Murmur. For a few moments we watched an actor throwing himself around the stage in alarming contortions, performing the same sequence over and over again until it was right. Later we saw an actor in The Little Mermaid rehearsing aerial work in front of other cast members, which actually I suppose is going to be underwater work. The play opens in December.

Prop table

Being back stage was amazing! It’s such a huge space and full of equipment: racks of lights, props tables, fly tower, a quick change area. The workshop, organised in bays, is wonderfully chaotic looking, packed with tools, equipment, odd bits of scenery. It also has a fifty year old painting screen, a screen on rollers which go down into a sinister looking, narrow trench. Painters can attach large pieces of work to the screen which they can reach by turning the rollers rather than climbing on scaffolding or ladders.

Eighteenth-century seating

We went up to the gods, which has never been an area I’ve liked in any theatre. Still, the views of the auditorium from there are wonderful. It also has a small collection of original eighteenth-century seating, so you could see how uncomfortable they must have been.

Of all the theatrical equipment, best of all was the thunder run – eighteenth century sound technology at its best. It’s a series of wooden shutes and channels which run above the audience. Cannon balls were rolled down them to create the sound of thunder. We also saw a replica of a 1700s wind machine, and a rain machine. What’s more, the Old Vic regularly puts on tours during which you can actually see and hear the thunder run in action. I wouldn’t miss it for the world, and so I’m going back next month for the Thunder Run Experience!

The auditorium from the gods