Sue Crewe visits a
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 AA road sign announced "Hamlet",
but local instructions on how to find Brady's warehouse were more graphic.
"It's a bloody great shed, duck; just beyond Asda and opposite the
slag banks." Bob Brady is pained
to hear his 22,000 sq ft steel frame, breeze block and concrete edifice
described as a shed, but it's a small pain compared to |
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| Doing his bit for class and culture in Cumbria: actor Alan Rickman played to full houses at the former transport warehouse. | ||||||
| the satisfaction he takes in the shed's recent transformation into the cultural epicentre of the Furness peninsula. | ||||||
Jutting from the west coast of
Cumbria, the peninsula and its chief town, Barrow-in-Furness, have but a
precarious hold on the rest of the country's consciousness. Indeed, precariousness
is no stranger to Barrow, where economic boom and bust flow like the tides
that race across the corrugated mudflats and quick-sands of Morecambe Bay.
First the place lost its iron and
steel works, then the docks fell silent as shipbuilding faded: defence cuts
have caused swingeing redundancies, and the recession is sucking at what
jobs remain.
Mr Brady is the
head of a transport company that employs 107 people, and although they don't
come any smarter than him when it comes to shifting business, even he couldn't
keep the shed humming.
But by 7:30 pm
on a bitterly cold weekday evening 796 people will have filed past the portable
lavatories parked on the asphalt apron and in through a small, blue door
in the great expanse of breeze block that is the warehouse's north wall.
But it isn't Brady's warehouse any more; that blue door gives on to a mysterious
and glamorous place.
Cliff-faces of
black curtaining drape the walls, punctuated by illuminated exit signs.
Bold, bright banners fall from steel roof girders and rafts of blue seating
rake away from three sides of a rectangle. There is music and warmth and
the buzz and chink of a theatre bar. A PA system urges us to take our seats.
| People stop telling each other
about Alan Rickman (who is playing Hamlet) and are telling each other
that this was an empty shed only a week ago.It all started
when Barrow borough council invited the Hallé orchestra to play in
the town and was looking for a venue. Vickers Shipbuilding & Engineering
Ltd (VSEL) could not lend its biggest shed because it was occupied by a
half-completed Trident nuclear submarine or two. Then someone mentioned
the difficulty to Mr Brady, a Barrow man born and bred who is more than
willing to do his bit, "if it brings a bit of class and culture to
Barrow". |
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| Stark face of culture: Brady's converted warehouse. | ||||||
| The £350.000 warehouse was
declared to be "absolutely fantastic" acoustically by the orchestra's
leader, and class and culture have been flowing to Barrow ever since. |
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The Hallé was followed by
the LSO and the CBSO. and Northern Broadside put on Richard III.
With all this, and with Thelma Holt's production of Hamlet (which
recently had a sell-out season at London's Riverside Studios), the council
is playing in the first division, and knows it. There are hints of epic
struggles, both political and practical, to get the show in the shed, but
the local response has been electrifying. Each of the five performances
has been sold out for weeks in a town with a population of only 60.000 (5.000
of whom have recently been made redundant).Not that the entire
audience came from the town, Cumbria spreads to Carlisle in the north and
Kendal in the south, and people have come from all corners of the county,
and beyond. They have come through driving run that falls as early snow
on the mountains with cushions) rug, the odd flask of brandy, and high expectations.As the lights dimmed
Ghost dressed in a too-big overcoat, came and sat on a piece of driftwood
on the sand-strewn stage. The audience knew him well and from at moment
they were immobile. The temperature dropped and we could see the actor's
breath on the air but there was no rubbing of hands or shifting in seats.It was said that
the tickets sold quickly because of Rickman, last seen in Barrow
in his films Robin Hood, Die Hard and Truly Madly Deeply,
but it's just as likely that they were there for Shakespeare and the first-rateness
of it all.In Cumbria women
are called "love" or "duck', and Geraldine McEwan (Gertrude)
will have undoubtedly been "ducked" to bits that afternoon, while
taking tea with the mayor. One of the women who works at the great red,
sandstone Victorian-Gothic town hall was sitting in the front row with her
daughter, Tracy. The woman had helped with the mayoral tea party and sent
the cast away with boxes of home-made scones.Also there were
four young apprentices from Vickers. Or rather they had been apprentices
until they were laid off a few months ago. Even at the concessionary rate
of £7.50 a ticket it was a hefty bite out of their dole money. Was
it Worth it? It seemed it was. "Brilliant," "fantastic,"
"who'd have thought we'd get actors of this calibre in Barrow?"After the performance
the cast gathered in the bar for a drink as the last of the departing audience
straggled past. A middle-aged woman approached and thanked them each in
turn for what she had seen and was rewarded by Laertes (Adrian Rawlins),
who stepped forward with the most dazzling smile and said it was she who
should be thanked for supporting them.As we retrieved
our cars from the waste ground in the shadow of the slag banks--dumped spoil
from the redundant steel works--someone remembered how they used to glow
red in the dark. Now they are cold and black, but the new spirit of Barrow-in-Furness
glows on.Other unusal cultural
venues include: The Arnolfini, 16 Narrow Quay, Bristol BS1. 4QA (0272 299191
an 1830 tea warehouse. The Green Room. 54 56 Whitworth Street West Manchester
M1 5WW 061-236 1677, set beneath railway arches. Tramway, 25 Albert Drive,
Glasgow, G41 2E (041-423 1333), converted from a disused shed, Jacob Street
Studio, 9-l 9 Mill Street, London SKI 2BA (071-23? 1066), set in four docklands
warehouses.
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