THE DILAPIDATED Riverside Studios, fighting falling audiences and a deficit approaching £300,000,
are to close-for five months in April for a facelift. THE DILAPIDATED Riverside Studios, fighting falling audiences and a deficit approaching £300,000,
are to close-for five months in April for a facelift.
The closure, heralding an ambitious £1.75 million plan for the
regeneration of Riverside and its Thames-side frontage, is being
pushed through by its new director, William Burdett Coutts, who
also runs Edinburgh's thriving Assembly Rooms.
The cost is already proving painful. The visual arts department
has been shut, 11 of Riverside's 33 staff made redundant and four
more are expected to go.
'Everything in the building needs doing and the initial aim is
to put it in some kind of working order,' said Mr Burdett Coutts,
who was shocked by its state when he took over in September. 'What
I am doing will sustain the staff at Riverside that do survive.
Without it, none of them will.'
In the most dramatic change, he is moving the entrance from the
side to the front of the building so newcomers will no longer
have to hunt for it.
Said Mr Burdett Coutts: 'Though we expect to get a grant of £306,000
in the coming financial year from Hammersmith council, we have
been warned that it will be the last.'
He intends to use his own television production company, Assembly
Film Television, to generate work for the studios but his underlying
aim is to restore Riverside's reputation for innovative theatre,
dance and an exciting international programme.
The building was used by the BBC before it became an arts centre
where Alan Rickman, Kenneth Branagh and Richard Briers have all performed in recent
years.
A £1.5 million appeal will be launched in April to finance the
plans, which include mooring a ferry outside which will have been
transformed into a 400-seat cafe, bar and performance space.
'I want to stop people constantly looking back to the halcyon
days of 10 years ago or wherever,' Mr Burdett Coutts said, 'and
get excited about the future.'
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