Ensemble Theatre Group

A Man for All Seasons. Theater Playbill. Savoy theatre
The Savoy Theatre – London

The Savoy Theatre, built by Richard D’Oyly Carte, opened Oct. 10, 1881 in order to showcase the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan. This theatre was the first theatre, as well as public building in the world, to be lit by electricity in its entirety. Around 1,200 incandescent lamps were used. It also had gaslights installed for backup purposes, but they were not used often. The Savoy Hotel, also built by D’Oyly Carte, went up next to the theatre in 1889.

The theatre was, for many years, home to the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company and the Carte family ran it for more than a century. D’Oyly Carte’s son, Rupert, modernized and rebuilt the theatre in 1929 and in 1993, following a fire, it was rebuilt again. The original design for the theatre was came from C.J. Phipps.

It closed in 1903 and reopened in February 1904 with John Leigh and Edward Laurillard acting as managers. They remained in the managerial positions until December 1906, when the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company returned to the site for repertory seasons between 1906 and 1909. At this point, C.H. Workman took over the manager position until 1911.

The theatre was managed by George Augustus Richardson from November 1911 to Feburary 1915, at which point D’Oyly Carte’s son, Rupert D’Oyly Carte, took over. Rupert decided to bring the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company back to the theatre at this time and he also hired Malcolm Sargent and Geoffrey Toye as guest conductors and Isidore Godfrey and Harry Norris as musical directors.
Savoy Theatre was closed June 3, 1929, and the interior of the building was rebuilt completely. The original capacity of the theatre was 1,292, but was reduced to 986 by 1912. The new theatre designed allowed for 1,200 people. The theatre was reopened Oct. 21, 1929, and presented a production of “The Gondoliers.”
Historic Print (M): [Savoy Theatre and Hotel Dunlop, Boardwalk and Ocean Ave., Atlantic City, New Jersey] /
Gilbert and Sullivan seasons ran at the Savoy Theatre on and off from 1929 to 2003. The theatre also featured “Blithe Spirit” in 1941, which ran for 1,997 consecutive performances.
Management of the theatre went to Sir Hugh Wotner in 1948. The D’Oyly Carte Opera Company ceased operations in 1982 and the last heir of the D’Oyly Carte family died in 1985, effectively ending the family line.

During renovations in 1990, a fire destroyed the building, sans the stage and backstage area. It reopened July 19, 1993, and the newly rebuilt theatre currently seats 1,158. During the renovations, a swimming pool was added above the stage and another story was added about the theatre.

Since 1993, some shows at the theatre have included “Relative Values,” “Travesties,” the musical “She Loves Me,” “Dead Funny,” and “Coward’s Hay Fever.” In 2000, the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company was shortly reconstituted and produced “H.M.S. Pinafore” and “Pirates of Penzance.” The company followed these with “The Barber Seville” in 2004.

Currently, the theatre (located at The Strand, Westminster, London, WC2R 0ET), is showing Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Carousel,” a show which debuted Nov. 29, 2008.

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A home movie theatre is a simple combination of television, DVD player or video player and a good set of speakers and amplifiers. But home movie theatre can have more accessories other than these simple things. Thus it can be an integration of a relatively high quality video output with surround sound thereby providing you with the ultimate in home entertainment.

It is instructive to note down the different components of a home movie theatre. Normally, home movie theatre is an assemby of video output or a display unit, music system with amplifiers, and processing devices like AV reciever or preamplifiers.A home movie theatre has several speakers, usually a six speaker system, which is placed around the room. This is very much unlike a TV system which has an inbuilt speaker system. The home theatre divides the soundtrack into multiple channels and sends different sounds to different speakers. This, in general, follows the concept of surround sound technology, which is found in the movie theatre. Thus the sound effects feel so real.

While installing the home movie theatre, your room can be treated as the basic and one of the most important components. If the person does not have a perfect room for a home theatre he can make some simple changes to make it ideal. While choosing the room one must keep it in mind that four walls should enclose the room. An enclosed room limits the area that has to be filled with sound, so the listener gets a more powerful effect from the system.

The shape of the room also holds an important place in the home movie theatre, as the shape of the room will influence how the sound will circulate around the room. Thus the most ideal shape is a rectangular one. Wall to wall carpeting is ideal, but a large rug over the floor or a carpeted floor is good enough to serve the purpose. Very little light or even complete darkness is what you need in order to get a vibrant picture.

The general components comprise of centre channels and subwoofers, blue ray players, DVD recorder, projectors, LCD or plasma TV. Placement of speakers for a home movie theatre is significant to get accurate sound reproduction. Speakers should be heard and not seen. The center channel and sub-woofer are the most difficult to place. The shape of the room mostly affects the sub woofers. The size of the sub woofers depends on the size of the room. And if the user wants to install multiple sub woofers the challenge becomes more difficult. The centre channel should be hidden behind a screen.

Screen quality has a direct and marked effect upon the resultant picture quality of the home movie theatre. Thus choosing the screen depends on the lighting, size and other attributes of the room. Each screen material has its own specific attributes in respect of gain, reflection and color shift. There are various manufacturers who make projectors for home movie theatre. There are CRT projectors, LCD projectors, DLP projectors and even light canons.

It all depends on the user how much he will spend on a home movie theatre as all these components of the home movie theatre come in different price ranges. The higher priced equipment is always better, but one should keep in mind that he must buy a system according to his room and budget as well.

We may take for granted now that the arts in this country are prone to relatively little external censorship. However, this has only really been the case since 1968, when the Theatre Act was passed by government to allow for freer artistic expression in British playhouses.

Before this time all play-scripts destined for production were required to be sent to the Lord Chamberlain for his approval. Not technically an instrument of the government but of the monarchy, the Lord Chamberlain’s ‘readers’ had the power to fine, censor or ban outright any play that they deemed unsuitable for public performance.

Famously, the censorship encompassed outlawing nudity, swearing and anything regarded as ‘promoting’ homosexuality or homosexual acts.

In 1968 however, bowing to much public and artistic pressure, the matter was brought before the House of Lords and the Theatre Act of 1968 was enforced abolishing theatrical censorship.

Key figures in proceedings were the playwright John Osborne and the outspoken critic Kenneth Tynan who both gave evidence at the hearing.

The liberation of theatre came at a time synonymous with cultural revolution. The 1960s, a decade famed for its radical uprooting of social conventions, had already legalised homosexuality and begun to alter the way it viewed casual sex, racial inequality and recreational drug use. What’s more, many young playwrights (often grouped together under the banner “The Angry Young Men”) where producing thought-provoking works that tested and scrutinised the boundaries of what could and could not pass for ‘legitimate’ theatre. Great writers like John Osborne, whose play ‘Look Back in Anger’ is often cited as the quintessential work of the movement, and Harold Pinter were quickly amassing reputations as challenging, and even dangerous, theatrical practitioners.

Of course, in such a turbulent political and cultural climate theatre censorship became completely untenable. The Theatre Act of 1968 was brought in and the American musical Hair opened in the West End just 24 hours later. Featuring scenes containing nudity, drug taking and boasting a stringent anti-Vietnam War message, the show was a complete break from the repression of theatre censorship that preceded it.

Since then, it might be argued, that theatre has ‘gone the other way’ and now shows little regard for staging any material that might offend. The comedian Peter Cook once quipped: “I don’t want to see plays about rape, sodomy and domestic abuse; I can get all that at home.” Though, of course, Cook was taking a fairly surrealist swipe at the prevailing middle-class (often hypocritical) sensibilities, perhaps there might be a germ of truth in what he’s saying. Namely, just because theatre can show things like rape, sodomy and domestic abuse, should it?

The answer, it would seem, is entirely dictated by an individual play and the motivations and intentions that it possesses. Gratuitously exploiting a subject is not the same as fearlessly addressing it.

A more pressing consideration might be concerned with taking another look at the idea that opened this article, that theatre is prone to little external censorship. Though now there are no legislative restrictions in place to curtail playwrights’ artistic vision, other factors may seem to limit theatre in ways not altogether obvious. For example, Margaret Thatcher’s government cut public funding to the arts dramatically in the 1980s. Such a financial stranglehold might not have directly censored dramatic material, but it certainly forced many playhouses to stage fewer new plays and even close outright.

In more recent times, when the Birmingham Repertory Theatre staged Behtzi in 2004, the theatre was the scene of angry rioting by a portion of the sikh community that felt the play mocked their faith.

Whether theatre and the arts can ever be totally free to express itself in the way it chooses is debatable, the debt owed to those that ended the formal censorship however is not. Quite simply, without the efforts of people like Osborne and Tynan, the West End might not be the respected home of expressive theatre that it is today.