Thorndike Theatre

Thorndike Theatre

Theatre built 1967-9 by Roderick Ham, assisted by Ronald Bayliss, David Hancock and Colin Bex, with theatre consultants Theatre Projects Ltd, for the Leatherhead Repertory Company. The building incorporates the side walls from an inter-war cinema that formerly stood on the site.

The main structure consists of an auditorium and foyers of reinforced concrete with board-marked concrete and brick infill, contained within the shell of the old building. The fly tower and workshop are steel framed with brick infill panels, clad externally with pale grey moulded sheets. Dressing room and administration blocks are of load-bearing brickwork supporting reinforced concrete beams set into the old auditorium walls. The complex plan sits behind separately rebuilt shops and offices (not included in the listing), with only a narrow entrance from the street and a similar entrance from the car park to the rear.

The narrow street frontage is of three storeys with small windows and sets of three light timber doors with squared panes leading into the foyer. Large lettering announces "THORNDIKE THEATRE". The fly tower and workshop exteriors facing the car park are not of special merit.

The interior is of principal interest. Three tiers of foyers open onto a fan-shaped auditorium containing a single raked tier of continental seating with 526 seats and an end wall with proscenium (36 feet by 16 feet high) with small apron and fly tower. The foyers feature board-marked concrete surfaces, staircases on either side of the space, and balcony fronts giving views up, down and across the space. Doors with near-square glazing panes are repeated throughout the foyer tiers. The lower foyer contains a foundation stone of 1967 bearing Dame Sybil Thorndike's signature and a bust of her, below a plaque recording the opening by Princess Margaret on 17 September 1969. A former café area is located under the auditorium, and an upper floor contains square rooflights. To the left is a block containing the small youth theatre space (the Casson Room) and dressing rooms. To the right are offices and scenery workshop.

The auditorium has rough square tiled walls which fan out and curve back, so the broadest rows of seating (by Ernest Race) are not at the rear. The sightlines and acoustics are excellent. An implied proscenium at the stage end features lighting alcoves to either side and in the ceiling gantry. The green room is entered only from the upper foyer and sits on top of an adjoining office block which is not itself of special interest.

The Thorndike Theatre was one of the most successful theatre designs of the late 1960s. It replaced the former Crescent Cinema which had been adapted to flourishing repertory use under managing director Hazel Vincent-Wallace, with support from Dame Sybil Thorndike, who starred in the opening production in September 1969. It was Ham's first theatre, and established him as one of the leading specialists in theatre design. The implied proscenium, providing a natural frame to the action without emphasis on the proscenium arch, and the intimacy of the space—with no seat more than 58 feet from the curtain line—compare favourably with more traditional theatres such as the Yvonne Arnaud in Guildford (1965) and Oxford Playhouse (1964). The foyer is a deliberately theatrical space, designed to be dramatic in its architecture as a space where the audience can perform. The building received the RIBA Award in 1970 and was praised by the Architects' Journal for achieving technical perfection perhaps unequalled in British theatre building at that time.