Oxford Playhouse extract

Drama, professional or amateur, was virtually non-existent at Oxford in term-time from the mid-sixteenth to the late nineteenth centuries thanks to a succession of statutes which empowered the university authorities to ban plays and theatres. Before the opening of the New Theatre in 1886 prestige companies appeared at the Town Hall in the vacation rather than the ramshackle Theatre Royal, which became an officially frowned upon, tacitly tolerated variety hall in term.

After the Master of Balliol College, Benjamin Jowett, sanctioned the creation of the Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS) and the building of the New Theatre during his four years as Vice-Chancellor his successors continued to veto plays they disapproved of. The late Stanley Dorrill, who succeeded his father as managing director of the New in 1912, told me he had to discuss his term-time programme in person with the Vice Chancellor until the 1930s, and change it if it did not meet with his approval. Using the Vice-Chancellor’s other power to ban theatres within the university environs, the combative Rector of Exeter College, Dr Lewis Farnell, came close to stifling the Playhouse at birth in 1923 because he thought one theatre was distraction enough for workshy students.

Both OUDS, the leading university dramatic society, and the City of Oxford Dramatic Club, the leading group of local amateurs, staged productions annually at the New Theatre. Smaller professional companies appeared at makeshift venues like the Corn Exchange. College societies performed in college halls in winter, on college lawns in summer, as did OUDS when it staged open air productions. Smaller city groups made do with church halls, less often venturing out of doors.

The Oxford University Opera Club began life at the Playhouse in Woodstock Road but soon migrated to the New Theatre. Few other university or city groups made use of its limited facilities. OUDS staged a major production at Woodstock Road in 1938 only because no college would allow them to use its lawns. The other major student society, the University Experimental Theatre Club (ETC), began life in 1936 at the Taylorian Institute.

The transformation of the New Theatre in 1933 into a plush Art Deco auditorium with 1,800 seats effectively put it beyond reach of amateur pockets. Its success underlined the seismic shift taking place in Oxford’s character from small market town dependent on the university to prosperous industrial city, a large number of whose growing population worked at Lord Nuffield’s car factories.

Longer term the increased mobility the motor-car offered changed the pattern of theatre-going in Oxford, vastly extending the New Theatre and the Playhouse’s catchment areas. For the moment both relied heavily on local residents and students.

I suspect the main reason so few pictures survive of the present Playhouse being built in Beaumont Street in 1938 is that most people could watch it happening. J.B. Fagan, the first director at Woodstock Road, aimed his output unashamedly at the university. His successor, Stanford Holme, wooed town as well as gown but significantly mounted few productions out of term. Both operated a system of weekly rep: their actors rehearsed next week’s play during the day and appeared in this week’s play at night. Hard as it is to believe, that remained the practice until 1950 when Frank Shelley introduced fortnightly rep.