LONDON -- Better late than never, London's Young Vic Theater has joined the parade of London theaters prepping a sizable makeover that should find an overhauled building reopening to the public in fall 2006.
Oscar nominee Jude Law kicked off a fundraising appeal Feb. 10 for the £12.5 million ($23.3 million) redevelopment of the popular venue near Waterloo Station. He has performed two plays there in recent years -- John Ford's "'Tis Pity She's a Whore" and Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus."
In addition to being a friend of Young Vic a.d. David Lan, who directed both shows, Law was keen to lend his support to the lively, audience-friendly venue where, says Law, you not only "sit and watch and hear a performance, but you almost feel it, smell it."
Law left the media launch to catch a Eurostar train to Paris, leaving Lan, chairman of the Young Vic board Patrick McKenna and architect Steve Tompkins, of the Haworth Tompkins partnership, to beat the drums for a venue that should start the rebuild in July.
At present, the theater has reached 80% of its target figure, a renovation substantially smaller, in terms of costs, than comparable refurbishments at the Royal Court and the Royal Opera House, among various other venues. (The £7.2 million Almeida renovation cost less than the Vic, but affected that theater's bar and foyer areas, in some ways, more than the auditorium itself.)
But whereas the Court re-fit took 2½ years, and was also a Tompkins project, the Vic is expected to take a year or so less, during which time its output will be reduced by half -- from nine shows (seven self-generated and two visiting) to four or so, all co-productions.
With £10 million ($18.7 million) of the Vic's building costs accounted for, a further £2.5 million ($4.67 million) must still be found. McKenna, the onetime business supremo at Andrew Lloyd Webber's Really Useful Group, has donated £1 million from his own pocket, while Lan mentioned a female director (he wouldn't name her) who was personally giving the theater £25,000. An American subset of Young Vic supporters have given £150,000, with the Young Vic fully aware -- like every other British theater nowadays -- of the value to be found in American "friends" (albeit not quite as much value now that the pound/dollar exchange rate is nearly 1:2).
Lan said the renovation would not be radical: "Unless you know the space well, you may not think anything has changed." And both he and Tompkins expressed their continued commitment to the Vic's unnumbered seating on padded benches, intended to heighten the informality of an auditorium that first opened in the 1970s as a temporary structure.
After the rebuild, the Vic's main auditorium will see its seating capacity increased from 350 or 400 to 600. There will be two smaller studio spaces, one to be named for the late Maria Bjornson, the theater designer ("The Phantom of the Opera") who died in December 2002, at age 53.
Under the auspices of Lan, 51, the South Africa-born writer-director, the Vic has been on something of a roll, offering a home to such diverse talents as Peter Brook, Richard Jones, Trevor Nunn, and Josette Bushell-Mingo while hosting Antony Sher's hugely acclaimed "Macbeth" and the RSC's epic cycle of the "Henry VI"/"Richard III" history plays.
Lan is now in rehearsal for a rare (in London, anyway) revival of the Thornton Wilder play "The Skin of Our Teeth," starring Maureen Beattie and opening March 4.
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