![]() ![]() Revived by The National quite recently, it’s a play with just four characters, two parents and two kids and no furniture, just chairs positioned as car seats, so it was quite experimental for its day. Our Town was one, a play by Thornton Wilder, an American playwright. Hilary explains that in its early years the theatre put on some very unconventional theatre productions for the time: “We did all sorts of extraordinary things, experimental theatre, too, not necessarily the classics. ![]() She was just 18 when she came to the throne in such a man’s world, so my mother’s plays are about Victoria’s relationship with Albert, with her mother, with her governess, Baroness Louise Lehzen and with how she managed her role.” “Queen Victoria was rather extraordinary in the social context. When asked if she had ever seen a production of Vickie, Hilary said she’d not only seen the production, but had appeared in it on a number of occasions along with her sister Helen, who she remembers played the young princess as a child. The first production at the Little Theatre in 1935 was Vickie, a play written by Consuelo de Reyes about the young Queen Victoria, who was a great heroine of hers. The cinema retains some of the decorative features of the typical 1930s, while more recently it has undergone a discreet conversion into a two-screen arthouse cinema that is now part of the Picturehouse group. And you can tell that the architect had never designed a cinema before because if you get up in the balcony while the film is showing and go out of the front door your head is projected onto the screen! There are various other anomalies around and I suppose that is what gives the building its character,” she says. I think they threw in a projection box as an afterthought. ![]() When Hope died in her fifties, she left her considerable fortune to Consuelo, enabling her to build and develop the Little Theatre.īuilt in 1935, the majority of the building has a Georgian design: “You can see the early design of the building was different and we now have this odd bit at the front which doesn’t quite match the very rigid Georgian style. The Little Theatre’s owner Hilary KingĬonsuelo first came to Bath to work with Helen Hope, one of Bath’s first female magistrates, who was closely involved in women’s and children’s welfare before the welfare state existed. Their community theatre involved the local population and they ran all sorts of courses – including drama courses and courses to learn about theatrical productions and make-up lessons.” The picture above shows the participants of one of those courses outside Citizen House in 1938. Amazingly it seated 200 people in what I guess must have been great discomfort, because in the 1920s and 30s comfort didn’t really feature. They rented an early 18th-century house in Bath and they developed a theatre within the house. Their daughter Hilary King, who now owns the Little Theatre, explains, “My parents’ passion was community theatre. Theatre director and playwright Consuelo de Reyes first met Peter King when she advertised for a stage manager in the 1920s for her community theatre in Bath. As the way forward for cinemas is considered, we remember our talk with owner Hilary King, the daughter of the theatre’s founder, about how it all started Known for its comfy chairs and vintage aesthetics, Bath’s Little Theatre Cinema has always been a favourite for watching new releases, much-loved classics, and live cultural screenings from theatres from around the world. ![]()
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