Save Bristol Old Vic

WHAT'S IN A NAME: WHY BRISTOL OLD VIC?

In 1818, on the unfashionable south bank of the Thames a new theatre called The Royal Coburg was opened.

In 1833 it was renamed The Royal Victoria, in honour of the young heiress to the throne, in an attempt to improve it's image, but it became a dirty, boozy, melodrama house, dubbed affectionately by its patrons, the Old Vic.

The Original Old Vic

In 1880, when Emma Cons, a pioneering social reformer among the poor of South East London, leased the theatre set out to provide purified entertainment with no intoxicating drinks and renamed it the Royal Victoria Coffee and Music Hall. In 1898 she was joined by her niece, Lilian Baylis, who assumed sole control in 1912.

Lilian Baylis guided the destiny of the Old Vic until her death in 1937, and it is to this amazing woman that we owe the foundation of the Royal National Theatre, the Royal Ballet, and the English National Opera. In her hands, the Old Vic became the most famous classical theatre company in the world: the first to present the entire cycle of Shakespeare's plays, and also the home of ballet and of opera in English.

So it was hardly surprising that it was this Company, which was invited to reopen the Theatre Royal in May 1943, with a production of She Stoops to Conquer, in which Dame Sybil Thorndike played Mrs. Hardcastle, and also spoke the Prologue.

The Bristol Connection

In 1946, the Old Vic was invited to set up a resident repertory company in Bristol, and on 19th February with a production of The Beaux Stratagem the Bristol Old Vic was born.