Mermaid Theatre
The closed Mermaid Theatre, now primarily a conference centre
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| Address |
Puddle Dock London, EC4 United Kingdom |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 51°30′41″N 0°06′07″W / 51.511306°N 0.101972°W |
| Public transit |
  Blackfriars
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| Owner | Blackfriars PD Ltd |
| Type | Open-stage |
| Capacity | 600-seated on one level |
| Current use | Conference centre and recording |
| Construction | |
| Opened | 1959 |
| Closed | 2003 |
| Architect | Ove Arup |
| Website | |
| www.the-mermaid.co.uk | |
The Mermaid Theatre was a theatre encompassing the site of Puddle Dock and Curriers' Alley at Blackfriars in the City of London, and the most recently built in the City since the time of Shakespeare. It was, importantly, also one of the first new theatres to abandon the traditional stage layout; instead a single tier of seats surrounded the stage on three sides.
The 20th-century theatre was the life's work of actor Bernard Miles with his wife, Josephine Wilson. His original Mermaid Theatre was a large barn at his house in the St. John's Wood area of London. This seated 200 people, and during 1951 and 1952 was used for concerts, plays and a celebrated opera production of Dido and Aeneas with Kirsten Flagstad, Maggie Teyte and Thomas Hemsley, conducted by Geraint Jones, which was recorded by HMV. For the third season in 1953 the Mermaid Theatre was moved to the Royal Exchange.
Miles was encouraged to build a permanent theatre and, raising money from public subscriptions, he oversaw the creation of the new building on land formerly occupied by a warehouse. This site was close to the location of an abortive attempt, in the Jacobean era, to build a theatre (named Porter's Hall) for the amalgamation of the Children of the Queen's Revels and Lady Elizabeth's Men. This project, undertaken by Philip Rosseter with distant backing from Henslowe and Alleyn, was ended because of complaints from the neighbourhood's residents.
The new Mermaid Theatre opened in 1959 with a successful production of Lock Up Your Daughters and it was the venue for many other very successful productions, such as Cowardy Custard (often cited as responsible for the revival of interest in Noël Coward's works) and including an annual staging of Treasure Island, with Miles reprising his role of Long John Silver, which he also played in a television version. The Mermaid Theatre also ran the Molecule Club, educating children about science.
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Wikipedia