Theatre’s first century has been a true rollercoaster ride

But rather than a gentle fairground spin, the first 100 years of the theatre have more closely resembled a rollercoaster ride.

There have been some great highs for the theatre that opened in 1907 – most notably in the late Eighties, when it was unarguably the most successful provincial theatre in the country – but there have also been some terrifying downward lurches.

Fortunately, the Operatic Society was tenacious enough to pull the theatre up in the late Fifties, when it appeared to be in a fatal tailspin.

Let’s join the ride… The Operatic Society was formed in 1912 and first performed at the Hippodrome, as the theatre was originally called, in 1924. Signor Rino Pepi, the theatre’s flamboyant founder and this column’s hero, booked the Society on a bi-annual basis – a tradition that was continued during the reign of his successor, Edward J Hinge.

Hinge was practically as charismatic as Pepi. He was a man steeped in money-making gimmicks – he turned the heating up ten minutes before the interval so he would sell more ice creams – and variety theatre, even though in terms of popu- Echo Memories clambers aboard to relive the great highs and terrible lows of Darlington Civic Theatre WHAT’S ON: A Darlington Operatic Society programme from 1927 SAVIOUR: Councillor Fred Thompson, alderman, mayor and leader of the Operatic Society larity its day was done.

During the Second World War, he turned the Hippodrome into a 24-hour rolling soft porn show so servicemen stationed nearby could see a little of what they fancied in their rare hours of leave.

Soho strippers and risqué revues topped the bill – all in the best possible taste, of course.

With the soldiers back in civvy street, the theatre struggled to find an audience. In 1954, Hinge asked the Operatic Society to perform a panto, Cinderella, which he had written. It was well received, but there is more than a hint that this was his way of avoiding paying the wages of a proper panto dame as he teetered on the brink of bankruptcy.

He closed his doors for a last time at Easter 1957 and was pursued to the end of his life in 1961 by the Inland Revenue who reckoned he hadn’t paid the National Insurance contributions of the theatre staff.

The Hippodrome was a dark, derelict place. Stageless, the Operatics were forced to perform their autumn 1957 production, No! No! Nanette, at Darlington High School for Girls (now Hummersknott).

Their leader, Councillor Fred Thompson who lived in Middleton St George, suggested that the council might buy the Hip, but the council surveyor said it would be “a disgrace” to the town as a civic amenity. Reluctantly the council raised the rates by a farthing which allowed the Society to lease the theatre.

The Hippodrome was renamed the Civic, and after much elbow grease it reopened with the Operatics’ performance of White Horse Inn.

“As the Hippodrome curtain fell, the capacity audience erupted into spontaneous resound applause,”

said the Northern Despatch (The Northern Echo’s sister evening paper which closed in 1985). “They had witnessed two treats – a first class musical and the rebirth of a theatre.”

Yet it was to prove a painful rebirth.

The audience was often sparse, and the programme was often poor. There would be successful appearances by big names like Max Jaffa and the Halle Orchestra, but then there would be boxing bouts.

In 1960, there was and “all-star wrestling tournament” featuring Lord Bertie Topham and His Faithful Valet against Joe Keegan, “a fabulous grappler”.

In January 1961, the wrestling concluded with a “terrific international bout” between Young Hackenschmidt of Hamburg and the Farmer of Dewsbury.

As the Society’s lease ran out, it tried to persuade the council to buy the shabby building outright for £8,000. It was not a popular suggestion. “Many people support the councillors who think it would be wrong to spend £8,000 on something which might become a white elephant,” said the Darlington and Stockton Times.

The council discussed the proposal in July 1961. Live theatre was in decline around the country and, as one councillor said, everybody just wanted to go to bingo.

Coun Thompson exploded. He called the anti-theatre brigade’s arguments “balderdash”. “If we miss the finest bargain the town has ever had offered, we will all live to regret it,” he said.

The council turned down the finest bargain.

It had bigger fish to fry. Since 1959, it had been considering a redevelopment of the town centre which, in terms of controversy, would make the Pedestrian Heart look like a walk in the park.

It had instructed borough architect Eric Tornbohm to start with a clean slate: erase everything between the River Skerne in the east and High Row in the west, between Victoria Road in the south and Tubwell Row in the north, and begin again. St Cuthbert’s Church was graciously allowed to survive, but the rest of the area was to be covered by featureless concrete and glass boxes in which would be placed a town hall, a new market, a multistorey car park, a shopping mall, a suite of offices, an art gallery and a brand new theatre.

This plan became known as the Shepherd Scheme, and its controversy dogged Darlington for more than a decade.

Which didn’t help the Operatic Society. Its lease on the dilapidated theatre was all but over.

The theatre owners were holding out for £8,000 which they believed they could get from a developer with a bulldozer. The council, which didn’t want an Edwardian theatre because it was planning a Sixties civic theatre, would go no higher than a reluctant £5,500.

Coun Thompson was decisive.

On November 4, 1961, he blew every penny in the Operatic Society’s bank account by buying the ramshackle theatre for £8,000. Later that afternoon, the Society sold it to the council for £5,500.

Never can a voluntary organisation have voluntarily lost so much money in one day, or a council saved a theatre so cheaply.

Yet it really didn’t want it.

Throughout the Sixties, it begrudgingly carried out minimal repairs – “our own theatre, owned and operated by this corporation, is the most dangerous place of public entertainment in the whole town”, exploded one councillor in 1966 – while pushing on with its plans for the redevelopment.

Indeed, in March 1967, when an ICI tanker careered around the corner from Parkgate into Borough Road and wiped out the theatre’s original wrought iron canopy, the council must have wished it had wiped out the expensive black hole/white elephant in its entirety.

Yet as the Sixties drew to an end and the Seventies started, public inquiries into the Shepherd Scheme were won and lost and so were local council elections.

Political colours changed; visions for the future altered.

A new town hall was allowed on the old Leadyard, but wholescale destruction was no longer the order of the day.

All of a sudden, the council realised it was the proud owner of Pepi’s Parkgate palace which it had acquired for a bargain price.

To its eternal credit, it decided to invest. It even decided to gamble: in January 1972 it appointed the youngest theatre director in the country, Peter Tod, and over the next two decades the rollercoaster turned full circle. The Civic was transformed from the tumbledown wreck that the Operatic Society had saved from a long drop into the most successful provincial theatre in the country.