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The End of the Line for the Mermaid

Dateline: 23rd March, 2003

So the Corporation of London has made its decision and the Mermaid Theatre is not to be replaced. Instead the Theatres Trust will receive £6m as a form of compensation*. This in spite of a substantial protest from theatrelovers in London and throughout the country, including susbcribers to the British Theatre Guide Newsletter who sent many emails in support of the campaign. As one of our subscribers said:

Londoners paid for the Mermaid. They paid brick by brick for it to be built so that the city could have a theatre and that expectation was more than met by Bernard Miles. No-one has the right to destroy it.

At the BTG we heard the news in another email from Maggie Sutton, the co-ordinator of the Save the Mermaid campaign. She said simply

Corp of London Planning Committee meeting held today - REVISED PLANS ACCEPTED - THE MERMAID WILL BE DEMOLISHED WITH NO REPLACEMENT

Like so many people I have happy memories of the theatre. The Mermaid was, in fact, my introduction to London Theatre. In the early sixties I saw its wonderful production of Euripides' Bacchae and that visit, a day trip down from Cambridge where I was a student, rekindled my love of theatre, as did the Mermaid itself. Until that visit my theatre experience was limited to Victorian or early twentieth century houses which were large, ornate and in some way forbidding - they seemed almost to demand that you wear your best suit to enter them. The Mermaid, by contrast, was modern and unintimidating, with its open stage (what a revelation after seeing nothing but proscenium arch theatres!), raked single level auditorium (no more posh and cheape areas!) and bare walls.

The theatre was built in 1959 on the remains a warehouse destroyed during World War II and was the first to be built in the City of London since the time of Shakespeare. Regrettably for some years now it has been used as a conference centre and an art gallery rather than a theatre.

Now it is to vanish completely: the conference centre will be replaced, the theatre will not, but the Theatres Trust will be £6m better off. There's bitterness and a sense of betrayal among those who have fought to keep the Mermaid alive and a distrust of the Theatres Trust. Realistically it probably had little chance of preventing the destruction. In its Annual Report 2002, its director, Peter Longman, wrote:

Regrettably we have been under attack during the year from some of our former allies within the Save London’s Theatres Campaign, over our willingness to see the Westminster Theatre replaced with a modern theatre building, and our agreement in principle that the owners of the former Mermaid Theatre should not be required to replace it if an appropriate sum of money was made available to build a new theatre or improve existing ones elsewhere. The fact is that we cannot seek to save everything, and that we have to face economic reality. But the need to maintain a stock of theatres is one reason why in planning terms they are regarded as sui generis, and planning permission has to be obtained to change their use.

The Trust is a statutory body, but does it have any real power?

The Trust’s status as a statutory body with Trustees appointed by the Government, its role as a statutory consultee on planning applications, and its unique and specialised expertise, give it another more official audience. This comprises planning authorities, architects and developers, and government departments and agencies concerned with the arts, heritage, planning and environment. The Trust is a tiny organisation, and a very specialised one, but it operates on a very broad canvas. (Italics mine)

It is there to be consulted. It can bring moral authority to bear. It will be listened to. But it cannot forbid or prevent. And one does wonder if it really did want to save the Mermaid. A remark made by its chairman Rupert Rhymes in his introduction to the 2002 Annual Report is revealing:

The Trust is not a preservation body and sentimentality doesn’t pay any bills

It did get £6m out of the developers for a new theatre to replace the Mermaid - for which we should have some gratitude - so now we must watch carefully to see how that money is used.

* This is not, in fact, true: it is the City of London Corporation which will receive the compensation which must be devoted to theatre. See the statement issued by the Theatres Trust, which arrived at the BTG after this article was published.

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©Peter Lathan 2003