When I visited Nottingham Playhouse recently to see my friend Andrea in a superlative production of Aaron Sorkin’s play based on Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird [To Kill A Mockingbird] I felt an immediate sense of nostalgia when I entered the auditorium.
When the Playhouse opened in 1963 I was in the middle of my grammar-school education and by the time we reached the sixth form the following year our English teachers had formed a rota to take us by coach once a month on a Friday evening to see whatever was on in the Playhouse’s opening seasons which were directed principally by John Neville (1925-2011).
Neville shared his role of artistic director at first with Frank Dunlop (b1927), who went on to found the Young Vic in 1969, and the polymathic Peter Ustinov (1921-2004). Between them they brought to Nottingham a broad range of classic drama and a scintillating troupe of talented actors.
Therefore, in our teens, we were privileged to see – live on stage – not only John Neville’s Richard II, Oedipus and Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, but the twenty-something Judi Dench as Margery Pinchwife in William Wycherley’s bawdy Restoration comedy The Country Wife, which had us rolling about in our front-row seats, even if some of us didn’t at first twig the pun in the title.
These opportunities were unrepeatable: Neville resigned in 1969 because the theatre’s grant was repeatedly frozen; nowadays theatre seat-prices are elevated beyond most school budgets, especially when big-name performers are cast. Indeed, Nottingham Playhouse runs a laudable 50:50 Appeal, which enables audiences to donate the cost of tickets for local people who otherwise wouldn’t experience live theatre: 50:50 Appeal – Nottingham Playhouse.
I’m pleased to see that Peter Moro’s theatre, with the circular drum of the auditorium prominent above the rectilinear outer shell, has been respectfully restored: Moro had been involved in the Royal Festival Hall project, and for Nottingham created a conventional proscenium theatre that encloses its audience so they share the same space as the actors.
And on the night I was there the To Kill a Mockingbird tour filled every seat in the house as it storms around the country on its way to a West End run in August 2026: TOUR — To Kill A Mockingbird.