On the day of the public meeting, where Ventnor Town Council will explain the reasons behind their decision to close the Ventnor Winter Gardens, Daft Old Duffer shares his views on ‘the crumbling theatre’. Ed
I’ve been poking around in the Ventnor Winter Gardens situation and I’ve come up with some unwelcome, but I think unavoidable facts.
The first is that the building was never designed to be a theatre at all. The clue is in the name – Winter Gardens.
As originally designed, the bar and and hall area formed one complex where customers could sit and sip their drinks, whilst watching others sedately waltzing to the music of the trio situated on the small stage.
Alas, the demand for this sort of entertainment passed away and the wall dividing the hall from the bar was erected in an attempt to develop a new usage.
An attempt that has always failed.
Catch 22 situation
The stage itself falls – and always has fallen – below any minimum standard expected by professional performers. As well as that, the two dressing rooms are woefully inadequate.
Added to this, the venue is, like many other small theatres throughout the country, in a catch 22 situation.
The only acts Mr and Mrs Public want to see are those they recognise from the telly. A young, jobbing-mill actor who has done two appearances in AlbeCorry will nowadays command more attention – and money – by far than the most gifted of non-telly performers.
But telly ‘stars’ charge such over-inflated fees that theatres, just to break even, are forced to charge more for their seats that people will willingly pay.
Which is why big stars now appear in outdoor venues such as stadia.
Lack of audience
Mainland theatres that do survive, do so in part because they have a far larger catchment area to draw upon, and part because they are often backed by some luminary of the theatre, who can draw in subsidiary funds, and even entreat some of their gifted friends to appear at a special low rate, just to feel charitable.
None of this is available to the Winter Gardens.
And even it was, the place would need to fill up almost continually, winter and summer, again, just to break even. The occasional star appearance of one or two nights in the season just won’t hack it. Even if the Winter Gardens was in tip top structural shape and required only routine maintenance. Which is decidedly not the case.
Heading north
We all know the main roof needs replacing. For two reasons. One, it has simply reached the end of its useful life. And two, one side of the building has, over the years, slipped markedly down hill, thus putting too much strain on the roof.
For many years now fibreglass patches have had to be applied in order to stem the leaks.
And the walls are festooned with cracks – which open and close with the weather. Glass tells have been installed in order to keep a watchful eye against something major happening.
But I know of at least one case where a chunk of masonry fell out of such a crack and plummeted down the equivalent of two stories, narrowly missing the head of one of the employees.
Not much better elsewhere
As for the subsidiary roofs – the ones over the foyer and bar area – sometime in the nineties both these roofs had to be fitted with special wedge-shapes pieces because the rain, when it fell, instead of running into the downpipes actually ran away from them.
In fact both roofs would have been paddling pools if it was not for the fact that the puddles were able to drain away through leaks.
If you want proof of all this, just take a look at the doors leading from the car park into the theatre foyer. As you wonder at their weird shape – the result of countless planings and sawings – just bear in mind they started life with corners at 90 degrees. When the building itself was in its original shape.
Less important perhaps is that the once magnificent sprung dance floor, has been distorted by the movement and now sports a series of dips and bumps.
Refurbishing the Winter Gardens would cost many hundreds of thousands of pounds and at the end of it would still present a building not fit for purpose.
And if any such renovation was undertaken, the easiest and quickest way would surely be to knock it down and start again.
