Unity Theatre, London

Unity Theatre was a left-wing amateur theatre club based in several venues in London between 1936 and 1994. It had links with the Left Book Club Theatre Guild and the Communist Party. During its lifetime, Unity mounted over 250 productions, most of which were new plays, and toured extensively.

Initially operating from St. Judes Hall, Britannia Street, in Somers Town, Unity moved in 1937 to a converted former chapel in Goldington Street in the same area. After the theatre was destroyed by fire in 1975, productions continued sporadically in other venues till 1994. The original site was sold for social housing, becoming Unity Mews: a plaque commemorates the theatre.

History Origin and aim

Unity Theatre emerged from the coming together in the 1930s of the Workers' Theatre Movement with Left Theatre, Group Theatre, and other London-based workers' theatre groups. It attempted to create "a single focus for socialist drama", proclaiming that:

After moving to Goldington Street in 1937, Unity Theatre registered as a cooperative society, Unity Theatre Society Ltd., and set up the Unity Theatre Club. The club organised a multitude of cultural and social activities including folk, film, and poetry clubs, a choir, an orchestra, rambles, and parties and dances. The society established a school of dramatic studies, and in 1939 launched a glossy magazine, New Theatre.

First decade In its early productions, Unity used several then-novel dramatic formssatirical pantomime, Living Newspaper, and mass declamationand brought an international perspective to the London stage with plays by American, Irish, continental European and Russian dramatists.

Satirical pantomimes In 1938, Unity's political version of Babes in the Wood, a traditional English children's tale and pantomime, lampooned Neville Chamberlain's appeasement policy during the Munich Crisis. Its cast included Bill Owen, Mark Cheney, Vida Hope, Alfie Bass, and Una Brandon-Jones. Ann Davies (the principal boy) portrayed the Popular Front as Robin Hood, appearing in the uniform of a Soviet soldier at the end of the show to declare: The programme included lyrics for some of the production's songs. Babes in the Wood ran for seven months, and the critic Montagu Slater said the play "had more direct effect on current politics than any other single production in the history of the English stage".

Living Newspapers Written and staged in early 1938, Living Newspaper No.1: Busmen, the first British Living Newspaper, dramatised the strike by London busmen in May 1937 for a shorter working day and less onerous schedules.

Busmen who had been strikers were involved in researching material for the play, which incorporated newspaper reports, meeting minutes, transcripts of speeches, statistics, and conversations overheard in bus queues and on buses. A series of short scenes interwove factual material with fictional reconstructions of events, switching between the formal discourse of politicians and trades union officials, extracts from op-eds and editorials, dialogues, statements of facts and figures, and the views of busmen. The "Voice of the Living Newspaper", offstage in the flys above, provided linking commentary. Alan Bush composed the music, Herbert Hodge wrote scenes between a bus driver and his wife, and Montagu Slater composed the verse. The non-naturalistic staging and production style drew on the Expressionist work of German playwrights such as Erwin Piscator and Ernst Toller. Directed by John Allen, the play ran for three months and attracted generally favourable reviews.

Living Newspaper No.2: Crisis covered the appeasement crisis of September 1938. Put together by the company in 36 hours, it opened on 29 September, the day Chamberlain met Hitler and Mussolini in Munich. The production was updated as events unfolded.

Mass declamations Who are the English? was the first of several mass declamations written by Jack Lindsay. Performed in 1936 initially by Unity and then by other left-wing theatre groups, it invoked and celebrated radicals and revolutionaries in British history in an alternative to the traditional imperialist narrative:

Spain Unity was active in the anti-fascist movement supporting the Spanish Republic during Spain's civil war. In 1936, the troupe performed Spain, a poem by Randall Swingler adapted by Edgar Criddle for mass declamation as "A drama of modern history":

A reworking of Jack Lindsay's poem On Guard for Spain! followed in 1937. Transformed by Unity into a declamatory piece for voices and chorus, there were several versions, with Lindsay writing extra stanzas at Unity's request. On Guard was performed by theatre groups across Britain:

Wartime In May 1939, the society recorded 7,000 members, with affiliated organisations (such as trades union branches and cooperative societies) accounting for another 250,000.

On 3 September that year, Britain declared war on Germany at the outbreak of World War II, and all theatres and other places of public entertainment were closed. Unity Theatre re-opened two weeks later (the first theatre to do so), staging a revue, Sandbag Follies, and then another, Turn Up the Lights. Both criticised government policy, with Unity declaring in a pamphlet that "We are the first theatre to attack the war policy of a government in wartime since Euripedes' Trojan Women was performed in Athens in 415 BC."

Many of the troupe's actors and writers were conscripted, and the theatre was bombed several times. Unity remained active throughout the conflict: besides staging plays, pantomimes and revues, from September 1940, at the start of The Blitz, its Outside Show (later Mobile) Group presented plays and sketches in factories, hospitals, parks, and air-raid shelters, putting on over 1,000 performances. Brown lists some performance sites and describes how the Outside Show Group engaged with its audiences. Ann Davies described performing in a shelter in Belsize Park tube station:

In addition, Unity members were involved with the Army Bureau of Current Affairs, whose small Play Unit, set up in 1943, included several prominent members of the troupe, such as Jack Lindsay, Ted Willis, Mulk Raj Anand, and André van Gyseghem. The Play Unit toured military bases in Britain and abroad.

Critical reception The chief theatre critic of The Sunday Times, writing in 1990, said:

Postwar Professional company Shortly after the end of the war, Unity declared its intention to set up a professional repertory company:

The professional company launched in early 1946 under the direction of Ted Willis with a production of Eugene O'Neill's All God's Chillun Got Wings. In May 1947, for economic reasons, the venture collapsed: several productions had been flops, no subsidy from the newly founded Arts Council was forthcoming, and with the advent of the Cold War, Unity's popularity suffered from its association with the Communist Party.

Role During the war's aftermath, the satirical and documentary approaches taken in Unity Theatre productions became mainstream both in professional theatres in London and popular television programmes. According to Chambers (1989), "Unity turned inwards and failed either to find a new role or to renew with sufficient vigour its traditional one." The London theatre closed after a fire in 1975. In the view of Peter (1990), "[Unity Theatre] finally expired ... because it represented a spirit of old-fashioned opposition and could not find its place in a more strident and increasingly prosperous age."

Attempts were made to revive the theatre in the late 1980s and early 1990s with a studio theatre in the space now occupied by Camden People's Theatre. The Merseyside Left Theatre, which became an affiliate of Unity Theatre in 1939, has, since 1944, operated first as Merseyside Unity Theatre and then as Unity Theatre Liverpool. Unity Theatre Cardiff, formed in 1942, left the Unity Theatre movement in 1948 and was renamed Everyman Theatre Cardiff.

The Unity Theatre Trust was established in 1962 as a registered charity with the aim of "[advancing] the education of the public by fostering, promoting and increasing the interest of the public in the art of drama and the co-related arts." It maintains an archive and awards grants.

Archives Several archives have collections of material related to Unity Theatre. The Unity Theatre Trust's archive is housed at a branch of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Salford's Working Class Movement Library also has a collection, as does the People's History Museum in Manchester. The Bishopsgate Institute in London hosts two collections: one accumulated by Harry Landis, and the other by Ron Travis, who undertook research towards a PhD in the history of Unity Theatre. The Herbert P. J. Marshall collection is held by Southern Illinois University.

Notable people

Dramatists Unity introduced several international dramatists to the British stage, presenting premieres of Odets' Waiting for Lefty (1936), Brecht's Señora Carrar's Rifles (1938), O'Casey's The Star Turns Red (1940), Sartre's Nekrassov (1956), and Adamov's Spring '71 (1962). The theatre also helped popularise the plays of Gorky.

Actors Notable actors associated with Unity Theatre included Alfie Bass, Una Brandon-Jones, Michael Gambon, Julian Glover, Vida Hope, Bob Hoskins, David Kossoff, Harry Landis, Herbert Lom, Warren Mitchell, Bill Owen, Eric Paice, Michael Redgrave, Paul Robeson, actor-manager Hazel Vincent Wallace, Ted Willis, and Roger Woddis.

Musicians Notable musicians associated with the theatre included composers Alan Bush and Christian Darnton, conductor David Ellenberg, pianist James Gibb, baritone John Goss, piano duo Mary and Geraldine Peppin, composer John Sykes, and composer and songwriter Lionel Bart. Bart's earliest contributions were lyrics for Turn It Up, a revue. He also wrote the lyrics for an agitprop version of Cinderella and the revue Peacemeal, and composed the musical Wally Pone, based on Ben Jonson's Volpone.

Designers The designers of Unity Theatre's sets, costumes, and programmes included James Friell and Lawrence Gowing (sets for Babes in the Wood); James Boswell, who designed the programme for Giant Ripper (1940); and John Heartfield, who contributed to the translation and design of the Soviet thriller Comrade Detective (1944). Rivka Black and Ern Brooks created sets and costumes for various productions. During the 1950s and 1960s, Ken Sprague designed several sets for productions of Shaw's The Apple Cart, Chekov's The Cherry Orchard, and Miller's The Crucible. Sean Kenny designed the sets and lighting for Bloomsday (1960), an adaptation of Joyce's novel Ulysses.

Managers Managers, at various times, of the theatre or its sectional activities included Heinz Bernard (director), Alec Bernstein (chair), Raymond Cross (business manager), Jack Firestein (who ran Unity's folk club and bookstall), Oscar Lewenstein (general manager, and secretary of the national society), and André van Gyseghem (president).

Productions

Chambers (1989) chronicles productions in Unity's two principal theatres: Britannia Street, covering 1936 and 1937, and Goldington Street, from 1937 to 1975 (when the theatre burnt down). He also lists performances that took place in various venues from 1976 to 1983 and touring productions. The Unity Theatre Trust lists productions from 1936 to 1994.

Selected productions 19361939

1940s

1950s

1960s

Unity Theatre, London

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