The Edinbourgh Playhouse

July 18, 2018 by Alexander Meldrum

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The Edinburgh Playhouse The Edinburgh Playhouse is a former cinema in Edinburgh, Scotland which now hosts touring musicals and music concerts. Its capacity is 3,059, (Stalls: 1,519, Balcony: 860 and Circle: 680) making it the UK's largest working non-sporting theatre in terms of audience capacity. The Hammersmith Apollo, which is a similar building, has more seats, but it is only used for concerts, not for musicals. The theatre is owned by Ambassador Theatre Group. Building history The theatre opened in 1929 as a super-cinema and was modelled on the Roxy Cinema in New York. It was designed by the specialist cinema architect John Fairweather, most famous for his Green's Playhouse cinema in Glasgow. The original colour scheme was described as opening as follows: Tones of ivory and stone predominate on the walls, and the roof is decorated with bands of pale green leaves intersected with gold at intervals. The seats in the different parts of the house have been upholstered to harmonise with the general scheme of the decoration. The organ fronts are in Venetian style, and the clock settings, which are square, are neat and attractive. At the time of its opening, it was the largest cinema in Scotland and the fourth largest in the UK. The building was originally listed Category B in 1974, and this was upgraded by Historic Scotland to Category A in 2008. Performances In recent years, The Playhouse has played host to a wide variety of artists and shows. It also caters to the youth of the surrounding area who are involved in stage experience projects and youth musicals projects in which children as young as 10, and young adults as old as 21, can take part in shows on the world-famous stage. It is used as a venue for both the Edinburgh International Festival and Edinburgh Festival Fringe each August. Technical details The front of house sound position is somewhat unusually located at the rear of the Dress Circle. Another oddity is the motor hanging points for the advance truss, which are not parallel with the line of the front of the stage. The Auditorium Left point is about 500 mm further into the auditorium than the centre and house right. Towards the rear of the stalls, there are 41 mm unistrut Product 221-724 fixed to the ceiling to facilitate the hanging delay speakers. In the Gallery, there is also a winch bar across the full width of the auditorium to again facilitate the hanging of delay speakers. The theatre now benefits from a lift to bring up 45' trailers and tractor units up to stage level, which is three floors below street level at the rear of the theatre. Ghost The building is said to be haunted by a ghost called Albert, a man in a grey coat who appears on level six accompanied by a chill in the air. He is variously said to have been either a stagehand who was killed in an accident or a night-watchman who committed suicide.

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