Teatro bring drama back to Leamington pub

MHLC-20-05-13 Teatro play May60
Teatro Theatre School, are performing a series of plays that were performed at the Jug and Jester when it was a theatre during the 1800s as part of the Leamington history festival.
Members of the cast,Tom Phillips, Lizzi Gill and Marylin Dixon (all actors). — MHLC-20-05-13 Teatro play May60 Teatro Theatre School, are performing a series of plays that were performed at the Jug and Jester when it was a theatre during the 1800s as part of the Leamington history festival. Members of the cast,Tom Phillips, Lizzi Gill and Marylin Dixon (all actors).

Two hundred years ago in 1813, a Mr John Sims opened the New Theatre in Bath Street.

Designed to cater for the growing numbers of visitors flocking to Leamington for the season to take the waters, it attracted the great actors of the day – including Edmund Kean, Charles Macready and Robert Elliston - who took it over in 1825 and attracted stars all the way from Drury Lane.

But on the opening night, a Deaths-Head moth flew down from the theatre flies and attacked the young female artist singing I’d Be a Butterfly. This was not seen to be a good omen and the theatre closed in 1835 to become a wine vaults - and ultimately the public house that is now the Jug and Jester.

To celebrate the anniversary as part of the ongoing Leamington Looks Back history festival, Teatro is staging a number of items from the original opening night playbill, including extracts from the tongue-in-cheek The Earl of Warwick and Fortunes Frolic.

Performances take place at the steps of All Saints’ church in Leamington on Sunday at 2.30pm, inside the Old Theatre at the Jug and Jester pub on Monday at 7.30pm and as part of the Teatro Showcase at the Spa Centre Studio next Friday (June 7) at 7.30pm.

To find out more, call 420737.