Bleak house

Uncle Vanya
Rose Theatre, Kingston

The Death of Margaret Thatcher
Courtyard

At last the Rose has burst into bloom in Kingston. Luckily I allowed myself twice the suggested 40 minutes to get there from Waterloo. It took me quarter of an hour to extract a ticket from the computerised machines, which have been brilliantly programmed to be thicker and slower than human beings. On reaching Kingston I got instantly lost in a jungle of contradictory signposts. Best advice, make for Kingston Bridge (visible from outside the station), turn upstream and walk for three minutes along the riverbank. And there you are. Peter Hall’s new theatre is a modernist redoubt arranged across three floors. The lobby and bar have been designed with no inventiveness or artistry. The builder has been ordered simply to create the largest possible enclosure for the smallest sum of money. It’s bleak. Nihilistic materials are Meccano’d together and bask in their nakedness; copper pipes snake across bare concrete; shadeless lights swing from exposed wires; glittery mesh connects steel banisters to the stairs. The outside walls are glass, the internal ones breeze block, and the floorboards are made from some queasy functional woodstuff. Perhaps this chicken-coop chic is part of some bracing design revolution but it reminded me of the pool-room on an oil rig. Inside, the auditorium is much more inviting although for some reason it’s painted a mulish dark grey. The floorboards seem pleasingly bright and the stage is very wide and set low down so that you feel close to the action even if you’re at the rear of the stalls. The disc-shaped design, based on Shakespeare’s Rose, achieves a highly successful marriage between spaciousness and intimacy. Just in front of the stage there’s a small clearing reserved for students and cheapskates who pay £7 a ticket. Unlike the Globe, where standing is enforced by capos with cattle-prods, sitting is encouraged. But bring your own cushion or you’ll pay an extra £3 for the hire of a skinny foam bum-rest.

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