Inside Look: The Sunderland Empire theatre
Sunderland Echo reporter Tony Gillan is given a look around the historic Sunderland Empire.
Find out about wartime damage, a reported haunting - and the capacity for 58 suspended Mini Coopers.
Find out about wartime damage, a reported haunting - and the capacity for 58 suspended Mini Coopers.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00The Sunderland Empire Theatre is magnificent. It's one of the finest venues of its type that
00:04you'll ever sit in. The region, the North East itself, is lucky to have it let alone just the
00:09city of Sunderland. London has larger and more famous theatres but none of them better than this
00:15beautiful specimen of ornate Edwardian architecture. Anyone who has sat in both
00:20the Empire and the London Palladium can confirm this. Over the last 117 years it's provided an
00:26appropriately grand venue with some of the biggest names in the history of entertainment.
00:30These include Lauren Hardy, Charlie Chaplin, W.C. Fields, The Beatles, Helen Mirren, Marlene
00:35Dietrich, Billy Connolly, Mickey Rooney, Morgan and Wife, Rudolf Nureyev and Bobby Thompson. You
00:41can do a tour, a public tour, of this venue and we recommend it but we've been privileged enough
00:47to be shown special stuff behind the scenes. So we have 2,000 seats in the venue and so we're in
00:53the bottom level at the moment in the stalls. Above us we've got the dress circle, we've then
00:57got the upper circle and the gods or the gallery at the top. We've got some other seats as well so
01:02on both sides of the theatre are the slippers which are these two. We don't usually sell the
01:07slippers anymore and sometimes cast and performers use those and do bits of acting in there or they
01:12might have some set up there that they visit. For The Lion King for example we had some of
01:17the actors there who had their bird puppets that were out into the audience. Above the slippers
01:22we've got the proscenium boxes. So in the proscenium boxes they used to be for the upper class
01:28and all of the upper class who wanted to come and sit in those didn't really want to watch the show.
01:32As you can see it's not a very good view, they just wanted to be seen by members of the audience.
01:37So a perfect view from those who were sitting in the gallery into the proscenium boxes so we don't
01:42sell those anymore either. And now we have our ambassador boxes which are on the dress circle
01:47level and they give a really good view to the stage and they're a little bit nicer if you
01:52want to spend a bit more money and get some drinks delivered to you and have your own
01:57individual space. Do you want to guess how much our theatre cost to build?
02:02In 1906? Bear in mind yes 1906-1907. A hundred thousand pounds? A lot less than that. It was
02:10actually only £31,000 to build at the time which obviously in nowadays money would be a lot more
02:18and quite a lot cheaper than lots of people think. Above the proscenium boxes we've got some
02:24what look like decorative sections but that was actually where people used to go up to announce
02:29that the show was about to start. So there's a little hidden doorway that takes you up there
02:33and that's where the trumpeters used to go and announce that the show was about to start. Our
02:37stage used to actually be raked stage but we had a stage refurbishment in 2004 which took six months
02:44and one of the main things that we did was change the stage from a raked stage which just went
02:48slanted to a flat stage and we also expanded our roof so above us is a lot lot bigger than it used
02:55to be. You can definitely see that from outside you can see sort of big grey box if you ever drive
02:59in past you'll notice that and that is our stage refurbishment and the reason we got that is just
03:04to bring in bigger shows so shows like Disney we've had Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, The Lion
03:09King with us recently and their set and everything that they bring with them is so large and such a
03:14big scale that we needed that space to have everything stored up there. On this side of the
03:19stage you will see the dock and so the dock is where the get-ins and the get-out happen so that
03:24is when the production will bring in all of their equipment and set everything up and the big garage
03:30door over there is where they would reverse the vans onto the stage and unload everything.
03:34Some performances bring several lorries I think the largest we have is 16 trucks for one show
03:42some only bring two or three for the smaller scale production and they bring everything with them from
03:46all of the speakers, the lighting, the costume of course they bring everything on those trucks so
03:51it's a lot of stuff to carry. There's 58 fly bars above our heads and each fly bar in our theatre
03:57can hold roughly the weight of a mini cooper so if we really wanted to we could have 58 mini
04:01coopers above our heads and we'd be perfectly safe and the fly bars are lowered on stage right
04:08and they're lowered by our backstage team and you attach everything that you need for a show to
04:13those fly bars so it could be lighting rigging, it could be bits of set and bits of scenery and when
04:19they're not visible on stage to the audience that is what lives up in our box above the stage above
04:24our heads and they stay up there until they're needed for the show and then they're lowered back
04:28down for the next scene. So this is famously Sid James's dressing room and some say it's haunted
04:34so we'll have to see. So Sid James famously performed here in 1976 in a performance of
04:40The Mating Game alongside his co-star Olga Lowe and Sid James if you don't know was very very famous
04:47and was very famous as a comedian for having a very distinctive laugh which will come in key to
04:51our ghost story. So this was Sid James's dressing room and he was performing on stage on the evening
04:58and he was on a couch with his co-star Olga and Olga delivered her line and Sid didn't respond
05:04so Olga looked over and she thought he was looking a bit pale a bit unwell so she delivered
05:08her line again he still didn't respond and at this point she was a little bit worried so she asked
05:12for the stage manager to come out and it was very unheard of it is very unheard of in theatre for
05:17the stage managers to be seen by the audience so the audience thought this was a joke and this
05:21was part of a performance when the stage manager came out but of course it wasn't. The stage manager
05:26noticed that Sid was unwell and asked if there was a doctor in the house. Of course Sid has been in
05:31many performances including Carry On Doctor so they thought that this was a remake although
05:37they were going to bring something in from that and of course it wasn't. Eventually a doctor did
05:41come out onto the stage and they noticed Sid was coming in to call for an ambulance. So the ambulance
05:46arrived and Sid was taken to hospital and he was pronounced dead on the way to hospital and he'd
05:50suffered from a heart attack on the stage. So with this being Sid's dressing room some say it's
05:55very haunted. Les Dawson has actually been in our theatre and stayed in this dressing room
06:00and Les not many people knew about him that he's a very spiritual person so he was very nervous
06:05about coming here knowing what happened to Sid so he was getting ready and he said he saw a ghostly
06:10pale face of Sid James in the mirror behind him and he said Sid whispered something very vulgar
06:16and horrible in his ear which he hasn't shared with anybody before disappearing. He said he felt a
06:21very sharp pain in his chest as Sid disappeared and he vowed to never ever come back to Sunderland
06:27Empire after that and he didn't. So lots of people sometimes ask to change dressing rooms if they ever
06:33hear with us in Sunderland Empire and know about the story of Sid James because some say they hear
06:37his laugh in here quite often or they hear thumping on the wall or taps on the shoulder
06:42coldness floating past them but this is still used to this day lots of people do stay in here
06:48some of the main cast members usually have this dressing room. So these are our original dressing
06:52rooms what block A is what we call these dressing rooms these are the ones that were built when we
06:56were built in 1907. Obviously they're not as glamorous as you might think they're really
07:00built for purpose they've got everything that actors and performers would need in the dressing
07:04rooms and we'll head over to the new block of dressing rooms that were built later on. So this
07:09is our new block of dressing rooms we're in the dressing room named after Sid James so each of
07:14our dressing rooms in this new block are named after a famous star or stars who performed here
07:19and each one has a bit of information about that person as well so these would be for the main
07:23performers in the shows that are with us and they might share between two or they might just have
07:28one to themselves and the company manager of the show will always stay in one of these as well.
07:32The foundation stone of our theatre was built on the 29th of September 1906 by a lady called
07:38Vesta Tilly. So Vesta Tilly was a world famous comedian and she was the most highly paid performer
07:43of her time so it was a very big moment when she laid the foundation stone and we opened less than
07:48a year later on the 1st of July 1907 and the theatre was a partnership between Edward Moss,
07:53Oswald Stoll and a local man called Richard Thornton. Richard Thornton was originally from
07:58South Shields and he was a busker who busked on the Marsden seafront and he soon became a manager
08:02of a run-down theatre in Union Street and once he'd made lots of money he went on to take control
08:08of the Avenue Theatre and the Opera House in South Shields and he became really successful
08:12very quickly and decided to team up with Edward Moss and Oswald Stoll which transformed the
08:18northern theatres really in the early 1900s. He became restless in this partnership and wanted
08:24to do something more and bigger and decided to build a theatre of his own so he built our
08:29theatre and created what we call the Empire Palace which it was at the time and it really
08:34changed the face of theatres in the 1900s and Thornton and Moss formed the Empire Palaces
08:39throughout the north. We also wanted our admission costs to be really really low so we were trying to
08:44be really inclusive and when we first opened up in the gallery the seats there were just long
08:49concrete benches and admission was one penny each so families would buy lots and lots of tickets
08:54they'd give the children a penny and send them up in a separate entrance to go and find the best
08:59space in the house and the gods and so we were one of the cheapest in the northern region as well.
09:04Above us is the Edwardian ventilation system so just above the big chandelier there is the
09:10kind of see a bit of a grid so what they used to do in Edwardian times lots of people used to smoke
09:17they used to raise the grid and kind of let some air in and let all of that smoke out so that was
09:22the original ventilation system and obviously in such an old building. So do you want to guess what
09:27our longest closure was in the Hudson Empire? World War Two. So World War Two was our second
09:36longest closure our longest closure was Covid but when we closed for World War Two we closed
09:41in 1939 and we were forced to close our doors as most public places were and everywhere was
09:47closed apart from churches in the area and because we closed it resulted in immediate
09:53protests from people of Sunderland and people in the North East because they believed that the
09:57theatre was providing really really important entertainment for on-leave troops and just to kind
10:02of bring everybody together. When we did close this resulted in protest and the protests were
10:07successful on the 16th of September so just under two weeks after we actually closed and we were
10:12allowed to reopen provided that we were closed by 10pm every night and when we were open again
10:18and shows were with us we had as lots of people did rationing at the time so lots of the performers
10:24who were with us they were doing two show days they would wear the same makeup and some people
10:28did report seeing some of the performers walking around Sunderland in all the glam makeup and
10:33costumes and ready for the evening performance. Lots of people ask about our banisters so our
10:37banisters are actually the original banisters from when we first opened in 1907 and during the war
10:42the Dun Cow pub was bombed just next to us and that meant that all of these windows in our dress
10:48circle stairs and dress circle bar were shattered inwards. Some of the debris damaged these hand
10:53railings and so there's lots of dint in those. So that has been deliberately preserved that way it's
10:58not just damaged per se? Yeah yeah so we've kept them the way that they are just to show that we
11:02survived and that was still open. Above our heads is Terpsichore. Now Terpsichore is one of the nine
11:09muses and she's the goddess of chorus and dance and Terpsichore is actually the original statue
11:15that was on our tower when we opened so Terpsichore is made of bronze and she was on our tower roof
11:21she was actually rotating when we first opened. Now after she survived a long time we decided we
11:25wanted to preserve that so we brought her indoors and she's proudly on display on the dress circle
11:29stairs and we've got a replica of Terpsichore outside now that's made of fiberglass so she's
11:34obviously nice and preserved and can stay there for a long time and she doesn't rotate anymore
11:39she's just standing there nice and proudly facing the front of the building. It's Terpsichore not Terpsichore?
11:44It's Terpsichore yes Terpsichore. But it just remains for us now to say a very big thank you
11:49to the good people at the Sutherland Empire Theatre for giving us a glimpse behind the scenes
11:54of this magnificent venue.
11:59you