Taking a tour through Darlington's theatre history

Because, at his most corpulent, actor and theatre impresario Stephen Kemble weighed 30 stone, and he was famed the length and indeed width of the country for being able to play Shakespeare’s most rotund character, Sir John Falstaff, without any padding.

He made his name in London, but came north to manage a circuit of theatres based around Durham and Newcastle, but stretching as far north as Aberdeen, and including for a season the tent theatre in Darlington.

Indeed, after that season, he was tempted back to Drury Lane in London to reprise his most famous, and gargantuan role. A poem on the poster advertising his return explained:

“All good honest flesh, and blood, and bone,
And weighing, more or less, some thirty stone!
Upon the northern coast by chance we caught him,
And hither in a broad-wheeled waggon brought him;
Blest with unwieldiness (at least), his size
Will favour find in every critic's eyes.”

Drury Lane is the world’s oldest theatre in continuous use, with performances dating back to 1663. In Durham, there is a vennel named after it, running down to the river off Saddler Street. The city’s first theatre was here in the mid-18th Century, with the stage low down by the river and the raked seating of the auditorium following the lie of the land as it rose towards the cathedral.

The entrance on the left to Drury Lane, off Saddler Street, in Durham in 2003 - it has since been painted a dark blue

In the 1760s, the manager of the theatre was Thomas Bates, who had a company of actors that toured the region.

The earliest evidence of a theatrical performance in Darlington is a handbill in the library dated June 1768 and advertising the appearance of Mr Bates’ company – Bates himself appeared as one of the stars. The company stayed for at least three weeks.

The handbill in the Darlington local studies collection which shows the Durham actors led by Thomas Bates have arrived

The next evidence is an advert in the Darlington Pamphlet newspaper of 1772 revealing that Mr Bates’ company was to perform a comic opera, called Love in a Village, at “the new theatre in Darlington…tickets to be had at the principal inns”.

The 1772 advert from the Darlington Pamphlet promoting the performances of the Durham actors, including Thomas Bates and James Cawdell

We don’t precisely know where these performances took place, but we do know that Darlington’s first performing space was in a barn beneath Clay Row and then a tent theatre – perhaps “the new theatre” – was erected on the Green Tree Fields at the rear of Skinnergate. On Saturday, July 24, a guided walk on behalf of the Hippodrome, will look at where it might have been.

Blackwellgate, Darlington, in the 1950s, with the Green tree cafe occupying the corner

Also appearing with Mr Bates in Darlington in 1772 was his nephew, James Cawdell, who took over the running of the company on the retirement of his uncle in 1782. James fell out with the owners of the Drury Lane theatre in Durham, and so built himself a new theatre on the opposite side of Saddler Street behind the Lord Nelson Inn.

"This theatre was opened on March 12, 1792 with an occasional prelude called Apollo's Holiday, written by Mr Cawdell, the new comedy Wild Oats and the farce The Spoiled Child," says a contemporary record.

A magnificent picture of mid 1960s Saddler Street in Durham with the Shakespeare pub on the right - the second theatre was just behind it

It was accessed by a vennel, now called Playhouse Passage, and was such a success that the pub in front of it changed its name to The Shakespeare.

James Cawdell had a finger in many theatres across the region, and brought in well known actors to fill them. Of course, the bigger the name, the bigger the audience, and they didn’t come much bigger than Stephen Kemble, who made his debut in Durham in 1788.

Stephen Kemble, as Hamlet

Kemble came from a theatre family, and had made his debut in Covent Garden in 1783 blacking up to play Othello. He caused much merriment among the critics because he kissed his stage wife Desdemona, played by Elizabeth Satchell, so passionately that his make-up smeared all over her face.

Perhaps Kemble did not mind the sniggering reviews because later that year he married Elizabeth. The critics thought she could have become one of the great stars of the era, but she instead had a couple of children and toured with her husband.

Despite the success of his Falstaff, he was never as big – in terms of reputation – as his brother and sister, who were superstars of the day, and so he began to go into provincial theatre management. He started at the Theatre Royal in Newcastle in 1791, and soon had theatres in Chester, Lancaster, Sheffield, Glasgow and Edinburgh. He wowed the audiences by putting on new plays and attracting the biggest stars from London, who had previously thought it an insult to be invited to play the provinces.

He quickly added more venues to his list – Berwick, Aberdeen, Alnmouth, Scarborough – and then, in 1800, when James Cawdell died aged 50 in his home in South Bailey, he took on the management of the Durham theatres.

In those days, an impresario had to have a licence to run a theatre, and so we know that in January 1802, the Justices of the Peace at Durham Assizes granted him permission to perform at South Shields and Sunderland for 60 days from January 16, at Durham for four months from April 10 and then Darlington and Stockton for 60 days from June 12.

Darlington's tent theatre on the Green Tree Fields in the 1850s

It was the Georgian Theatre at Stockton that Kemble ran, and in Darlington it seems most likely that he ran the tent theatre behind the Friends Meeting House on the Green Tree Fields – a theatre which later became the scene of a fabulous skirmish with the Quakers, as next Saturday’s walk will tell.

Among his many other theatres, Kemble also ran the Theatre Royal in Northallerton which was built in 1800 behind the Tickle Toby Inn. He is said to have performed as Falstaff there. It became a Methodist chapel in 1834 and then a slaughterhouse and now, overlooking the Applegarth car park, it is the Sportsmans Club.

The Theatre Royal in Northallerton, which Kemble ran for a short while in the early 1800s, is now a club. Picture: Google StreetView

It looks like, although there was a lot to go round, Kemble spread himself too thinly across the country and failed to invest in the fabric of his theatres.

He retired from theatre management in 1806 and settled in The Grove in Quarryheads Lane, Durham – it is now the bursar’s office for Durham School – and became great friends with Count Josef Boruwlaski, the Polish dwarf who had also made Durham his home. The Count stood just 3ft 3ins tall, whereas Kemble was 6ft and 30 stone, so their friendship had the makings of a great little and large double act.

The diminutive Count Josef Boruwlaski was Kemble's great friend

Kemble still appeared on northern stages and regularly returned to London to reprise Falstaff, where he was greeted with great acclaim. His last known performance was in Durham in May 1822, two weeks before he died in The Grove on June 5. He was buried in the Chapel of Nine Altars in the cathedral and when the Count died in 1837, he was buried beside him.

•  To follow in Kemble’s footsteps in Darlington, join Chris Lloyd, who compiles Memories, on a guided walk through the town’s theatre history on Saturday, July 24, at 2pm, starting outside the old Green Tree Inn. Tickets are £8 and needed to be booked through the Hippodrome box office, 01325-405405, or via the website darlingtonhippodrome.co.uk