£25.6m later, a New Marlowe

The tourists drifting past in boats on the river Stour didn't realise it, but the music they could just hear in the distance was the very first performance in Canterbury's brand new £25.6m Marlowe theatre. Appropriately (for a building in which the first year's programming finds space for Peppa Pig, the 84-strong Philharmonia Orchestra, Peter Pan on Ice and Glyndebourne touring opera), mezzo soprano Rosie Aldridge sang arias from Bizet, Saint Saëns and Gilbert and Sullivan.

The archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has been in for an approving look – the uncompromisingly modern theatre, surrounded by medieval listed buildings, is clearly visible from the tower of the cathedral, and the view of the cathedral spectacularly fills an entire window in the theatre – but very few of the townspeople have had a chance to see what their taxes were spent on.

At a time when every local authority in the country is slashing culture and other budgets to the bone, the council raised most of the money for the new theatre, and will also own and operate it – and predicts firmly that it will generate more money spent in the area in the first year than they have invested, along with hundreds of direct and indirect jobs.

"We did intend to have a fortnight of just inviting people in for a look, but we ran out of time," Janice McGuinness, head of culture at Canterbury council, said – shouting to make herself heard over the din of drilling and hammering. The stage lighting was still being rigged, and it was impossible to get Aldridge's grand piano into the auditorium, and so the foyer became an impromptu recital space.

The theatre will be opened by Prince Edward (once famously a theatre-company tea boy) on 4 October 2011, and has just announced the first year's programme. Theatre director Mark Everett is bursting with pride over the Philharmonia residency – the first in Kent by a major symphony orchestra; their first concerts are already sold out – and Glyndebourne adding Canterbury to its tour in 2012, but also promises that Cinderella, the first pantomime, will be properly spectacular: "I'm allowed to have a lot to do with that, it's my treat of the year," he said.

There will also be a new show from the Canadian aerial circus company Éloize, Northern Ballet's Nutcracker and the Rambert dance company, Henry V and The Winter's Tale from Propeller, Edward Hall's acclaimed Shakespeare company, big touring musicals including Grease, and the premiere of a new production of Top Hat.

The new theatre, designed by Keith Williams, is actually smaller in volume than the old Marlowe, a 1930s converted Odeon, but has 1,200 bright orange leather-covered seats, 250 more than the old building, and a big enough orchestra pit, backstage space and fly tower to take in major touring musicals, opera and ballet. There is also a 150-seat studio space, where the choreographer Richard Alston will be working with the cathedral choir to create a new piece, A Ceremony of Carols.

For Everett, the moment of highest drama was the night in 2009 when the council finally voted to go for it, not only to flatten the old building but buy the car showroom next door so the site could spill on to the river bank. Everett first came to the Marlowe in 1994. The new theatre takes its eclectic programming from the tatty but much-loved old building, but in the barn-like space the cheapest seats were so far from the stage they might as well have been in the next county.

"Nothing that has happened since has been as scary as that moment," Everett recalled. "The old building was falling to pieces around us, and up to the last minute it was by no means certain which way the vote would go. We'd have made the old building work somehow – the one thing all theatres have is unlimited supplies of gaffer tape and black emulsion. But this is a dream come true."

Guardian 28th Sep 2011

Closures "justified by fall in council grant"

HB Times 28th Oct 2010

Marlowe progress

HB Gazette 9th September 2010

Mervyn King praises Marlowe

HB Gazette 9th September 2010

Gale's View: Visitor Information Centre

I have not, in the interests of those that I represent, always seen eye to eye with City Hall. This was true under a Liberal administration that asked the Town which swimming pool design it preferred and then went ahead and built the least favourite one, that sought to claim credit for a seafront paid for by a Conservative government through sea-defence funding and that made a pre-election promise to re-build the pier and failed to deliver. It is equally true of an administration that wants to construct a sports hall at the back of the town with inadequate access and parking, that seeks to re-build the Marlow Theatre, at a cost of £20 million plus, in the centre of an already overcrowded city and that rejected plans for a new hotel in Beltinge.

I have long felt that the City Fathers have taken a metro-centric "within the City Walls" view of the District at the expense of the majority of the population that live not in the City centre but on the coastal strip. That said, I regard with some disdain the bandwagon that has been set rolling in an endeavour to preserve the Tourist Information Centre in its present form.

Do not misunderstand me: I like the TIC, I admire its hardworking, friendly and diligent staff and I think that the display of goods, chattels and services on offer is both colourful and attractive. I do not, though, think that this outlet can or should be set in aspic and preserved and I think that a suggestion that we should re-locate the Council offices in what is, at the end of the day, a glorified conservatory is barmy even by woolly-headed Liberal Democrat standards. Populist the idea may be but practical it is not. (This proposal, remember, comes from Councillors who, when they had the chance, failed to seize the opportunity to roof the bandstand and turn it into a twelve month of the year facility!)

The present administration led by John Gilbey wants to raise the tourism offer in both Whitstable and Herne Bay and, in order to do so, seeks to take advantage of modern technology to improve the information services not only at the popular bandstand and pier locations but at other sites throughout the Town.

There is also no question of abandoning the face-to-face information service solely in favour of push-button service points. With vacant space available for re-vamping within the Council offices in the centre of the Town in William Street there is no reason why a far more comprehensive service offering, perhaps, the sale of rail, coach and bus tickets as well as accommodation and entertainment bookings and traditional information should not be introduced. Such a unit will have to be staffed and I see no reason why those who currently do an excellent job and who do not wish to be otherwise deployed should not continue to man a new TIC.

Neither is there any intention to allow the bandstand site to remain vacant or to see it occupied by a second rate tenant. It is a valuable location in which there is already much interest and I would hope and expect that in tandem with the upgrading of the tourist offer we shall see this space put to good use in the interests of both visitors and residents.

We have, do we not, a choice. We either allow Herne Bay to sink further into genteel decline or we look to innovative and exciting changes in retail, hotel, restaurant and entertainment facilities that are compatible with the demands of 21st century tourists from home and overseas and that simultaneously improve the quality of life and opportunity for those living in the Town. We can argue the toss over what shape new developments should take and we can agree to disagree, if necessary, over the route forward. We cannot, though, any longer allow ourselves the luxury of standing still and I personally applaud the endeavours of an administration that at last appears to have discovered the Canterbury coastline and wants to make things happen in Herne Bay.

Roger Gale M.P. (July 9th 2008)