Shakespeare’s Globe should be buzzing right now. The weather in London is glorious: under normal circumstances, this unique replica Elizabethan playhouse would be in full swing, the open-air yard packed with crowds beneath the night sky. Instead, like all our theatres, it lies silent. More distressing still is the recent disclosure that it might stay so.
The theatre is one of many to submit evidence to a government select committee of the grave impact of the lengthy, crisis-enforced closure. The world-renowned venue states that, without emergency funding from government, “We will not be able to survive this crisis.”
That is stark. And the Globe is far from alone. “We’re not a sector with lower income, we’re a sector with no income,” says Julian Bird, chief executive of Society of London Theatre and UK Theatre. “Seventy per cent of theatres will run out of cash by the end of the year. And there are some very, very big venues in that 70 per cent.”