ASSEMBLY ROOMS
BY GEORGE! After an 18-month refi t, Edinburgh’s Assembly Rooms is soon to reopen in style, with a new team promising big things for the Fringe, fi nds Mark Fisher
S ay what you like about modern-day dress sense, but when Edinburgh’s Assembly Rooms returns to life, today’s fashionistas will have some stiff competition. Yes, they’ll be excited about the opening ceilidh in July and the high-profi le Fringe line-up that includes Stewart Lee, the National Theatre of Scotland and Phil Nichol, but will they be any match for the audience of August 1822, when King George IV came to town?
Back then, eyewitness Thomas Mudie was so taken by the guests at the Peers Ball, he wrote a whole book about it. ‘The ladies were in most elegant white dresses, richly bespangled, and had on plumes of white ostrich feathers, their plumage in constant undulation, appearing to the eye like an ocean of foam,’ he wrote.
Stick that in your Topshop and smoke it. But even if our glad rags don’t have
previously the Wildman Room and the box offi ce stood, as well as a branch of Jamie’s Italian in the old Supper Room, with a second entrance on Rose Street. Upstairs, the Ballroom, Music Hall, Crush Hall and the East and West Drawing Rooms have had plasterwork, cornicing and chandeliers spruced up. Walls have been repainted in muted tones, gold-leaf fi nishings have been replaced and decorative rosettes restored. ‘People will notice the obvious things like the decoration and the restoration,’ says Clelland, who’s lining up a programme of book readings, dances, conferences, dinners and craft fairs, ‘but all the infrastructure – new sound systems, new heating and ventilation system, all the behind-the-scenes things – will make being in the Assembly
Rooms so much easier.’
quite the same class, we’ll certainly be able to savour the refreshed elegance of a building brought back to its 18th century splendour. After an 18-month closure and a £9.3m refi t, the George Street venue where once Dickens, Scott and Thackeray gave readings has been returned to its Georgian prime – with a Jamie Oliver restaurant thrown in for good measure.
in,’ ‘What people will notice is it’s going to be much lighter, airier and more when contemporary they come says general manager Shona Clelland. ‘Then, as they go up the stairs, they will be blown away by the restoration in the fi rst-fl oor rooms. It’s going to be back to the grandeur that it originally had.’
Visitors will now fi nd ground-fl oor shop units where
20 THE LIST 26 Apr–24 May 2012
end The scheme has not been without its critics. Longstanding festival resident William Burdett-Coutts was forced to move his main Assembly Fringe operation to George Square after last year’s closure. He was concerned the loss of the smaller ground- fl oor spaces would put an the building’s ability to present work on all scales and force promoters to concentrate on the more commercial end of the market. is not an argument that c o n v i n c e s Clelland. ‘The A s s e m b l y festival created lots of spaces the within building, but for the rest of the year, those spaces were
to It
not utilised fully,’ she says. ‘OK, there’s not so many spaces downstairs during the festival, however we’ve still got four spaces upstairs, two of which are small. I’ve never been concerned about that, because I have to make the building work year-round. For the citizens of Edinburgh, we want this building to be somewhere people come – they might come for a meal or for a shop, but at least they’re coming to the building.’
Equally convinced is Tommy Sheppard, director of the Stand Comedy Club, who has been awarded the fi ve-year contract to programme the venue in August. He’s broadening his previous programming range to include theatre and music, while holding on to the ethical values that have made his existing venues such a hit with performers. ‘We’re going to translate to the Assembly Rooms the attitudes we think have underpinned our success on the Fringe,’ he says. ‘Broadly speaking, we are taking the risk on the programme and we should be able to ensure the profi t-making shows subsidise the loss-making shows, so we won’t be transferring those losses to the individual artists.’
The programme ranges from Stewart Lee’s Carpet Remnant World to the National Theatre of Scotland’s An Appointment with the Wicker Man, from Irish chanteuse Camille (left) to Phil Nichol in The Intervention, a serious drama about an alcoholic. The smaller shows will have a top ticket price of £10; the bigger ones shouldn’t go much over £15. ‘We’re in it to do something good for the city and the festival,’ says Sheppard. ‘We’ve taken advantage of moving up the road to allow a number of the people we work with to move to that platform. Stu and Garry, who have done a show every Sunday for nine years, are going to be doing a lunchtime improv show every day