Ian Mullins retires

With a new season of plays opening in St Andrew's Church in October New Farnham Repertory Company founder-chairman-director Ian Mullins has announced his impending retirement from the post with his last words on the subject of the Redgrave Theatre.

In a press release Ian wrote:

When the forthcoming season is finished it is my intention to retire as Chairman/Director of the NFRC which I founded seven years ago and which has given me some of the most rewarding experiences in my long career in the Professional Theatre. But the time will come at the end of the forthcoming season for the last bow and the final exit!

The building of the Redgrave Theatre thirty-one years ago was a unique and spectacular achievement and one of the great success stories in the whole history of the British Repertory Theatre Movement.

The NFRC has clearly pointed the way towards the proper restoration of Professional Theatre in this town and I trust it will continue to do so.

The Maltings is a very fine Community and Arts Centre which makes its own invaluable contribution to the social and educational life of our society and Farnham will always be justly proud of it, but the idea that it could ever replace the Redgrave as a theatre is ignorant nonsense.

The Redgrave is one of the finest small purpose-built theatres in the country and to demolish it will be an unprecedented and unpardonable act of cultural vandalism. I cannot believe that we are prepared to tolerate that.

The East Street Regeneration Scheme is in chaos … hardly surprising when you consider how ill-conceived the whole thing was from the start. A modest, intelligent community-driven (not commercially-driven) scheme, with the Redgrave at the very heart of it, is becoming more clearly every day the only possible solution.

It is now so obvious that the people of Farnham must be given what they want and what is their right without further procrastination and delay by local government

These are my last words on the subject of the Redgrave Theatre. I was immensely proud and privileged to work in close collaboration with the distinguished architect, Frank Rutter, on the theatre’s original design, and honoured to be the last Artistic Director of the beloved old Castle Theatre and the first Artistic Director of the Redgrave.

The great public enthusiasm roused to build the Redgrave thirty-five years ago is now being engendered again to save it.

And I offer this warning to the authorities... .Take care! The disgust I shall feel at its demolition will actually be shared by thousands!

I shall leave with the words of Mark Twain ringing in my ears...“A Town without a theatre is not a civilized town”. What would Mark Twain have said about a wealthy town which once had a beautiful modern theatre and actually allowed it to be demolished?

Meanwhile the New Farnham Repertory Company is about to open an exciting and colourful new season....

From the pen of one of Britain s universally acclaimed modern dramatists comes one of the most powerful and important plays in recent years ... RACING DEMON ... to be followed by a new dramatisation of JANE EYRE, one of the most popular novels in the English language. The season also includes three special Sunday night recitals.

Pick up a brochure at our box office and rest assured that theatre is alive and well in Farnham.

Ian Mullins's last appearance with the NFRC in a scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream at Thursleigh in 2005