CRITIQUE: AS YOU LIKE IT

Hull Truck’s new theatre may not yet have the spirit of its old venue but Wright & Wright has created an architecturally assured building that should have the punters coming back for more

Words Eleanor Young | Photos Peter Cook

‘THE FIRST COUPLE of days in here I was shell-shocked,’ says creative director of Hull Truck theatre John Godber. ‘It was like a North Sea ferry. I thought how do we steer this?’

Godber addresses the opening press conference in his new auditorium with a little homily about what it brings over in shape and intimacy from the old Methodist church hall that was the Hull Truck venue at nearby Spring Street. But nostalgia for the old place can’t hide the fact that it was inadequate and dilapidated. Godber admits the team would ‘quite often’ have to fix the leaking roof with gaffer tape, and jokes about the number of seats on a dry night compared to when it rained. Everything refers back to the old theatre; perhaps unsurprising considering Godber has been with the company for 25 years.

Clearly the old venue was much loved, but to the uninitiated Godber can sound like he is imposing artificial constraints on a new building that has far more potential than the old one. And in any case Hull Truck owes its national reputation to its touring productions more than to its local base. In his new theatre Godber might sound architecturally overawed but he is used to playing theatres in London and any number of regional venues.

So architect Wright & Wright was charged with creating the intangible ‘magic’ of theatre, visiting theatres across the country to discuss what Godber liked and disliked and taking hundreds of measurements. The new main house holds a larger audience than the old one (290 seats increased to 440), has a deeper stage and allows the company to fly in props. The challenge was to make these changes while recreating the Spring Street sense of intimacy. It was partly achieved with the rake of the seats – keeping the audience close to the actors to ensure that everyone watching could laugh together at jokes on stage rather than having a Mexican wave of humour. Solid-floored gantries were used to bring down the height of the auditorium, with Anne Minors Performance Consultants taking a leading role in getting these details right (see box page 46).

And yet the transposition of the spirit of a place is practically impossible and in this instance it perhaps shows in the lack of joy in the auditorium as it awaits its first performance in late April. Sandy Wright of Wright & Wright admits that the auditorium design had its limits. ‘The auditorium was about engineering and crafting,’ he says. ‘There is more “architecture” in the foyer.’

Beyond the main auditorium there are two big concepts to the building. First, it is all a black box. The dark brick marks out the theatre against its neighbour, the white-panelled St Stephen’s shopping centre. The brick continues inside for the front of house walls and floor, but here areas of the bricks are glazed, giving them just a little more shine and making them something of a tactile highlight. If this black box is like a theatre, then those within it are all actors (the second big concept) so the glazing onto the street is conceived as the edge of a stage – the ‘audience’ being those outside - disappointingly mainly cars and buses along the main Hull drag of Ferensway. Spatially this idea works best at the entrance where a mini proscenium arch frames the activity beyond on the cut-away corner. As Shakespeare put it: ‘All the world’s a stage. And all the men and women merely players.’  They are nice ideas but don’t feel specially relevant to Hull Truck: they could apply to any theatre and most public buildings.

And then there’s Elvis. The architect says the main staircase encased in steel grid is a reference to Jailhouse Rock. And it’s true, you imagine it as a utilitarian staging with actors clambering over it singing Elvis-style. But at the same time it lacks the elegance of Wright & Wright’s staircase in its Women’s Library in Whitechapel, which uses some of the same devices. There it has a dark element of mystery as it rises inside a brick shaft. In Hull, set against glass, it has quite a different character. The steel grid gives the staircase a sense of enclosure and the reversed steel nosings proudly displaying the supplier’s details on the oak treads are a little industrial reference that makes you smile. The semi-obscured vision of the ascending audience will lend an abstracted animation to the foyer. 

It was the Women’s Library that won the project for theatre novice Wright & Wright. Godber’s previous conversations with architects around glass and steel hadn’t impressed him: ‘I wanted something that wouldn’t blow away.’ But a preference for solid, well-made buildings has its drawbacks: notably cost. Hull Truck was not on an Oxbridge college or British Library budget but built for just £2,590/m2. However, going for an architect that takes the ‘heavy’ approach has worked as an urban strategy. Wright (‘All our buildings are heavy’) sees the design as taking Hull’s civic and industrial materials into the building, with brick and visible steelwork. The theatre sits well on Ferensway, holding its own against the traffic, the dark box emboldened by its bright red theatre sign visible from routes to the centre.

The theatre is part of a retail-driven regeneration strategy and the material mix makes for a building that is significantly more architecturally assured and happy with its place in the city than those in the clutch of undistinguished buildings around it – not surprisingly, Wright doesn’t volunteer a mention of the immediate context. The red brick wall of the Albermarle Music Centre hugs the theatre like a blowsy aunt in a family photograph. Next to that is the uninviting bulk of St Stephen’s shopping centre and the Holiday Inn which determinedly turns its back on the theatrical newcomer. 

But it is perhaps the invisible elements that most qualify this building as a ‘good’ piece of architecture. The backstage area with its rooflights and terraces is far more humane and habitable than the breeze block warrens that constitute back of house in many theatres. The light and outdoor space of the rehearsal room transform it from a straightforward box. And interestingly the back of house elevation isn’t a monolithic slab but is broken down into smaller-scale elements, suggesting habitation even though all it does is overlook a goods yard and the car park ramp of St Stephen’s.

Wright & Wright were instrumental in bringing Max Fordham on board as environmental engineer, which has resulted in a subtle low energy strategy with natural ventilation throughout, even in the two auditoria. Air is piped down from behind the roof parapet (an attempt to get cleaner, quieter air than is available at lower levels nearer to Ferensway), fed into plenums under the seats in the auditoria and vented through the top. In the foyer, windows will be automatically opened as the temperature rises, and three-storey slots at the rear provide vents.

For those for whom these improvements only make them pine for the old space, the remnants of the former Spring Street theatre are likely to be up for auction soon. Will the new theatre build the same kind of loyalty? On my visit Hull Truck theatre appeared a calm and pleasant space but a little hard and clinical. It may just need an audience to bring it alive. Architecturally it is comparable with places like London’s Unicorn Theatre by Keith Williams (RIBA J March 2003) or Bennetts Associates’ Hampstead Theatre (RIBA J January 2006) both of which, when empty, feel they are missing a theatrical soul. Neither had a great architectural history and so perhaps it is unfair to compare them and Hull Truck’s new theatre to those with built heritage such as the Young Vic and the Royal Court; both designed by Haworth Tompkins and both with a spatial and material richness that sustains them even when empty. Time and people will be the test. The greatest transformation will be wrought on the opening night audience as the atmosphere starts to warm up and noise levels rise. That is when Godber can really judge if his new building has matched the dilapidated but magical Spring Street home as a place of similar artistic excitement.

DATABASE: HULL TRUCK THEATRE

HULL TRUCK’S ETHOS is words and actors, but the production team wanted flexibility – scenically and technically – which Anne Minors Production Consultants (AMPC) provided with a multi-configuration stage and understage, moats, rear stage suspensions and a complex of octagonal lighting gantries to give strong lighting angles and compress the apparent height of the space.

The echoes of the old space can be found in the balance of the front (85%) and side (15%) audiences in relation to the stage; the angle of view to the audience from the actors; and the limited number of side rows that create an audience united in mirth. The stage right vomitory remains with seats adjacent to help everyone get the joke at the same time.

AMPC created a parabolic rake by using one intermediate step height but varying the number of steps per row, so the stage can be cradled by the audience. Curved junctions in plan further accentuate the cradling form and long rows create more frontal seats and generous legroom. The theatre got its audience to try out many seats before deciding which were the most comfortable and attractive. Anne Minors

SPECIFICATIONS

Clay facing brick (Ibstock Atlas Smooth) Ibstock Brick Ltd
Glazed clay facing brick (Ibstock Pewter) Ibstock Brick Ltd
Fire retardant timber coating (Gamma Retroflame Plus) Gamma Resources
Galvanized mesh grillage (Orsogril Britosterope) Orsogril UK
Acoustic insulation system (H&H Rocksil Slab/Tissue) Hodgson & Hodgson Group
Coping (Plean Precast concrete coping) Plean Precast
Dressing room mirror lights (Erco Mirror Luminaires) Erco Lighting
Clay pavers (Baggeridge S162 Blue Dragfaced) Baggeridge Brick

CREDITS

Client Hull Truck Theatre Company
Architect Wright & Wright Architects
Structural engineer Alan Baxter & Associates
Environmental engineer Max Fordham
Theatre consultant Anne Minors Performance Consultants
Project manager Davis Langdon
Quantity surveyor Davis Langdon
Acoustic engineer Arup
CDM co-ordinator Buro Happold
Access consultant David Bonnett Associates

IN NUMBERS
440-seat auditorium; 134-seat studio theatre; Gross internal area 4,050m2;
Construction cost £10.5million; Cost per metre square £2,590