Barn Theatre

It’s am-​dram that you pay to go and see which has always struck me as frustrating but I know where the money goes.
It has a full bar and a couple of rooms which I’m not sure if they use for more than one production per night but there seemed to be more than the 50 – 100 people in the foyer than fit into the back-​room-​style ‘auditorium’ we sat in.
The play was good enough but slightly offensively amateur towards the end with bright lights and Rufus Wainright’s ‘Hallelujah’ playing over the tanoy but while that wasn’t the actor’s fault it’s such a small theatre community that the same repeat offenders are brought in consistently for production and direction jobs.
All in all, it was fine but smacked of the kind of pseudo-​professionalism that school plays throw an envious side-​eye towards, while it’s larger theatre cousins mop their brows and wince at whenever their drunken uncle sits at the keyboard and rouses the room into a rendition of ‘Knees Up Mother Brown’ with actions.
Oh… and unless you know exactly where you’re going, the entrance is a bugger to find.

As amateur dramatics go the barn theatre does turn out some pretty ok productions. Of all of the local theatre companies this is the best of the bunch, they do seem to have more local talent and invest more time and money into putting on a show. I have over the years seen some above average productions, mostly the usual musical type things but they also do some drama too which is nice to see.