A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
THE CHISWICK AND BRENTFORD borough council has set up a sub-committee to go into the proposal that a penny should be put on the rates in order to guarantee the local theatre, the 0, against loss. The theatre generally owes a great deal to Mr. Jack de Leon, who, until eight years ago, ran the theatre in the ordinary commercial way and introduced to the wider stage a great many plays which might not otherwise have achieved production. Rising costs forced him to make it over to a council of management, and since then the theatre has been exempt from entertainments tax. This for a time held back the tide, but for the past three years the theatre has been running at a serious loss. If the ordinary law of supply and demand is to operate, then the 0 may as well go out of business—and many more little theatres throughout the country. The only answer is a subsidy; and the most fitting kind of subsidy in the case of theatres like the 0 is support from the local community. The objection that there are more people in Chiswick and Brentford interested in dog-racing than in the theatre may, or may not, be true; but! hope that the councillors are enlightened enough to take that modest step which will ensure the theatre's survival and cost each inhabitant of the borough less than the price of an evening newspaper a week.
Previous page
