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…everything e8

Hackney Empire – what next?

Posted by Andrew Boff on 9/24/09 • Categorized as Lead Story, News

Empire to Close?

The Hackney Empire is to close in January for nine months for “a period of reflection” according to The Stage

3 Comments

  1. valerie hawkins
    October 17, 2009 • 3:27 pm

    A “period of reflection” sounds somewhat like “Don’t worry, it won’t hurt.” While pausing for reflection, let’s not
    forget during WWII, Hitler planned to destroy historical buildings to demoralize the people. If the Empire goes, and with the Olympics approaching it may well happen, it will have the same effect. There are ways to keep the Empire going, if only to memorialize the birthplace of Harold Pinter! The Empire ranks along with any other historical building in London and should be handled accordingly…From a Hackneyite “across the pond.”

  2. marc
    January 19, 2010 • 10:44 am

    As usual nobody in Hackney (particularly the joke newspaper Hackney Gazette) has any intelligent analysis of this.

    Anybody who understand theatre will tell you that a 1200 seater-theatre couldn’t break even in the West End with a run of small-scale play. There is no way it was ever going to work work in Hackney where transport is difficult. Audiences of a few hundred are lost in this space. And so is money.

    The Muldoon period got it right, with a mix of big name stand up, short runs of Musicals plays with name actors in it. It brought people in to the theatre.

    The Empire can’t be a producing house and it should never have tried to be – apart from the Panto.

    There is some hope that once the upgrade to the Overground is complete and there are 6 trains an hour coming into Hackney Central, the theatre can start to attract enough people to fill the seats.

  3. John
    January 19, 2010 • 10:53 pm

    I’m a local ordinary guy & used to love going to the Empire. However, apart from the panto, I’ve not been in the last twelve months. Why?, simple – nothing worth walking along the road for! Too much alterrnative ‘comedy’, too many rap ’shows’ etc. – the Empire’s too big a venue to sustain this. More middle of the road entertainment really is needed to draw a paying audience in – plays, muscials, opera, dance etc. & for goodness don’t let the council get involved, that really would be a recipe for disaster!

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