Scarborough’s Open Air Theatre was opened in 1932. It had 7,000 seats, a stage 52m (170 ft) long and cost £11,000 to build. The theatre was part of Borough Engineer Harry Smith’s project, costing over £50,000, to create Northstead Manor Gardens. The stage was on an island in a lake, between two slopes, on which the seats were constructed. The landscape had natural acoustic properties, and audiences had no trouble hearing and seeing the action.
The theatre was leased by the council to the Scarborough Operatic and Dramatic Society, who selected and produced each year’s show. They specialised in light and comic opera in these early years. The Operatic Society would put on around 50 shows of each production, twice weekly over the summer season. These took on a grand scale, 1934’s Hiawatha employing 430 people in its chorus, ballet and orchestra. The theatre was known for its elaborate staging. Its production of Carmen involved ballet dancing ‘on a lighted, glass raft which swims on the dark waters’.
Being in the open air had some downsides, however. Shows were performed on Mondays and Thursdays, with the possibility of being performed the next day in case of rain, and refunds were issued from the Town Hall if they were cancelled on both days. This happened surprisingly few times in the theatre’s history. One storm during a production of Hiawatha in 1934 broke four lamps, tore down the scenery, turned over the wigwams and, according to the record, ‘shattered the mechanical contrivance by which Hiawatha disappears into the sun’. When Carmen was rained off in 1935, nearly 4,000 ticket holders gathered outside the Town Hall. Police were used to control the crowds, who got back nearly £600.
By the 1960s, shows were struggling to turn a profit, given the large costs of staging productions at the venue. The 1968 production of West Side Story only made £5,900, against its projected £24,550, which severely damaged the organisers financially. The council leased the site out to local businessman Don Robinson, who put on ‘It’s a Knock-out’ there for twelve seasons.
On 20th May 2010, the Open Air Theatre was reopened as a music venue by Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh.
