The Baker Mamonova Gallery and Kino-Teatr building
At last, I thought: some decent theatre comes to Hastings/St. Leonard's. Theatrical offerings in the town have hitherto been restricted to a thriving am-dram scene at The Stables in the Old Town and B-cast musical revivals at The White Rock. So when the enterprising duo of art dealer Russell Baker and his wife Olga Mamonova announced the conversion of the old Kinema building behind their spacious gallery in Norman Road you could have heard a small cheer at the opposite end of the town.
The space is fabulous, and beautifully fitted out for film and theatre. Its prime feature is a stunning shallow-domed ceiling. Surprisingly wide, the auditorium looks as if it can accommodate a couple of hundred people, with tiered seating so everyone can see. Large armchairs are for loungers in a row at the front and another at the back, but the ordinary theatre/cinema seats in between, if less spacious, are totally comfortable for an evening's performance.
The theatre opened with a play imported from New York - the McGowan Trilogy, by Seamus Scanlon. A set of three linked one-acters, it is set in Northern Ireland in 1984, and shows the apparent decline of central character Victor McGowan from reluctant IRA executioner to apparent psychopath.
We didn't really find the play worked. It's a challenge to take on Irish accents, which vary remarkably from region to region, even in the North. There seemed to be a variety of attempts on the part of the actors, but none of them was particularly convincing, and at times conflicted with the character's origin in the script. Paul Nugent, playing Victor McGowan, was doing his best, but I didn't find his interpretation consistent. The play itself has a touch too much "Bang bang you're dead" for my taste, and I could have done with a bit more subtlety. There's certainly scope for it in the material.
We left in the interval. But that's no reflection on the Herculean efforts put in by Olga Mamonova in particular in producing the play and on the whole team responsible for this great new addition to Hastings' cultural life. We'll be back!
Antony Mair
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