Half Moon Theatre: 27 Alie Street
Half Moon Theatre was formed in 1972 in a disused synagogue in Alie Street, Aldgate. It took its name from Half Moon Passage at the side of the building, an alleyway which is still there today, though the original building has been demolished. Two of the founders, Michael Irving and Maurice Colbourne, already lived in the synagogue and decided to convert the space into a fringe theatre when joined by Artistic Director, Guy Sprung. They were soon joined by many other theatre people and artists, including Jeff Hooper, Steve Gooch and Mary Sheen, and were offered help from members of the local community.
The company’s opening production in January 1972 was Bertolt Brecht’s In the Jungle of the Cities. In May 1972 the company had a major artistic success with Will Wat, If Not, What Will? by Steve Gooch, which received many positive reviews in the national press. Half Moon also actively sought to highlight opportunities for local actors and writers, including Billy Colvill and Johnnie Quarrell, to explore important topical issues and supported groups such as the Basement Writers. Other notable productions included Fall In and Follow Me by Dave Marson and Billy Colvill, a play about the children’s strike of 1911, and Female Transport by Steve Gooch.
Guy Sprung, co-founder and first Artistic Director of Half Moon Theatre, talks about the company’s first home in Alie Street, Aldgate. Interviewed by Ollie Nesbitt.
Co-founder of Half Moon Theatre, Michael Irving talks about the very early days of Half Moon Theatre on Alie Street and reflects upon the local environment. Interviewed by Beccy Allen.
Rob Walker was Artistic Director of Half Moon Theatre in the later 1970s and early 1980s in Alie Street and on the Mile End Road. He talks about visiting the old synagogue on Alie Street in 1972 when his friend Maurice Colbourne tells him they are going to turn it into a theatre.
Jeffrey Hooper was instrumental in the beginnings of Half Moon Theatre in Alie Street. He talks about how an old synagogue was converted into a theatre, with a slightly unconventional approach to building work. He reminisces about the special atmosphere of the theatre space. Interviewed by Rosie Vincent.
Caroline Irving was a graphic designer who became part of the creative team at Half Moon Theatre on Alie Street in the early 1970s. She talks about meeting her husband, Michael Irving when she went to the see the first production, In The Jungle Of The Cities. Interviewed by Lasairiona O’Baroid.
Writer, Shane Connaughton talks about his memories of Half Moon Theatre on Alie Street. Interviewed by Kavana Joyett.
Mary Sheen was a key member of the artistic team at the newly established Half Moon Theatre on Alie Street in the 1970s, performing in many plays. She talks about the local children who hung out at the theatre. Interviewed by Toni Tsaera.
Johnnie Quarrell was a former docker and bank messenger who wrote several plays for Half Moon Theatre. He talks about why Half Moon Theatre on Alie Street was a very special and creative place. Interviewed by Rosie Vincent.
Yvonne Gilan was an actor and founder member of Half Moon Theatre in Alie Street who appeared in eight productions with us in the early-seventies.
Caroline Irving was a graphic designer who became part of the creative team at Half Moon Theatre on Alie Street in the early 1970s. She lived in the theatre with her partner, Michael Irving and here describes the practicalities of living there when she had a baby. Interviewed by Lasairiona O’Baroid.
Ché Walker is the son of Rob Walker, Artistic Director of Half Moon Theatre in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He recalls the area around the first Half Moon Theatre from a child’s perspective. Interviewed by Georgina Da Silva.
Simon Callow talks about Half Moon Theatre on Alie Street and the rapidly changing nature of the East End communities at the time. Interviewed by Toni Tsaera.
Actor, Maggie Steed talks about Half Moon Theatre on Alie Street and how, out of all the theatres she has worked in, it is her favourite. She recalls using bits of the building to have a fire in the fireplace, so they could keep warm. Interviewed by Kavana Joyett.
Journalist and local activist, Mike Jempson, talks about the historical context of the late 1970s. He reflects on the changing demographic of the communities who lived in the area and the impact of the commercial development of Tower Hamlets, especially the establishment of the London Docklands Development Corporation. Interviewed by Chris Elwell.
Nora Connolly is an actor who performed at the original Half Moon Theatre, a disused synagogue in Alie Street. She remembers it well – not least for its unconventional arrangement for going on stage. Interviewed by Isabel R.
Rachel Harper worked in the pub next door to the Half Moon Theatre in Alie Street, which had no bar of its own. Despite the extra custom the theatre provided for the pub, she recalls it was not an easy relationship. Interviewed by Isabel R.
Andy Smith talks about writing Grand Larceny, which was a metaphor reflecting on the development of the area around Half Moon Theatre on Alie Street and the plans to demolish Wilton’s Music Hall and the arson attacks in St Katharine’s Dock. Interviewed by Rosie Vincent.
I am that forgotten one who christened ‘Half Moon’. To explain… I was a reporter on the East London Express (long since closed) in 1971-72 when I heard about plans to convert Whitechapel’s disused Alie Street Synagogue into a studio theatre. I knew this building well, having grown up in the Jewish neighbourhood. I think someone from the theatre group involved phoned the newspaper to promote the project.
It would make an interesting news feature, I thought, and went down to meet the group cleaning up the gallery and fitting out the stage. The inscriptions from the former congregation embers I can still recall were visible along the gallery sides, which were being lovingly preserved. This was now becoming one of the first little theatres where the performers involved the audience—revolutionary for the time, I had thought. They explained in the interview that the group selected the title ‘Alie Street Theatre’ as their working title before their first production opened, which didn’t really impress me. I thought it was lacklustre and would not have wide enough appeal.
It suddenly dawned on me that the building was next to a long, narrow alley connecting Alie Street and Camperdown Street to Whitechapel to the north (today’s Braham Street) —my school friends and I had often used it as a short cut heading to the Tower of London years before when we were kids and knew it well. This was Half Moon Passage which everyone around Whitechapel and Aldgate was familiar with (like Frying Pan Alley, off Petticoat Lane).
I pointed this out to the people I was interviewing and politely suggested it might make a better name for a small theatre company anyway. I remember saying, “Why don’t you call the theatre Half Moon instead, then everyone will remember it?” This was just a chance remark between more important questions about what they were trying to achieve with theatre art in the East End — but they looked at each other, mulled it over and came to a sort-of ad hoc agreement. They probably thought I would write up a more favourable preview. I felt like the registrar at a christening!
The name came to me, I suppose, because I was always coming up with snappy headlines years previously when I started up a weekly Shoreditch School newspaper as a 15-year-old!
I wrote up that preview for the following Friday’s East London Express, with the agreed new ‘Half Moon’ title in the headline across the back page. It proved a bit of a sensation in the community and I recall that day lunching at Bloom’s restaurant in Whitechapel High Street and seeing people in the street stopping and reading the paper, talking about what was happening to the old synagogue that had been a community landmark. It was a bit of an ‘exclusive’ for a young reporter like me, coming across the story by chance.
The story doesn’t quite end there…
I went on to work at the BBC for many years and the small theatre company went on to new premises at the old Mile End Baths, taking the ‘Half Moon’ name with them, I am proud to say. We were invited to broadcast a live themed breakfast Rush Hour programme on Radio London from the new location as a tribute soon after it opened. I was producing the programme, presented by my colleague John Waite (who later presented Radio 4’s You and Yours) and felt ‘at home’ back in the East End at the very theatre I had named. John Waite even interviewed “our producer” ‘on air’ during the programme about how I came to name the theatre. Sorry, I can’t remember exactly when that was broadcast, but likely to be late 70s or early 80s, definitely soon after the Half Moon moved there and of course well before its subsequent move to Limehouse.
I left the BBC in 1996 and returned to print journalism, then came back to the East End in 2003 as News Editor of the East London Advertiser—the local newspaper that was our ‘bible’ every Friday morning in our Whitechapel neighbourhood when I was growing up—sort of doing a full circle, or maybe half circle like the Half Moon.
Frances de la Tour performed at Half Moon Theatre on Alie Street and then played Hamlet when it moved to the Mile End Road. She talks about the innovation of the fringe company which she believes influenced other venues, such as the Donmar Warehouse and Kings Head Theatre. Interviewed by Khalilah Lubega.
Denis Lawson talks about Half Moon Theatre on Alie Street and the audiences. Interviewed by Kavana Joyett.
Local boy Dave Hill first encountered Half Moon Theatre in the 1970s, when he got involved backstage at age ten, progressing to become part of the stage management team. Here he remembers how these experiences have had a lasting impact on him. Interviewed by Alexia-Pyrrha Ashford.
Loesje Sanders the Administrator with Half Moon Theatre, remembers how the youth theatres were first established in Berner Street. Interviewed by Rosie Vincent
Caroline Irving was a graphic designer who became part of the creative team at Half Moon Theatre on Alie Street in the early 1970s. She talks about designing posters for the theatre. Interviewed by Lasairiona O’Baroid.
Peter Conway talks about the origins of the young people’s company at Half Moon Theatre in 1974, when he and Murray Edmond were taken on to do drama work in youth clubs in Tower Hamlets. He talks about the youth production, Driving Us Up The Wall. Interviewed by Toni Tsaera.
Local teacher and writer, Chris Searle became a member of the management committee of Half Moon Theatre in Alie Street and ran the Basement Writers group. He talks about Half Moon Theatre on Alie Street being a hub for community engagement. Interviewed by Toni Tsaera.
Billy Colvill talks about how the Half Moon Theatre resonated with him because it championed local issues and the East End. One of the plays he wrote was Fall In And Follow Me, a play about the children’s strike of 1911. Interviewed by Toni Tsaera.
The foundations of Half Moon Young People’s Theatre were laid in 1974 when Peter Conway and Murray Edmond answered an advert in Time Out and were taken on to run the Youth Project: drama workshops in youth clubs across Tower Hamlets. It was first based in Alie Street, then at the Berner Club, and finally at Oxford House. In 1977, the youth programme was expanded to include professional productions for young audiences. Funding from Tower Hamlets and the Inner London Education Authority led to expansion and the company moved towards a stronger educational emphasis and a comprehensive young people’s theatre programme.
Read Mike Jempson’s in-depth article on Wilton’s Music Hall becoming a possible venue for Half Moon Theatre
WILTON’S FOR THE EAST END: The untold story
I was the lay chair of the Half Moon Theatre Company in Stepney in the mid-1970s when its growing popularity meant larger premises were needed….
Steve Murray, Head of Arts, Parks and Events (London Borough of Tower Hamlets)
My memory of the Half Moon in Alie Street, I think around 1975/76. I was in a group called Soapbox Theatre based in Newham. Can’t actually recall the name of the play but it was about homelessness, written by Ian McPhereson who lived rough around Whitechapel for a few weeks to research it. Some staff from nearby Salvation Army Hostel brought along some residents to the play. During a scene where actors dressed as Sally Army staff asked their residents to pray before they received their food the real residents from the local hostel came onto stage and joined in, going on their knees to pray, ironically asking for forgiveness of their sins etc. It was hilarious and very moving at the same time and still one of my favourite memories of theatre. The Actors accommodated the intervention brilliantly but lighting guy was so stunned he forgot all his cues.
Brenda Rudd (née Riding), former actor
My memory is of the Poplar Theatre Workshop. We performed an old time music hall show at the Half Moon Theatre in Alie Street in the last 1970s. I was about 13, possibly 14. I remember we all turned up at the theatre; we had to bring all our own props and costumes. I remember thinking how tiny the space was for changing with all of us crammed in at the back and the side of the stage. I was supposed to be Eliza Doolittle and sang ‘Wouldn’t it be Lovely’. There were company numbers and a magician, plus a tapdancing routine. Because it was so dark you couldn’t see very well and there was no real back to the stage so one wrong move and you would have fallen about two metres and there was a paraffin heater right near. When my mum came back stage she was horrified. It wouldn’t possibly happen now, not with health and safety! But as a child with a love for performing I thought the Half Moon was a magical place and it had a very theatrical smell which I can still remember.
Half Moon Theatre was formed in 1972 in a disused synagogue in Alie Street, Aldgate.It took its name from Half Moon Passage at the side of the building, an alleyway which is still there today, though the original building has been demolished. Two of the founders, Michael Irving and Maurice Colbourne, already lived in the synagogue and decided to convert the space into a fringe theatre when joined by Artistic Director, Guy Sprung. They were soon joined by many other theatre people and artists, including Jeff Hooper, Steve Gooch and Mary Sheen, and were offered help from members of the local community.
The company’s opening production in January 1972 was Bertolt Brecht’s In the Jungle of the Cities. In May 1972 the company had a major artistic success with Will Wat, If Not, What Will? by Steve Gooch, which received many positive reviews in the national press. Half Moon also actively sought to highlight opportunities for local actors and writers, including Billy Colvill and Johnnie Quarrell, to explore important topical issues and supported groups such as the Basement Writers. Other notable productions included Fall In and Follow Me by Dave Marson and Billy Colvill, a play about the children’s strike of 1911, and Female Transport by Steve Gooch.
In 1974, the company set up a Management Council and began receiving funding from the Arts Council of Great Britain. US photographer Wendy Ewald also formed a photography collective, Half Moon Photography Workshop, which exhibited in the theatre foyer. There was a concerted policy of community involvement. An advert was placed in Time Out and Peter Conway and Murray Edmonds were taken on to run the Youth Project: drama workshops in youth clubs across Tower Hamlets. They were first based in Alie Street, then at the Berner Club, and finally at Oxford House. Soon plays were being presented on tour to community spaces, such as Spare Us A Copper, which explored the legal rights of someone being taken into custody. The seeds of what was to become the Half Moon Young People’s Theatre were sewn.
When Guy Sprung returned to his native Canada in 1975, Pam Brighton took over as Artistic Director and continued to place the community at the heart of the company. Her plays included the very politically influential George Davis Is Innocent, OK by Shane Connaughton. The company began a long campaign to acquire Wilton’s Music Hall, as success had led to the need for a bigger venue and members of the wider East End community were keen to keep it as a local resource.
Rob Walker succeeded Pam Brighton in 1977 and offered a season of popular, music-hall inspired theatre. Mozzle with Anthony Sher was in 1978, followed by the UK’s first ever production of a Dario Fo play, We Can’t Pay? We Won’t Pay!, and, later that year, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui with Simon Callow. 1979 began with a production of Guys and Dolls with only seven performers. By this stage the Young People’s Theatre was producing several shows a year to tour into schools and youth centres. Following the collapse of the campaign for Wilton’s, the company identified potential new premises in 1979 on the Mile End Road, next to Stepney Green tube. Steven Berkoff’s Greek, with Linda Marlowe, was one of the last productions in Alie Street in 1980.
Information taken from Survey of London, Central House (23-37 Alie Street):
“Until the early 1980s, when they were cleared for the site’s present building, 23–29 Alie Street were shophouses, workshops and a former synagogue of various scales and dates. No. 23 was a tall four-storey building that, though it looked earlier with its first-floor relieving arches, was built in 1874–7 by and for Thomas Peters, a carpenter–builder who had moved from No. 33, giving himself a yard and workshops to the rear. The ground floor was opened up for carriage access to the yard in 1907–8. No. 25 was a comparatively diminutive early nineteenth-century two-storey and garret survivor of a pair with No. 27, and No. 29 was another small shophouse that had been rebuilt after the Second World War.
No. 27…was built and consecrated in 1895 as the Great Alie Street Synagogue replacing the shophouse pair to No. 25. Dr Hermann Adler, Chief Rabbi, prayed at the laying of the foundation stone that the building would ‘stand forth … in the strength and beauty of usefulness’…[the synagogue] built under the supervision of the Federation of Synagogues, was designed by Lewis Solomon, the Federation’s architect, to accommodate over 250 people… The ground floor provided separate male and female entrances. To the rear the premises broadened on a site that had been occupied by a rag warehouse. A ladies’ gallery spanned three sides of the hall. In 1903 repairs and alterations forced a brief closure and re- consecration. What was later known as the Alie Street Synagogue failed to stabilize after a number of mergers and the declining congregation amalgamated with the Fieldgate Street Great Synagogue. It vacated the Alie Street building in 1969.
The former synagogue was converted to become the Half Moon Theatre… The theatre opened in January 1972 … and succeeded as an independent left- wing theatre outside the mainstream. The Half Moon attracted something akin to the excitement engendered by the Goodman’s Fields Theatre in 1741. It has been retrospectively described as having been ‘the most enterprising and consistently challenging and exciting theatre in London’. Stained-glass windows, Hebrew scripts and other synagogue fittings were preserved, as were the entrances and pilasters to Alie Street. The Half Moon colonised other buildings to the rear and 25 Alie Street became the booking office in 1980…
From 1883 the Jewish Working Men’s Club and Lads’ Institute was at 31–37 Alie Street… The club was primarily social in intent and aimed to appeal to young men, through educational lectures, as a forum for liberal ideas, and with space for leisure activities…At the time of opening, the club claimed 1,300 adult members and 330 boys. The three-storey brick building was mostly set back from Alie Street, and accessed centrally via portico arches below a protruding staircase tower. The ground floor housed a library, reading room, conversation room and committee room; billiard and bagatelle rooms were in the basement. A large music hall with seating capacity of 640 occupied the whole first floor. Though the building was squeezed between densely packed workshops and houses, open space to the rear allowed the rooms to be lit from both north and south elevations…Membership began to shrink after 1900. Tenancy of the building was transferred in 1913 to Monnickendam Rooms Ltd, an established East End catering and confectionery business that ran private banqueting rooms. The entrance was embellished with representations of flowers, fruit and urns and the interiors were adapted. In 1931, the basement and ground floor were converted to use as tailoring workshops, while the Royalty Ballrooms operated above. In 1936 the building was given over entirely to commercial use. That continued until around 1980 when it was demolished.
The large eight-storey office building that [now] stands on the site of 23–37 Alie Street and extends back to Camperdown Street was built in the early 1980s, to designs by C. A. Cornish Associates, architects, for the Western Heritable Land Company Limited. The flat brick-faced Alie Street elevation incorporates brick-arch flourishes in a vaguely neo-Georgian form that seems to be an attempt to respond to the eighteenth-century houses it faces. Initially, insurance and financial service companies were the principal occupants, in particular the US-based St Paul International Insurance Company, which led to the block becoming known as St Paul House. The building underwent full refurbishment after 2010, with an enlarged entrance at 25 Camperdown Street. This gives access to the head office of Centrepoint, a charity supporting homeless young people, from which the name Central House perhaps arises. This north-facing elevation is blankly commercial, glass vertical planes framed by dark brick.”