Amateur theatre’s Tip Top season

May 20 2008 by Philip Key, Liverpool Daily Post

Rehearsing 'Art', l - r, Simon Phillips, Steve Davies and Andy Jordan _320

CHESTER’S Gateway Theatre may have closed a year ago, but the building is not quite dead as a theatre.

It is now being run by the amateur theatre group, Tip Top Productions, and still pulling in the audiences.

The group’s latest production, Art, opens for a nine-night run from June 5, just one of six productions it is staging this year.

It also looks like they will be operating from the theatre for at least another 12 months, thanks to delays in the redevelopment of the area.

“Chester Council has allowed us to rent it for another 12 months,” explains Tip Top’s publicity officer Lee Hassett.

“We will be staging more productions and renting it out ourselves to other organisations as we have been doing in the past.”

It is not quite the same theatre as it once was, with the old auditorium gutted and seating removed. But the Gateway’s downstairs studio remains, complete with coffee bar and bar on the ground floor.

It is this space Tip Top has been using, a 120-seat performing space now retitled The Forum Studio Theatre. “The old auditorium could not be used for safety reasons,” says Hassett.

Ironically, it was Tip Top – a group created in 1989 to use the cream of amateur societies from Merseyside and Cheshire – which was the last company to play the old Gateway stage with a production of Hello Dolly! The theatre officially closed in April, 2007.

The latest production, Art, is the hit comedy by French writer Yasmina Reza, which enjoyed a long West End run in the 1990s.

It involves a completely white painting bought by Serge (played by Steve Davies).

Two old friends take different attitudes, Marc (Simon Phillips) thinks the painting is rubbish while Yvan (Andy Jordan) tries to see both sides.

As a result, their friendship is put under strain.

It is directed by Tip Top regular and professional actress Ruth Evans.

Tip Top Productions is going from strength to strength. Mold’s Clwyd Theatr Cymru has asked it to stage its production of Bouncers at its theatre in June and its regular pantomime – this year Cinderella – will go on stage at the Stiwt Theatre, in Wrexham, at Christmas.

Meanwhile, it will continue to host a number of events at the Forum Studio Theatre.

* ART is at The Forum Studio Theatre, Chester, June 5-14, tickets £10 (student tickets available at £4 on June 9, 10 and 11) 01244 341296.

philkey@dailypost.co.uk