Thousands turned out for the Everyman Theatre’s grand finale this weekend. Arts editor Laura Davis captures some of the atmosphere

“BE BACK soon” announces the graffiti scrawled across the front of the Liverpool Everyman, now an empty building awaiting demolition.

It is all that physically remains of Saturday’s grand finale – an event that started gently, with people sharing their memories of this adored theatre, and ended with a replica Everyman sign bursting into flames on its roof in front of a cheering crowd of thousands.

There was already a queue snaking along Hope Street by 2pm, when the doors opened for the final time – four figures dressed like ghoulish undertakers inviting visitors inside.

“It started off quite tentatively,” said Liverpool actor Stephen Fletcher, towering above the wellwishers in platform boots and a 3ft-tall top hat, his black cloak garnished with a pair of wings.

“No-one knew quite what to expect, but that’s part of the mystery of the day. One woman came up to me and said she’d met her husband here, and another used to come here to see shows when she was involved in building the cathedral.”

Fletcher, who remembers visiting the Everyman as a boy and wishing he could one day become an actor, starred in the theatre’s last newly- written production, Robert Farquhar’s Dead Heavy Fantastic, in March.

“Some people have been saying they’re sorry the building is being knocked down, but when they’ve been backstage and seen what it’s like there they’ve understood it’s got to happen,” he added.

There were gasps of surprise at the cramped conditions behind the scenes. The narrow dressing room where Pete Postlethwaite prepared to play King Lear in 2008 had been built from a section of the electricians’ storage room. Another is crowded by a staircase leading back up to the stage added for the recent production of Macbeth.

A recorded soundtrack of people’s recollections added a touching dimension to the experience, brought together by Leeds-based theatre company Slung Low. Some voices were recognisable – poet Brian Patten remembering Julie Walters wearing an elephant suit in his 1974 play, The Pig and The Junkie – but they were not named.

Ordinary audience members and stage stars’ memories were given equal importance in the democratic Everyman way. “My one complaint is that they’ve cleaned up the dressing rooms – they don’t even smell as bad,” joked BBC Radio Merseyside presenter Roger Philips, who was among the Everyman company under Jonathan Pryce in the early-1970s.