SWANSEA: Wider seats and a new cooling system for the Grand this summer

Theatregoers at Swansea Grand Theatre will find wider seats with more legroom when the autumn season opens, the council has announced.

A new cooling system is also being installed, which the council says will make the Victorian auditorium more comfortable for audiences and performers in warm weather — the sort of weather Swansea is having right now.

New handrails are going into the Upper Circle, the council said, making the climb to the cheaper seats easier.

Further improvements to the Grand Circle will take place in 2028, the council have said.

It lands on a venue that is filling up. The council says more than 84,000 people have been through the doors since January.

There is plenty booked to sit in those seats for: Al Murray and Leo Sayer both play the Grand this autumn, and West End hit Operation Mincemeat arrives before Christmas.

Then comes Snow White, with Owain Wyn Evans, Rebecca Keatley and Suzanne Shaw — and Kev Johns returning as the Dame in the Mirror, a specially created role after the stroke that kept him off the stage this year.

The year’s biggest booking so far was Welsh National Theatre’s Our Town, the company’s first production, starring Michael Sheen.

The theatre’s resident company delivered the other landmark. Grand Ambition’s Physical Education, set in a sixth-form boys’ changing room and drawing on life for young men in the city, took five-star reviews from The Guardian and The Stage.

Our own reviewer called the cast “quite simply phenomenal”, in a play studded with Wind Street and Langland references that could only have come from Swansea.

Written by Gorseinon writer Jonathan Houlston and directed by Richard Mylan, it ran in the theatre’s Arts Wing this month.

Last winter’s pantomime, Aladdin, has since been named Event of the Year at the Swansea Life Awards.

Councillor Elliott King, cabinet member for culture, human rights and equalities, said: “It’s been a fantastic year for Swansea Grand Theatre.”

He said there was “so much to celebrate”, pointing to “the critical acclaim surrounding Our Town”, the Swansea Life Award for Aladdin, and “investing in improvements for our audiences”.

“We are incredibly grateful to our loyal patrons, partners and staff who continue to support the theatre,” he said.

Cllr King added that the theatre “plays such an important role in delivering the council’s priorities, making Swansea a destination of choice for arts, culture and entertainment”.

The council has timed the announcement to the Grand’s 129th birthday. The theatre opened in 1897 and is one of the few Victorian theatres in Wales still in full-time use.

The Grand is not the only theatre in the region getting attention. Along the coast, Port Talbot’s Princess Royal Theatre is being rebuilt in an £18m project and will reopen this autumn under a new name — Yr Aelwyd, the Welsh for The Hearth.

Author

Kit Peters

Kit Peters is a journalist and the editor of Swansea Bay News, covering Swansea, Neath Port Talbot and Carmarthenshire since 2020.