Group Theatre

Group Theatre, Belfast, intimate theatre sited in the Minor Hall of the Ulster Hall, Bedford Street. It was opened in 1932 as the Little Theatre and offered weekly repertory for five years; as the Playhouse it continued until 1939. A year later the hall was leased as the Group Theatre by three amateur groups, the Carrickfergus Players, the Northern Ireland Irish Players, and the Ulster Literary Theatre, initially to share theatre facilities while presenting independent production programmes. The last group, founded in 1904 in emulation of the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, had achieved a considerable reputation internationally and had mounted first productions of nearly 100 plays. Eventually the three became fully amalgamated and by 1950 the company was a professional one, though working on a minimal budget. James Bridie, stationed in Ulster during the Second World War, was closely associated with the Group Theatre, other playwrights whose work was successful there including St John Ervine, George Shiels, and Joseph Tomelty. Important plays from England and America were also produced by a company that included at various times Tomelty, Colin Blakely, and J. G. Devlin. The Group Theatre was seen in London in 1953, and at the Edinburgh Festival in 1958 with a bitterly sectarian play The Bonefire by Gerald McLernon. The production of another contentious play about the ‘troubles’, Sam Thompson's Over the Bridge (also 1958), was hastily withdrawn amid controversy. The arrival of television in Northern Ireland affected box-office takings, and the company came near to collapse. It was rescued by two popular local comedians, James Young and Jack Hudson, who as joint managing directors from 1960 to 1972 staged productions of enormously successful local comedies, many specially commissioned from Sam Cree. Audiences then dwindled again owing to civil disturbances, and the theatre closed, but the Belfast City Council carried out refurbishment and in 1978 reopened it as a venue mainly for amateur companies. The theatre hosts over 30 productions annually, encouraging new Ulster writers as well as staging old favourites. (See also BELFAST CIVIC ARTS THEATRE and LYRIC PLAYERS, Belfast.)