A dramatic history

The Pig – presumably a reference to the pig iron used in the city's steel industry – was one of the names suggested for the Crucible before it opened in 1971. Other suggestions, as the theatre's first artistic director Colin George told a Sheffield audience a couple of weeks ago, included the Ace of Arts, the Dramarama, the Assemblage, the Bath and Ladle, the Hopper and – tragic that this one never got through – the Bogie. Snooker at the Bogie. Not to be sniffed at.

Colin George, an old trouper with a whiff of Richard Briers about him, was back in the city – at the Lyceum Theatre – to take part in a lunchtime event organised by the Theatre Archive Project. Run jointly by the London-based British Library and the University of Sheffield, this seven-year-old project is researching the British theatre from 1945 (formation of the Arts Council) to 1968 (abolition of theatre censorship).

It has the personal archives of two of the 20th century's theatrical greats – Sir John Gielgud and Sir Ralph Richardson – several hundred scripts and an oral history of 250 interviews (1.5m words!) with both theatre folk and theatre-goers. Click on the website and read the memories of such leading writers as Michael Frayn, Arnold Wesker, Trevor Griffiths and Peter Nichols and an impressive cast of actors including Timothy West and Brian Rix.

Glenda Jackson recalls working at Boots the Chemist before launching her acting career and appearing as a granny in "a cotton wool wig" at the age of 22. And Cannon and Ball remember their first experience of panto – in Bradford with Charlie Drake – after their earlier career in working men's clubs. "No-one was talking! There were no glasses clinking," says Bobby Ball. "It was just a... quietness; it was a wall. It frightened us to death." This was some years after their earlier incarnation as Bobby and Stevie Rhythm, wearing black blazers.

And there's the Age Concern Drama Appreciation Group, reminiscing about the old days at the now-demolished Sheffield Playhouse, a cosy little repertory theatre up a steep alley in the city centre. It staged Greek tragedies in authentically Athenian style (masks, buskins) and premiered The Stirrings in Sheffield on Saturday Night, a piece of local folk culture to which we'll return. It made a change from the legendary Harry Hanson's Court Players, whose productions, as Jacci Hamilton recalls, were "very much French windows and a chintzy sort of sitting room". Such safe-and-sound theatre was, according to the accepted version of history, swept away in 1956 by John Osborne's Look Back in Anger, which moved the dependably outrageous critic Kenneth Tynan to write: "I doubt if I could love anyone who did not wish to see Look Back in Anger."

It's a line quoted by Tynan's biographer, Professor Dominic Shellard, when I meet him in his office at Sheffield University, where he has been Pro-Vice-Chancellor for two years. Shellard was the Theatre Archive Project's driving force.

"A group of us had come to the conclusion that too much importance had been given to Look Back in Anger," he says. "It's as though there was nothing else happening in the theatre between 1945 and 1968."

Eager to explore how true this was, Shellard and colleagues launched the archive's interview project: "The aim was to add some colour to an era that was regarded in monochrome." At first they concentrated on famous theatre folk. They found, however, that, though The Famous invariably had interesting things to say, they'd often said them many times before. So the archivists spread their net wider and, says Shellard, "sought out jobbing actors and actresses who weren't particularly famous, behind-the-scenes people, box-office people."

It was by no means just the world of London theatre, in which "the top stars had an image of being theatrical royalty... the marriage between Olivier and Vivien Leigh really gripped the nation".

In the '50s and '60s, the repertory system was still the norm in Britain, along with the last days of variety (killed off by television) and the birth of TV theatre – Armchair Theatre, Donald Wolfit in Ibsen's Ghosts, Eric Porter in Cyrano de Bergerac, new drama like John Hopkins' devastating domestic tragedy Talking to a Stranger, which George Melly, as Observer TV critic, called "the first authentic masterpiece written directly for television". It turns out that the years before Look Back in Anger were less bland, more feisty and thoughtful, than they were often given credit for, with the plays of JB Priestley and Terence Rattigan debating serious social issues.

They weren't, however, perhaps as dangerous as the wartime years. The Theatre Archive's collection of programmes includes one from a Sadler's Wells Ballet matinee in 1943. "You will be notified from the stage if an air raid warning has been sounded during the performance," it advised. "All we ask is that – if you feel you must go – you will depart quietly and without excitement."

There's a programme for an early production of Britten's Peter Grimes ("Next week: White Horse Inn"), another with adverts for Sunflex Sheer Stockings and the Restaurant Des Gourmets ("for late supper after the show"), and ones for plays that have rather faded from view – The Blind Goddess, Off the Record, Rise Above It, Junior Miss.

Most fascinating is a programme from 1950 for a six-week tour of Othello round Wales and the Borders. Backed by the Arts Council, its cast included no-one very famous and its venues – Chirk Parish Hall, Rhos Miners' Institute, the Workmen's Hall at Llanhilleth – weren't the glitziest. It would have been interesting to know what its 23-year-old producer, fresh from Oxford, thought of it. His name was Kenneth Tynan.

Meanwhile, back at the Sheffield Lyceum, Colin George is being interviewed by Daniel Evans, artistic director of Sheffield Theatres. Behind them is the set for Oh What a Lovely War, with army caps hung on stepladders and the odd abandoned double bass. "In this very theatre," says George, "I saw Cinderella soon after I came to Sheffield in 1962. The Ugly Sisters were Morecambe and Wise." Evans reflects on the community feel of Sheffield theatre-going: "People will talk to you at the till in Marks and Spencers and say 'I enjoyed your performance last night'." And Dominic Shellard interviews three long-time theatre-goers – Christopher Baugh, Tony Richards and Barbara Silcock. They reminisce about the old Playhouse. "You could order tea and biscuits and they would be brought to your seat," recalls Baugh. And about the undiminished novelty of the Crucible's thrust-stage.

"You can sit so close that you're practically breathing in and out with the actors," says Silcock.

And there are warm waves of audience nostalgia when The Stirrings in Sheffield on Saturday Night is mentioned. This much-revived documentary musical about trade union troubles in the 19th century knife-grinding industry – first directed by Colin George – never fails to excite Sheffield theatre-goers. There's surely an idea here. Why not update it to the late 1950s and give it a radical new edge? You could call it The Stirrings in Sheffield on Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Actually, that's a pig of an idea.

See www.bl.uk/theatrearchive

YP MAG 22/5/10