Theatre loses in High Court after secretly building venue without permission
A theatre has lost a High Court appeal after it was ordered to tear down its 465-seat venue which was built secretly without planning permission.
Kevin Fraser, director of Titchfield Festival Theatre, took his fight to save his venue to the High Court after claiming to be the victim of a 'vendetta' from the local council.
Mr Fraser had already admitted the £1.7 million development in the Hampshire village of Titchfield was built without planning permission and the theatre was declared illegal by a planning inspector last year.
Determined to ensure that the show must go on, 68-year-old Mr Fraser launched an appeal by alleging that the inspector's ruling was not lawful.
However, a High Court judge made the curtain finally fall on Titchfield Festival Theatre's Arden stage, the newest of its three stages.
READ MORE:
Shows are still being advertised for next month at the Arden stage although it is understood that the theatre is under orders to cease performances.
William Shakespeare is thought to have links to Titchfield after an alleged affair with the Earl of Southampton, Henry Wriothesley, who sponsored the writer for a time.
For the last 13 years, Titchfield Festival Theatre has been operating out of a converted barn which holds two auditoriums seating 100 and 200 audience members respectively.
But after two failed attempts to get permission to convert a storage space on the site, in August 2022, artistic director Mr Fraser sanctioned the covert building of the new venue more than twice the size.
The Arden Theatre which has the order to be torn down at Titchfield Festival Theatre in Titchfield, Hampshire. (Image: Andrew Croft/Solent News) The new Arden theatre even featured an underground orchestra pit - which can seat up to 16 musicians - dwarfing the existing Acorn and Oak theatres.
It had been hosting performances since last summer, before Fareham Borough Council stepped in by serving a Planning Enforcement Notice in 2023.
READ MORE: Titchfield Festival Theatre loses appeal to stay open
Councillors from Fareham Borough Council said it 'beggared belief' that Mr Fraser would build the Arden without permission.
Kevin Fraser at Titchfield Festival Theatre in Titchfield, Hampshire. (Image: Andrew Croft/Solent News) Mr Fraser branded them 'Scrooges' and said they had a 'vendetta' against him, but in August last year the venue was declared illegal by a planning inspector.
Central to the decision was the stipulation that the site could not legally be used as a theatre.
In a statement published by the BBC, Titchfield Festival Theatre said: "The trustees are obviously disappointed with the ruling from the Judicial Review.
"We are taking further legal advice on the potential outcomes. In the meantime the Arden Theatre continues to operate."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Forbes
14 hours ago
- Forbes
This Times Square Tropical Paradise Unveils Theatrical New Menu
Tucked away from the hustle and bustle of Times Square below, The Terrace and Outdoor Gardens is a tropical oasis in the heart of New York City. Known for its stunning interiors and innovative dishes, it's a hotspot for tourists and locals alike. And, for the first time ever, the vibrant restaurant has given its menu a full overhaul. The result? A ton of theatrical flair that will evoke the senses. Located on the ninth floor of the luxurious five-star Times Square Edition, The Terrace and Outdoor Gardens transports diners to a tranquil paradise. Helmed by Michelin-starred Chef John Fraser, the new menu features seasonal favorites along with reinvented classics that give a fresh perspective on traditional French and American cuisine. 'The new Spring menu was inspired by the rhythm of the season itself — its sense of renewal, brightness and delicate abundance. The menu is a celebration of ingredients at their peak, designed to feel both elegant and alive,' said Chef Fraser. According to Fraser, the restaurant's interior, which is outfitted with towering trees, ambient lanterns and rugged wooden furnishings, serves as both muse and mirror to the menu. 'Its palette of soft greens and natural textures, combined with filtered sunlight and florals, evokes the feeling of dining within a landscape. We designed the dishes to echo that — vibrant, tactile, and grounded in nature,' he explained. 'You'll see edible flowers, herbaceous oils, and compositions that feel almost botanical in their arrangement,' While the previous menu emphasized symmetry and formality, Fraser said that the Spring menu leans into spontaneity and softness. 'There's a sense of looseness in the plating, allowing ingredients to breathe and unfold visually,' he noted. 'The presentation is more organic, more seasonal in spirit, and more connected to the story we're telling now,' Standout entrées include Spring Lamb Ravioli, complete with minted ricotta and fresh peas and garnished with edible flowers. The bold Aphrodite's Cup cocktail is a refreshing wine berry sorbet with pierre ferrand, mommmenpop grapefruit sparkling rosé and pomegranate seeds. For dessert, the eye-catching Frozen S'mores amps up the theatrics. It comes out smoked with a cloud puff, and is torched tableside for an Instagram-able moment. 'We think of theater as an extension of storytelling—not spectacle for spectacle's sake. We all know that we eat with our eyes before our stomach and we really wanted to elevate the visual experience,' Fraser explained. 'Just as we eat with our eyes before our mouths, we aim to elevate the visual experience in a way that deepens the flavor. For example, a smoked cloche may lift to reveal our version of s'mores. It's a moment, but it always leads back to flavor.' The Terrace and Outdoor Gardens dinner menu is available to enjoy daily at Times Square Edition from 5pm through 9:30pm.
CBS News
6 days ago
- CBS News
"Rent" takes the stage in Philadelphia as the Tony Awards honor Broadway's best
"Rent" takes the stage in Philly as the Tony Awards honor Broadway's best "Rent" takes the stage in Philly as the Tony Awards honor Broadway's best "Rent" takes the stage in Philly as the Tony Awards honor Broadway's best This Sunday, Broadway's biggest night takes center stage for the 78th Annual Tony Awards on CBS, celebrating excellence in live theater. But right now, the spotlight is also shining in Philadelphia, where the Arden Theatre in Old City is presenting its own tribute to Broadway history, Jonathan Larson's groundbreaking musical "Rent." The rock musical, which won four Tony Awards and a Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1996, continues to resonate with audiences nearly 30 years later. "The vibration of 'Rent' – what it stood for – I think, is still really, really impactful today," said Gilbert Diego Sanchez, who stars as Angel in the Arden Theatre production. CBS Philadelphia A Timeless Story with Timely Themes "Rent" follows a group of struggling artists in New York City's East Village, grappling with love, loss, poverty and the AIDS crisis. It's a portrait of resilience and chosen family with themes that continue to hit home in 2025. "Introducing the piece to a lot of young people, I think, is really important," Sanchez said. "Because when I heard this soundtrack at 14 years old, it blew my mind." Ashley Smith-Wide Eyed Sanchez brings warmth and emotional depth to the role of Angel, a generous, joyful drag performer living with AIDS, whose presence lifts the entire community. "I think Angel is a beautiful example of like even though things are awful or can be awful on you, if you choose love, if you bring people together, if you make people laugh, it can bring the light back into the room," said Sanchez. Still relevant, still radical The musical's urgent messages about housing insecurity, health care access and LGBTQ+ rights still ring loud and clear, especially as those issues persist across the country. "Homelessness is a huge issue," Sanchez said. "We see kind of the erasure of trans people, and gay people being attacked by the administration, kind of like AIDS was attacked in that time, and no one was talking about it." While "Rent" offers moments of escape, it also offers reflection. Arden Theatre Company "What's amazing about the piece, and also it's, I think, kind of disheartening about the piece, is that it still stands very, very true," Sanchez said. As audiences fill the seats at Arden Theatre, the show invites them to measure their lives in love, just as its characters do. The Arden Theatre's bold new production transforms the Haas Stage with the iconic chords of "Seasons of Love," "I'll Cover You" and more. Twenty-dollar Rush Couch Seating is available up to 72 hours before each performance — in-person only at the TKTS booth inside the Independence Visitor Center. For tickets and showtimes, visit
Los Angeles Times
05-06-2025
- Los Angeles Times
What does smelting have to do with Ted Bundy? A lot, argues ‘Murderland' author
The first film I saw in a theater was 'The Love Bug,' Disney's 1969 comedy about a sentient Volkswagen Beetle named Herbie and the motley team who race him to many a checkered flag. Although my memory is hazy, I recall my toddler's delight: a car could think, move and communicate like a real person, even chauffeuring the romantic leads to their honeymoon. Nice Herbie! Or not so nice. A decade later, Stanley Kubrick opened his virtuosic 'The Shining' with fluid tracking shots of the same model of automobile headed toward the Overlook Hotel and a rendezvous with horror. Something had clicked. Caroline Fraser's scorching, seductive 'Murderland' chronicles the serial-killer epidemic that swept the U.S. in the 1970s and '80s, focusing on her native Seattle and neighboring Tacoma, where Ted Bundy was raised. He drove a Beetle, hunting for prey. She underscores the striking associations between VWs and high-yield predators, as if the cars were accomplices, malevolent Herbies dispensing victims efficiently. (Bundy's vehicle is now displayed in a Tennessee museum.) The book's a meld of true crime, memoir and social commentary, but with a mission: to shock readers into a deeper understanding of the American Nightmare, ecological devastation entwined with senseless sadism. 'Murderland' is not for the faint of heart, yet we can't look away: Fraser's writing is that vivid and dynamic. She structures her narrative chronologically, conveyed in present tense, newsreel-style, evoking the Pacific Northwest's woodsy tang and bland suburbia. Fraser came of age on Mercer Island, adjacent to Lake Washington's eastern shore, across a heavily-trafficked pontoon bridge notorious for fatal crashes. Like the Beetle, the dangerous bridge threads throughout 'Murderland,' braiding the author's personal story with those of her cast. A 'Star Trek' geek stuck in a rigid Christian Science family, she loathed her father and longed to escape. In Tacoma, 35 miles to the south, Ted Bundy grew up near the American Smelting and Refining Co., which disgorged obscene levels of lead and arsenic into the air while netting millions for the Guggenheim dynasty before its 1986 closure. Bundy is the book's charismatic centerpiece, a handsome, well-dressed sociopath in shiny patent-leather shoes, flitting from college to college, job to job, corpse to corpse. During the 1970s, he abducted dozens of young women, raping and strangling them on sprees across the country, often engaging in postmortem sex before disposing their bodies. He escaped custody twice in Colorado — once from a courthouse and another time from a jail — before he was finally locked up for good after his brutal attacks on Chi Omega sorority sisters at Florida State University. Fraser depicts his bloody brotherhood with similar flair. Israel Keyes claimed Bundy as a hero. Gary Ridgway, the prolific 'Green River Killer,' inhaled the same Puget Sound toxins. Randy Woodfield trawled I-5 in his 1974 Champagne Edition Beetle. As she observes of Richard Ramirez, Los Angeles' 'Night Stalker': 'He's six foot one, wears black, and never smiles. He has a dead stare, like a shark. He doesn't bathe. He has bad teeth. He's about to go beserk.' But the archvillain is ASARCO, the mining corporation that dodged regulations, putting profitability over people. Fraser reveals an uncanny pattern of polluting smelters and the men brought up in their shadows, prone to mood swings and erratic tantrums. The science seems speculative until the book's conclusion, where she highlights recent data, explicitly mapping links. Her previous work, 'Prairie Fires,' a biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder, won the Pulitzer Prize and other accolades. The pivot here is dramatic, a bit of formal experimentation as Fraser shatters the fourth wall, luring us from our comfort zone. While rooted in the New Journalism of Joan Didion and John McPhee, 'Murderland' deploys a mocking tone to draw us in, scattering deadpan jokes among chapters: 'In 1974 there are at least a half a dozen serial killers operating in Washington. Nobody can see the forest for the trees.' Fraser delivers a brimstone sermon worthy of a Baptist preacher at a tent revival, raging at plutocrats who ravage those with less (or nothing at all). Her fury blazes beyond balance sheets and into curated spaces of elites. She singles out Roger W. Straus Jr., tony Manhattan publisher, patron of the arts and grandson of Daniel Guggenheim, whose Tacoma smelter may have scrambled Bundy's brain. She mentions Straus' penchant for ascots and cashmere jackets. She laments the lack of accountability. 'Roger W. Straus Jr. completes the process of whitewashing the family name,' she writes. 'Whatever the Sackler family is trying to do by collecting art and endowing museums, lifting their skirts away from the hundreds of thousands addicted and killed by prescription opioids manufactured and sold by their company — Purdue Pharma — the Guggenheims have already stealthily and handily accomplished.' Has Fraser met a sacred cow she wouldn't skewer? Those beautiful Cézannes and Picassos in the Guggenheim Museum can't paper over the atrocities; the gilded myths of American optimism, our upward mobility and welcoming shores won't mask the demons. 'The furniture of the past is permanent,' she notes. 'The cuckoo clock, the Dutch door, the daylight basement — humble horsemen of the domestic Apocalypse. The VWs, parked in the driveway.' 'Murderland' is a superb and disturbing vivisection of our darkest urges, this summer's premier nonfiction read. Cain is a book critic and the author of a memoir, 'This Boy's Faith: Notes from a Southern Baptist Upbringing.' He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
