Greens Playhouse (Ayr)

Green's Playhouse, Ayr, now occupied by Mecca Bingo

The Playhouse, Ayr is the finest remaining complete example of a classic John Fairweather Green’s Playhouse. Its auditorium is a rare intact survivor of a purpose-built cinema on this large scale. It is of more than local importance as the best surviving example of Fairweather’s large scale designs for the Green family, featuring as it does a similar interior decorative scheme to the demolished Glasgow and Dundee Playhouses.
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The design fitted 3,116 seats in a building with stalls and a single balcony – both the Glasgow and Edinburgh Playhouses achieved their massive capacities using two tiers of balconies. The stalls accommodated 1757; the balcony 1303, and boxes 56.

Looking at the plans, this was achieved my minimising the foyer spaces, squeezing the café into a mezzanine level under the balcony rake, and having the balcony extend backwards over the foyer spaces to the very front of the building. There is very little in the way of wasted space within this building.

Photograph: 29 April 2010
Photographer: ©Mike Bailey

Greens Playhouse (Ayr)

Green's Playhouse, Ayr

Green’s cinemas were built to increasingly large scales; HJ Green explained the reasons for this in a 1931 interview: "Of course my cinema is a success," said Mr Green. "The bigger the cinema the greater the success. And the reason - because people know they can get in - no-one is wasting time by coming to my cinema because they know there will be room for them. And there's another reason: the big cinema will always attract because it can give better value for money. Overhead expenses are minimised, and so we can afford to give the best pictures, good musical interludes, at a price at which small cinemas cannot possibly compete."

"In this amusement business the public demands progressive change. From silent to talking pictures, from black-and-white to colour photography, from small downtown 300-seaters to 4,000 seaters. Car parks, cafes, dance halls, these things will all become part and parcel of the cinema of the future.
My new cinema at Ayr, besides having a car park, will have a flat roof on which gyroplanes may land. It is my belief that the cinema is definitely establishing itself as the centre of social life in every town” [1]

The only other cinema auditorium of this scale to survive in Scotland is Fairweather’s Playhouse, now the Festival Theatre, in Edinburgh. That was built much earlier, very much with cinema-variety in mind, featuring a large stage and many dressing rooms. Ayr’s Playhouse was built solely for cinema use, and as such represents the best surviving example of technical design and planning for cinema auditoria on this scale.

[1] A Thousand Miles of Filmgoing: Glasgow - Cecilie Leslie, Film Weekly article, 13th June 1931

Photograph: 29 April 2010
Photographer: ©Mike Bailey

For images of the theatre interior please follow this LINK or this LINK to the Scottish Cinema Archive

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