Interviewer Jane Markham talks to project workers about the transformation of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and the progress so far.
Tony Williams: The thing is, at the moment, what you're seeing is all the red-blooded macho stuff. You know, the holes in the ground and concrete and piling.
Tim Court: There's a two-storey-deep hole there which is going directly underneath the stage.
Peter Wilson: Digging a huge hole next to a river in ground that used to be connected to a canal basin has its challenges.
Jane Markham: Welcome to the new Royal Shakespeare Theatre transformation-in-progress. November 2008, eighteen months into the build, and creating this piece of theatre history is a drama in itself.
Kev Brindley: Oh yeah, the water levels run about to 1.82 metres and we've gone down nearly eight metres deep so we've had to pump water constantly.
Jane Markham: [That was] General Foreman Kev Brindley, who's been on site since the demolition team left in January. The basement is a key part of the new theatre. They did have the plans of the 1930s building to work with, it's just... they didn't tell the whole story and what they thought would be there wasn't, and a certain amount of extra concrete... was. Tim Court, Project Manager for the construction managers, MACE.
Tim Court: The guys have been breaking through about six metres of solid concrete, so that has taken us so much longer and it's been a real struggle - but we've got there.
Jane Markham: Peter Wilson oversees the whole transformation. He's the RSC's Project Director.
Peter Wilson: We knew that building a deep basement was going to be expensive and difficult and challenge the programme, so there were a lot of discussions with the artistic and technical teams of the RSC about whether they really needed a deep basement, and we negotiated about how deep - and how deep is exactly deep enough for you to bury below the stage someone tall carrying a spear, sitting on a tall throne so that the public in the gallery can't see them when the trapdoor opens to bring them up. So that meant about eight metres.
Jane Markham: Just the eight metres then [laughs]. Well, despite the problems below ground, the work on the surface has been going on apace. Just a few days ago the huge zig zag steel beams were hoisted into place over the top of the auditorium. Tony Williams is the man on site for Bennetts Associates, the architects.
Tony Williams: We had the biggest mobile crane I've ever seen in my life to lift that - 38 tonnes. They had to close the road to bring this huge crane in. It's quite interesting - when you think of the auditorium - you've got as much space above and as much space and volume below as well, to make the theatre work.
Tim Court: We can hoist the scenery up and it will all be shielded so you won't be able to see it.
Jane Markham: It's amazing to see it as a shell.
Tim Court: And apparently the distance across is, within a few inches, the same as Shakespeare's Globe [theatre].
Jane Markham: He'd be pleased.
Tony Williams: Yes [laughs] that's right, absolutely.
Tim Court: We think he would be pleased.
Jane Markham: What will be the thrust stage is already marked off. In fact, it's covered with a temporary wooden platform to allow work to continue in the basement beneath it while things take shape above.
Tony Williams: You can see, here, the walls of the auditorium and one of the things is that, anywhere you sit, no seat is more than fifteen metres away from the stage. You can actually understand that now.
Jane Markham: Yes, and it's a big, big stage isn't it?
Tony Williams: It is. It is a very large stage, yes.
Jane Markham: And if you wondered what happened to its predecessor, Tony has the answer.
Tim Court: When the old stage came out - and I was one of the last people to stand on the old stage - we saved all the floorboards and they're going to go down here, which is a three story atrium which goes right the way through the building.
Jane Markham: So when people are walking around here they know - they will know - they're walking on the original stage.
Tim Court: On the original stage floorboards, yes. As in treading the boards.
Jane Markham: And as the new Royal Shakespeare Theatre takes shape, Royalty has been taking an interest in what's been happening behind the hoardings, from the real Prince of Wales to the current much celebrated Prince of Denmark.
Kev Brindley: Dave Tennant came round, and Prince Charles has been round, and he actually stopped and spoke to us.
Robert/Yoghurt: Uh, I was standing outside, like, and he, well, I was gob-smacked actually. I was like, alright, just think about what you say and be very careful [laughs] as you have to.
Jane Markham: Robert, known as Yoghurt, who's been on the building team from the start. And Prince Charles, as the RSC's President, was particularly interested in the way the parts retained from the original Art Deco Elisabeth Scott building of the 1930s are being renovated and incorporated into the new theatre. Work has just started on the riverside elevation of the building and during his visit he laid a brick in one of the brick columns... but which brick?
Tony Williams: Right hand column, the top one there, that's right.
Jane Markham: He didn't scratch his name on it or anything?
Tony Williams: He didn't do anything like that but I was asked by one of his party to make sure that I knew exactly which brick he'd laid, for future reference.
Jane Markham: It'll go in the history books.
Tony Williams: It will, absolutely.
Jane Markham: This particular brickwork has been exposed because the cafe that was here before has been demolished and that allows more room between the building of the theatre and the river - and they'll be building a new walkway. It'll go all the way from Bancroft Gardens along the river to the church where Shakespeare is buried.
Peter Wilson: The cafe was done about ten years after the original building and it was also by Elisabeth Scott but by then she'd changed her style and she was a complete modernist by that time, so it looked like an ocean liner and it somehow doesn't quite... it didn't quite fit. And after a lot of discussions with English Heritage we decided to take it down, and the reason we were able to, in terms of space, is because our new auditorium is much more compact, not so tall, and we've got a whole deck of accommodation inside and on top of the original building to make a restaurant on top. So we've been able to get back this wide riverside walk which provides a step-free route all the way along the riverbank.
Tony Williams: It's quite a mellow brick. It's what we call a multi-red. Although it's a red brick, there's quite a lot of different colours in it. It's not the same brick as the original but it's the same clay, and so what we're doing is we are mixing the new bricks with the reclaimed bricks in order to try and blend the repairs in, so hopefully when we've finished, you'll be able to just stand back and it will look as if it's always been here. What Peter is very interested in is that we don't go over the top and make it look like a spec developer's new house, is that we keep the ghost within the walls, as he calls it.
Jane Markham: Looks to me as though they're making a rather good job of that, Peter.
Peter Wilson: I think they're making a spectacularly good job of it. It is really important not to make it look brand new. It won't look right if it does. It's got a history and I think they're striking exactly the right balance between leaving behind bricks that have got the odd chip out of them and replacing the ones that really don't do their job any longer.
Jane Markham: On the other side of the theatre, what's going to become a new landmark for Stratford is growing day by day. Today, it's just a concrete pillar but this is the beginnings of the central lift shaft of what will become a spectacular viewing tower. Peter Wilson again.
Peter Wilson: It's a new tower but in the Victorian period, the original Victorian theatre had a tower. So, for Stratfordians who like to see this kind of continuity with the past, it's both new and, in a new way, putting back what was there originally.
Jane Markham: The original tower was demolished after the fire that destroyed the earlier theatre in the 1920s but, as well as the echoes with the past, the new tower balances the new architectural design and leads your eye to the entrance to the new theatre. It will also be an attraction in itself.
Tony Williams: There's a staircase that winds round it. The idea is that you go up in the lift and you go down on the stairs.
Jane Markham: And the concrete lift shaft is just the beginning.
Tim Court: It is an absolutely standard bit of concrete construction but that's where normal construction ends. It's rather an unusual structure in modern terms because what is going up around it is solid brick work. Building solid brick that tall is something that doesn't really happen these days. Brunel would have understood it, as would most Victorians, but there aren't many brick towers these days.
Jane Markham: Standing here in the late Autumn sunlight, the brickwork is still to come. Even the concrete shaft has further to climb.
Tony Williams: One, two, three, four. You're four storeys up, there's another five to go.
Jane Markham: Oh, wow.
Tony Williams: So, you're going to get a view across. You're going to be looking down on the roof of this building, right across the Cotswolds and right over the town in that direction.
Peter Wilson: There is the most amazing view and I can say that with authority because a few weeks ago some of us went up in a crane basket and we worked out exactly where the tower top was and we took our house photographer, Stewart Hemley, with us and he took a complete panorama of the views that you will be able to see from the top and they look exactly like the postcards that used to be around in the 1920s - that were apparently one of the most popular postcards in Stratford - of the view from the old tower.
Jane Markham: And the tower's lift will give access to the upper areas of the new theatre.
Tim Court: We join - for the first three floors - there'll be a link bridge over so you can transfer from the structure straight out into there. You've also got a view from the link bridge right the way down the colonnade, which links the RST with the Swan Theatre - the colonnade through there - you can see the shape on the ground there.
Jane Markham: The work has reached that stage when you can get a real feel for the new building and the interaction between the old and the new. The construction management is being organised in packages, each package being developed as and when it's needed, from completing the design to putting it out to tender. It's all a bit more fluid than you might expect from a project of this size. Tim Court again, from construction managers MACE.
Tim Court: On a normal, traditional contract, all the information would be needed up front and then you'd go to a builder and you'd ask for pricing for the whole job and so you'd need the whole design. Well, here we haven't got that. You can cut it into chunks and you need the demolition work right at the beginning - you don't need the carpets then, you don't need to decide on the colour of the walls - and even when we're bringing the structure up, we're still designing the outer parts: the toilets, the dressing rooms, and all those sorts of things and ,as long we've got the framework agreed, we don't need the information that early on in the process. You wouldn't buy a three year old television, so you're not going to buy a three year old theatre. We can design it and build it right up to the minute and get the best possible technology and finishes and all the things like that.
Jane Markham: And it's the job of a lifetime. Architect Tony Williams had actually taken early retirement but when he spotted this project on the horizon he put some feelers out to Bennetts Associates, the architects, and now finds himself their eyes and ears on site and, given the nature of the project, with its cutting edge technological elements combining with heritage renovation, it's proving every bit as exciting as he'd imagined.
Tony Williams: The only problem is that the people that I'm working for within Bennetts, they're all obscenely young. You know, they're all in their middle twenties and I'm not going to tell you how old I am but I'm slightly a father figure, you know. Avuncular, I think is the expression. The thing is, it was very flattering to be asked and there's only one RSC, there's only one Royal Shakespeare Theatre and there's only one Shakespeare and so it's... an opportunity of a lifetime.
Jane Markham: And MACE's Tim Court is also happy to be here.
Tim Court: It was that kind of job that you just had to win. We like to be associated with iconic buildings and structures like the Millennium Wheel, British Museum, things that... other jobs that we have done - and this was a must-do. I just wanted to be on the project - and I got it.
Jane Markham: Has it let you down at all?
Tim Court: No, it's absolutely fantastic. Fantastic.
Jane Markham: Yoghurt, who has spent much of his time up on cherry-pickers working on the concrete pockets that will support the new structure in the original walls, is also very pleased with how it's all going.
Robert/Yoghurt; We all muck in, tidy up. Everyone works together. I've actually seen the lot go up from concrete, steel, everything. So it's come on quite well. It's looking very nice.
Jane Markham: And there is a great feel to this project. From the people who work here, to the mix between the old and new. The ghosts in those walls, well, they're looking on - and the work that has gone into the planning - in the past and day to day - is paying off so that, so far, it's all on schedule, give or take.
Peter Wilson: We're a little bit adrift at the moment, but only a matter of days. We've been here two years, on site, we've been eighteen months actually building - and to get where we are now, with all the problems in the ground, is not miraculous, it's well planned.