Guess which theatre is the first to open to the paying public post-Covid? Not Lloyd Webber’s London Palladium, where small audiences have been invited on trials, nor any of the other West End giants. This weekend the Great Yarmouth Hippodrome — Britain’s last stand-alone circus building — is welcoming audiences to its ringside seats for the first time since March.
The Hippodrome is tucked behind a row of kerchinging arcades on Great Yarmouth’s decaying, half-lit seafront. But its imposing red brick facade, built by legendary showman George Gilbert in 1903, leads into a lobby glinting with art deco-glass. Its performance space is a traditional 42ft diameter sawdust ring that can be flooded and filled with water like a pool.
The Hippodrome hasn’t only hosted knife-throwing, sword-juggling and the occasional dancing bear. Lloyd George held political rallies there, an ageing Lillie Langtry warbled through her vaudeville shows and Houdini staged his escape acts. During the war it was requisitioned by the military as a shooting range. Thereafter followed a period of slow decline, with the building, like circus itself, losing fashion and favour.
In 1979, pop star Peter Jay bought the Hippodrome to save it from being turned into a bingo hall. In the early 1960s, Jay’s band The Jaywalkers had a top 40 hit with ‘Can Can 62’ and toured with the Beatles and Rolling Stones. (Former Home Secretary Alan Johnson once auditioned as lead singer.) But by the late 1970s, Jay was ready to settle down in Norfolk, where he’d first formed the band at Norwich college.
One of the first things Jay did was restore the water ring to its original working order. One of only five like it in the world, the ring mechanically sinks to be filled with water deep enough for synchronised swimming.
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