The curtain will soon close for good at a £1,700,000 village theatre set to be dismantled after it was secretly built last year.
From outside, the Hampshire venue looks like a warehouse or a barn with grey brick walls and a sheet metal roof.
It certainly fooled Fareham Borough Council, which thought the structure served as storage space until someone tipped them off late last year.
The disguise hides a 465-seat venue claimed to be ‘the largest community theatre in Europe’, with an underground orchestra pit fit for 16 musicians.
Arden vastly outsizes the Titchfield Festival Theatre’s other venues – Oak Theatre and Acorn Studio – housed in a converted barn that conceal it from the road.
Panto boss Kevin Fraser had dreamed of expanding beyond the existing theatres, with a combined capacity of 400 audience members and a programme of up to 40 shows a year.
Two rejected applications for a 567-seat theatre in 2019 proved no hurdle for the artistic director, who greenlit construction anyway in August 2022.
Mr Fraser, a former Foreign Office diplomat, said: ‘Titchfield Festival Theatre is an incredibly successful community theatre company supported by thousands throughout the Borough and wider area.
‘It is the largest community theatre in Europe as well as being the only fully sustainable green theatre in Europe.
‘No mean achievement despite the constant harassment and vindictive vendetta it faces by Fareham Tory councillors.’
His disregard for planning rules has now caught up with him after his appeal against a November enforcement order failed on Monday.
The theatre must now be dismantled by October 12, with its orchestra pit filled in, and its stage, lighting, and sound equipment removed.
It comes after the council declared the increased noise and traffic, brought by 33,000 potential visitors to its 102 performances each year, unsuitable and unsafe for the fringes of Fareham’s suburbs.
‘It beggars belief that anyone would build a new 450-seat theatre without first securing planning permission’, planning committee chair Cllr Nick Walker said.
But Mr Fraser sees it as a decision so wrong ‘Shakespeare must be turning in his grave’.
‘The country will lose one of its greatest community arts assets’, according to a broken-hearted Fraser.
He said: ‘We had been using the site continually for theatrical use for over 10 years completely known to councillors.
‘Ten years in constant use is significant as the use is deemed as lawful after this period of time – internal works contained within that same site need no planning permission only Building Regulation.’
Mr Fraser claimed the theatre has been a victim of Conservative councillors using ‘bully boy tactics to try and destroy something that is only good for the general population of Fareham and beyond’.
He blamed it on the council soon opening its own multi-million pound arts venue, Fareham Live, in the town centre next month.
Mr Fraser said: ‘Fareham Borough Council clearly don’t want competition, they want to negate it.
‘There are 20 theatres in Shaftesbury Avenue in London – why can’t we have two in Fareham?
‘We are not going anywhere and will still continue. But we were being pestered and hounded – and at Christmas, hence why I call them the Grinches and Scrooges.’
Whatever he calls them, the council calls it victory.
Councillor Ian Bastable, vice chair of the planning committee, said: ‘I would like to reassure all of our residents that where development is carried out without planning permission, and is unacceptable in planning terms, this council will take action against it.’
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