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Pleasance marks 25th anniversary with massive London expansion
Louise Jury, Chief Arts Correspondent3 Aug 2009
One of the Edinburgh festival's most famous fringe venues is celebrating its 25th birthday with plans for a major expansion of its London branch.
The Pleasance, which opened its sister venue in North Road, Islington, in 1994, has taken over neighbouring buildings that became vacant because of the recession, doubling the space to about 100,000 square metres including several recording studios.
It is now hoped to make the Islington arm into a name as big as its Scottish parent, where hundreds of theatre companies and performers first made their name.
Pleasance founder Christopher Richardson, who lives near the London venue, said he wanted it to be "a theatrical business estate" which incubated talent and offered practical support to writers and performers, including young people in the local community.
The Factory theatre company, which made waves with its improvised version of Hamlet with strange props, has already moved into the bigger space as has Islington Youth Theatre.
The first companies to benefit from the new facilities are set to present their shows in Edinburgh when the fringe kicks off this week.
Among the cast for a production of 18th-century farce The School For Scandal, by RB Sheridan, will be Marcus Brigstocke; Lionel Blair marking his 60th year in showbusiness; Stephen K Amos; and Amy Saunders, also known as sword-swallower Miss Behave.
Nichola McAuliffe, star of the TV comedy Surgical Spirit, has written a play, A British Subject, about Mirza Tahir Hussain, a British man incarcerated on death row in Pakistan for 18 years. A series of galas in Edinburgh by comedians including Frank Skinner, Lucy Porter and Arthur Smith, who have played the Pleasance over the years, will raise funds to pay for the London development work.
Anthony Alderson, the Pleasance's director, said he would like to raise £2.5million over the next few years to make the most of the new space.
They hope more shows will come back to the capital after enjoying the publicity of Edinburgh - some to the Pleasance, but others in tie-ups with venues such as the Soho Theatre.
