Qualla: Nottingham Playhouse

Nottingham Playhouse: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MatthewDavid41, CC BY 4.0. Two buildings face each other across Derby Road, and neither is willing to back down. On one side: Nottingham Cathedral, designed in florid Gothic Revival by Augustus Pugin in the 1840s. On the other: the Nottingham Playhouse, a flat-faced piece of mid-century modernism by Peter Moro, completed in 1963 and unapologetically of its moment. When the Playhouse opened, the contrast scandalised the city. Sixty years later, the argument has become the point - and between the two buildings, a six-metre concave dish of polished steel called Sky Mirror catches the British sky and throws it upside-down at anyone walking past.

Read more: Nottingham Playhouse on Qualla

Image: MatthewDavid41 | CC BY 4.0

Nottingham Playhouse: The Cinema and the Vision

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit John Sutton, CC BY-SA 2.0. Nottingham Playhouse started not in this building but in a converted cinema on Goldsmith Street, where the company ran as a repertory theatre from 1948. Val May and Frank Dunlop directed in those early years, working with whatever the cinema would allow. By the late 1950s the cit...

Read more: Nottingham Playhouse on Qualla

Image: John Sutton | CC BY-SA 2.0

Nottingham Playhouse: The Sky Mirror Argument

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit KlickingKarl, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 2001, Anish Kapoor installed Sky Mirror on the small green space of Wellington Circus between the theatre and the cathedral. The work cost £921,000. It is a single curved disc of stainless steel, six metres across, tilted to reflect the sky - which means on any given day it is...

Read more: Nottingham Playhouse on Qualla

Image: KlickingKarl | CC BY-SA 3.0

Nottingham Playhouse: A Theatre that Travels

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Smashman, Public domain. Productions made in Nottingham have a habit of ending up elsewhere. The 2013 adaptation of The Kite Runner by Matthew Spangler became the Playhouse's best-selling drama, toured the UK, transferred to the West End from 2016 to 2017, and revived on Broadway in summer 2022. The 1984...

Read more: Nottingham Playhouse on Qualla

Image: Smashman | Public domain

Nottingham Playhouse: Listed and Loved

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mattbuck, CC BY-SA 3.0. By the 1980s, concrete interiors had fallen so far out of fashion that the Playhouse was 'refurbished' in ways that tried to hide its own character. The reckoning came in 1996, when the building was given Grade II* listed status; in 2004 a Heritage Lottery Fund grant paid for a s...

Read more: Nottingham Playhouse on Qualla

Image: Mattbuck | CC BY-SA 3.0