Stuart Griffiths has overseen a massive change in the fortunes of the Birmingham Hippodrome. He talks to Roz Laws about his10 years at the theatre.

Britain’s most popular theatre is looking forward to one of its busiest ever years.

The future looks bright for Birmingham Hippodrome, as it prepares to welcome even bigger audiences to blockbuster shows like The Lion King and War Horse.

But chief executive Stuart Griffiths is well aware of the hard work it has taken to put the theatre on a stable footing. As he marks 10 years at the helm, he doesn’t mince his words about the condition in which he found the Hippodrome when he took over.

“It was bankrupt,” he bluntly states. “We were in a very parlous state.

“I started a year after we had reopened in November 2001, after being closed for two-and-a-half years for a £35 million redevelopment.

“The reopening had been delayed and the National Lottery funding was capped so we had a significant capital shortfall which we needed to address.

“We had opened with expectations of audience numbers that did not materialise. Rather than the anticipated honeymoon period, we had quite the reverse, as numbers were about 25 per cent down.

“Over a two year period, a lot of people had got out of the habit of going to the theatre. Keeping audiences coming is a lot about momentum, one show rolls into the next. If you have a hiatus, it takes time to get the ball rolling again.

“We had a building which was 40 per cent bigger, so we had higher overheads, but we actually had fewer seats in the auditorium due to creating better access for the disabled, so we had less income from ticket sales.”

Griffiths believes what started the recovery was the hit summer musical of 2003, Miss Saigon, which ran for 15 weeks and took £5 million, getting a mass of people through the doors again.

He also worked on creating new revenue streams such as hiring out rooms for conferences and taking the catering back in-house.

As for the productions, Griffiths says: “We had to persuade producers that the Hippodrome hadn’t lost its way and would recover, that it would go back to being the most lucrative and successful regional date for them.

“We have done that now. We consider the half a million mark to be a good target to hit for annual ticket sales, that enables our business model to work and is the magic number which makes us the busiest theatre in the country.

“We’ve achieved that for the last five years or so and sometimes a bit more. We’re hoping 2013 will be a record year, with audiences of up to 600,000.”

The Hippodrome turns over £20 million a year, employs 100 people full-time and contributes more than £40 million to the local economy.

Griffiths, 49, talks of a surplus rather than a profit, as the Hippodrome is a charity. Any proceeds are reinvested in the theatre.

“People don’t always realise that we are not for profit,” he says. “We are not commercial but we have to generate enough money so we can reinvest with confidence.”

The Hippodrome is also home to Birmingham Royal Ballet and DanceXchange and provides regular dates for the Welsh National Opera.

Griffiths is particularly proud that the theatre is self-financing, with no support from public funding.

“We are not dependent on the public purse and grant funding in any way, that’s always been very important to us.

“But we are not an island. We are part of a complex web of interdependent companies like the BRB and WNO, and I’m very aware that big successes are often created with public money.

“Les Miserables was originally a Royal Shakespeare Company production while War Horse comes from the National Theatre.

“We benefit down the line so it’s up to us to support the subsidised sector.

“There’s no getting away from the fact that public funding is being cut. There’s less money available from the Government and Arts Council and significantly less from the local authority.

“The city is facing some tough challenges over the next few years and that is bound to have an impact on the cultural sector.

“Birmingham is lucky to have such a depth of cultural activity, but it’s a whole ecology and to lose any part of it would be a disaster.

“We can’t forget that we are part of that and we like to be as supportive as possible in helping other people’s creativity, as in the end we benefit as well.

“I love working in Birmingham, as there’s a healthy competition in the arts community but also a healthy collaboration. We know and help each other, which I don’t think happens in other cities.

“The Hippodrome isn’t the only theatre in town, and I want people to go to the other theatres too.

“I’m very proud of what the city has achieved this year, such as the world premiere of the opera Mittwoch aus Licht with a string quartet performing in helicopters.

“People came from all over the world to a warehouse in Digbeth. It was an amazing undertaking, almost impossible to stage, and we pulled it off, not London.”

The Hippodrome relies on two ‘Holy Grails’ a year to survive – the annual pantomime, which brings in around £3 million, and a long-running musical in the summer.

But this year the Hippodrome will enjoy what Griffiths describes as “an embarrassment of riches”.

For seven weeks from March 13, the theatre plays host to Cameron Mackintosh’s new production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical The Phantom of the Opera, complete with a new design and special effects.

Then for three months from the end of June, Birmingham welcomes The Lion King as part of its first UK tour, the biggest to ever tour the country. More than 200,000 tickets will be sold for the mane event.

More animals appear on the stage in October with the arrival of the National Theatre’s award-winning play War Horse.

“That’s never happened before, to have three really high profile shows in one year,” says Griffiths, who is clearly delighted but trying not to appear too ebullient.

“I am touching wood all the time,” he admits. “We are going through torrid economic times and are very mindful that people don’t have as much money in their pockets, and that there is a lot of uncertainty about the future.

“We don’t charge London prices but we recognise we are not a cheap night out. Yet audiences have an idea about what a Hippodrome experience is – high quality, consistent and reliable.

“The big shows are our life-blood but we also like introducing audiences to new things, like international dance companies.

“While the West End is very important to us, and what we produce in this country is fantastic, it’s not everything and I like to look at a world market. I want to extend our programming to include international companies, especially those performing dance.”

Griffiths has helped to introduce audiences to dance companies like those of Matthew Bourne, New York’s Mark Morris and Alvin Ailey and Taiwan’s Cloud Gate.

One of Griffiths’ highlights of his decade as chief executive is helping to create the biennial International Dance Festival in 2008. Held three times, it has already become one of the largest dance festivals in the world.

“It’s enabled us to really stretch the boundaries of our programme, and to extend what we do beyond our four walls,” he says. “We couldn’t stage a lot of these companies on their own, we need to bring them in as part of a festival to build up excitement and persuade audiences to see them.

“I think Mark Morris’s L’Allegro is one of my favourite works, a masterpiece.

“We also had the Royal Ballet of Flanders with a piece called Artifact by William Forsythe, who’s a modern genius but not an easy composer. I was knocked out by the response. I almost expected people to walk out, because it’s nuts in places, but they were as gripped as I was.”

Other achievements which have “pushed the boundaries” include The Voyage as part of the Cultural Olympiad events. The ambitious, free, outdoor production staged in Victoria Square was seen by 15,000 people.

“We might not be able to do something on that scale every year, but it’s the type of thing we should be doing, to make ourselves as connected as possible in the community.

“It’s how we grow. We want to be a positive force in the city.

“I’m all about not putting barriers in people’s way, whether breaking down the psychological barriers about thinking theatre isn’t for them, or improving technological barriers by making it easier to book online.”

Griffiths is well aware of the immediate environment of the Hippodrome and is chair of Southside BID, bringing businesses together to attract people into the area and making it as “pleasant and dynamic as it can be”.

It comes as a surprise, given what an enthusiastic ambassador he is for Birmingham, that the Yorkshire-born philosophy graduate lives 60-odd miles away.

He didn’t want to take his daughters Scarlett, now 18, and 13-year-old Dulcie out of their schools when he moved from the Swan Theatre in High Wycombe to the Hippodrome, so he lives with them and wife Daryl in a village near Oxford.

He says he uses his 90-minute commute to “come up with half a dozen ideas a day”.

So could he still be at the Hippo in another 10 years’ time?

“Who knows?” he smiles. “There’s a lot here that I have still to do, and I feel like I’m just getting going.”

Curtain goes up on shows for erveryone

It’s going to be a bumper year for theatre, from the Rep celebrating its centenary to the West End coming to the Midlands.

Theatres are gearing up to welcome a host of hits previously only seen on the London stage, from The Lion King and War Horse to The Mousetrap, Ghost and Priscilla Queen of the Desert.

We are getting to see Ghost, the award-winning musical, based on the hit Patrick Swayze film, just a year after its West End debut, while we’ve been waiting 60 years to see Agatha Christie’s classic thriller The Mousetrap.

Birmingham Rep celebrates its 100th birthday in February with the world premiere of Philip Pullman’s I Was A Rat! at the Old Rep, followed in March by Heather Gardner, Robin French’s take on the Ibsen classic Hedda Gabler.

Then in September the Rep will reopen its doors, with a refurbished theatre – air-conditioning and more toilets! – and the first season under new artistic director Roxana Silbert.

Among the treats in store at Birmingham Hippodrome this year are a new production of The Phantom of the Opera in March, The Lion King running for three months from the end of June and War Horse galloping in in October.

The year gets off to a great start for dance at the Hippodrome, with Les Ballet Trockadero de Monte Carlo in February, pictured above, closely followed Matthew Bourne’s Sleeping Beauty and the premiere of Birmingham Royal Ballet’s Aladdin.

The longest-running show in British theatre, The Mousetrap embarks on its first ever UK tour this year, arriving at Birmingham’s Alexandra Theatre in February and Wolverhampton’s Grand in May.

The Cole Porter musical High Society, starring Michael Praed and Daniel Boys, comes to the Grand in February and the Hippodrome in May.

The 40th anniversary tour of The Rocky Horror Show drops into the Alex at the end of January, while in March the theatre welcomes Jason Donovan in the first UK tour of Priscilla Queen of the Desert.

At the Wolverhampton Grand Theatre at the end of January the hit West End comedy The Ladykillers arrives.

In March comes the world premiere stage adaptation of Ellis Peter’s medieval sleuth Cadfael with the mystery The Virgin In The Ice.

Cats drops into the Grand in March, followed by Toyah Willcox, pictured, in Hormonal Housewives and, in May, the Dolly Parton musical 9 to 5. The musical Ghost arrives in June. Also fresh from the West End, Mike Leigh’s play Abigail’s Party arrives at the Malvern Festival Theatre in January.