The imposing Canterbury building where since 1933 generations of people have laughed, cried and been thoroughly entertained is no more. Helen Geraghty hears some memories of the well-worn building that was the Friars cinema and the Odeon and until the bulldozers smash it down, is the Marlowe Theatre.

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It was wartime, and a young boy stood on the cinema steps as he left the 1939 film Gone With the Wind with his mother.

As he stepped outside into the night air and stood on the top of the flight of stone steps a Messerschmitt fighter swept the length of Canterbury High Street.

The boy is now an old man and, standing on the steps again in 2009, he has said goodbye to the building.

It survived the war in tact, but it is bulldozers that will be coming to flatten it this summer, in preparation for a modern, purpose-built building due to open in late summer 2011.

Those steps – too tricky for the elderly and the disabled – and the heavy wooden doors are just part of the problem.

This funny old relic just doesn’t top the bill any more.

The Marlowe Theatre, in the Friars, Canterbury, was originally built as a cinema called The Friars in 1933, but was renamed the Odeon Cinema in 1946. The Odeon Cinema was then converted by owners Canterbury City Council into a theatre in 1984.

In 1944, the Marlowe, rather than London’s Leicester Square, was the scene of the glitzy world premiere of the film the Canterbury Tales, as the film makers wanted to thank local people for their help during filming.

But the existing 1,000 seat auditorium is considered too small to attract large ambitious productions, such as international ballet and opera.

The building simply struggled to adapt to the demands of theatrical productions. The popular coffee shop, created from the space beneath audience seating, was low-ceilinged and windowless.

Memories have been laid thick and fast at the door of theatre director Mark Everett.

He said: “I have heard quite a few tales of the past, all of them fascinating. We do have customers who go back for a long time and I love to hear them talk about the past.

“Like the elderly chap who was leaving a performance and he said to me he had always lived in the Canterbury area.

“He pointed at the step we were standing on, at the front of the theatre and said he had been standing on that very step after coming out of the theatre, when a Messerschmitt went right down the High Street.

“There are most certainly a wealth of memories in this building.

“Something I will miss about it is the wonderful cloud scenery effect in the auditorium, put in by theatre designer Roger Butlin. It is as if you are looking over into this cloudscape. One of the first things I did was to change around the foyer to make it more open. Then we got a local artist to do clouds in the foyer.

“But something I will be glad to see the back of are the steps and the doors into the theatre. They are unwelcoming and are difficult for elderly people and the disabled. You can’t see into the building as you approach it.”

One of the great features of the new theatre will be its welcoming and open glass frontage.

The building as we know it, is actually the second to be known as the Marlowe Theatre, the first, situated on St Margaret’s Street, was demolished to make way for the Marlowe Arcade.

Like its successor, the theatre was named after the playwright Christopher Marlowe, who was born and educated in Canterbury in the 1500s.

The 19th century statue in front of the building is in honour of Marlowe and features a muse, or inspiration, surrounded by small effigies of characters from Marlowe plays. In 1593, after a day of drinking with three friends, Marlowe was stabbed in the eye, with his own dagger.

Mr Everett said storing equipment was a major exercise that was like moving house hundreds of times over.

He said: “A lot of the lighting and that sort of equipment will stay and has to be very carefully stored.

“The Marlowe memorial will be able to stay where it is, but the mask sculpture at the front of the building will have to taken down and stored.”

The new project will cost £25.6 million. £19.5 million is coming in grants from Canterbury City Council, Kent County Council and SEEDA. This leaves around £6 million to be raised from private and public campaigns. Productions will continue in alternative venues.

The new venue will have a 1,200 seat auditiorium and also a 150-seater smaller space. There will be bars and foyers on three floors and even a piazza for outdoor events.

Mr Everett said professional advice was that despite the economic crisis the money would be raised. The Friends of the Marlowe is the biggest theatre friends organisation in the country – tickets for Night of a Thousand Stars, the theatre’s final gala performance sold out in two days.

The closure has meant redundancies among the seventy staff, some casuals and part-time.

A core management team will remain, although it is thought likely that some of the staff will apply for jobs at the new theatre.

Mr Everett said: ”I would be very surprised if when the new Marlowe opens, there aren’t quite a few familiar faces.”

More than a 100 members of the public went to the Guildhall to see the council vote in favour of the redevelopment.

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