With the right person running the show, the theatre still has a future

Part celebration, part vilification, the article rejoiced in the achievements of her tenure in the hotseat while almost in the same breath condemning Worcester City Council as the perceived villain of the piece.

Nevertheless, she was fairly restrained. It would have been wholly understandable if her swansong had been more heavily dosed with vitriol.

From where she is standing, the outcome of the battle for Worcester's last surviving theatre must appear unjustly harsh.

Indeed, her farewell speech was upbeat as she related the achievements of the past few years. A fitting epitaph. And that is something they can't take away from her.

When the Swan crisis erupted during the autumn, there was an immediate response from many people connected with the theatre. Letters poured in from the residents of Worcester and far beyond, most of them calling on the council to change its mind.

This newspaper rose to the occasion. Sensing the enormity of the drama, extra pages were set aside to cope with the flood of correspondence.

Every day, for more than a week, the Evening News published a "You Say Extra".

Argued from the heart rather than the head, many an impassioned plea was made. This was a battle where there could be no victors, only losers. And the inevitable happened.

Yet there might still be a way that offers hope for all those who wish the arts to flourish in Worcester...

However, we must establish some home truths. This unhappy state of affairs blew up in the first place when the Tory-controlled council decided it could not continue with a temporary £83,000 grant top-up that had been agreed four years ago by the then-ruling Labour group at the Guildhall.

Labour had raided reserves to boost the annual grant. The deal was supposed to run for - and this is an important point - three years only. This is what Labour agreed. And when the Tories took over the reins, they allowed the arrangement to continue for a further year.

The Tories are not cutting the Swan grant - only the extra allocation. Many people do not realise this.

There are a number of points that did not emerge during the Swan saga. For a start, the Labour group visibly kept quiet about this three-year time limit.

Had they retained control, would they have scrapped the original deal and given the Swan the extra cash forever?

Here's another point. Local councils up and down Britain are facing financial problems. It is not just Worcester. The reasons lie with the New Labour Government's enthusiastic continuation of rate-capping policies adopted by the Tories during the mid-80s.

Britain is rapidly becoming a centralised state. The power of local authorities has been slowly sapped away for the last 20 years. It is utterly disingenuous for politicians to point-score when the evidence does not stand up to scrutiny.

So. Why did Worcester Labour Group leader Adrian Gregson fail to go on record and condemn his own Government's fiscal policy as being the REAL reason why the Swan had to close?

And why were all the Swan's eggs put into one basket? The theatre's strategy centred on maintaining the increased grant. Nothing else would do. It was either that or nothing.

Why was there never a Plan B - to be brought in if everything else failed?

The Swan was financed with taxpayers' money. Why were the books not placed in the public domain?

Whatever happens now, the core grant presumably remains for anyone who wants to run a theatre in Worcester. And that, by any calculation, is a fair amount of money.

So let me put something else to you.

If the Swan cannot survive on £137,000, how come the Huntingdon Hall can live off its meagre grant? There's a moral in this somewhere. But the answer to this is that both venues could now really reap benefits if drastic action was taken.

But it would involve a complete shake-up of artistic provision in Worcester.

Put simply, someone needs to step in and take over. There has to be a total clear-out, too. All dead wood should be cut away, existing power structures consigned to the out-tray.

And the present Swan board must go.

There is now only one contender for the job. And that is Huntingdon Hall director Chris Jaeger.

This is the man who brought back the ailing hall from the brink. I well remember that memorable night in the mid-90s when the then-management went round with a hat, pleading for money to save the building as an arts centre.

I was convinced the place was doomed.

But much has happened since then. Chris has turned the building into one of the top concert halls in the Midlands. He did it with next to nothing, save faultless expertise, faith, hope and a modicum of charity.

There has been very little support from Worcester City Council. The Huntingdon became a victim of its own success.

Chris Jaeger's Midas touch can now do it for the Swan. And this is how it would work.

Huntingdon Hall has already taken over control of the Worcester Festival. Last year's Three Choirs was a test run, whereby the Hall became the centralised booking office for all the events.

This year, the Deansway venue will be the nerve centre for the Faithful City's fledgling festival.

A relaunched Swan could also come under the Huntingdon's wing. The building at The Moors would cease to have its own resident company and become a receiving theatre, but allow the amateurs and groups such as WODS to stay.

There could also be music in the bar and films shown on nights when there were no live performances. The possibilities, if not quite endless, are certainly wide-ranging.

None of these ideas is original. The Roses Theatre, Tewkesbury, has been operating like this for some time. Most nights, the venue is packed.

The attractions range from ballet to rock packages, popular films to experimental cinema, touring productions and much else.

The story of the Roses is similar to that of the Huntingdon. Both places have been pulled back from the brink by imaginative, forward-thinking management strategies.

At the end of the day, it has not been a permanently open public purse that has guaranteed survival, rather sound artistic sensibilities backed up with rock-solid business practice.

If the Swan did become a receiving theatre it would - theoretically - still qualify for a sizeable council grant. But instead of the cash being earmarked purely for the theatre, it could go into a centralised arts pot administrated by Chris Jaeger - who would then effectively be in charge of the arts throughout Worcester.

Of course, the Huntingdon should then qualify for a better deal, since the Swan - as a receiving theatre - would be on an equal footing with its musical counterpart just up the road.

This must be the way forward. I have always said that the Swan should not be allowed to die. But there will indeed be some tough decisions to make in the not-so-distant future. If you want to make omelettes, you've got to break some eggs.

There is no time to waste. The hour has come. And Chris Jaeger is undoubtedly the man of that hour.