What with the shows and charity work becoming ever more popular, and the rents in Shoreditch (where they had migrated to) getting higher it was time to find a permanent home in the East End. The French architect Samuel Teulon would have had no idea when he designed St.Marks church in North Woolwich Road in 1850 that it would end up becoming a Music Hall, but it still has a licence to conduct civic marriage ceremonies, and as Vincent remarked "theatre is like a church, giving a welcome and inviting people who don't know each other to sit together". A million pounds is a lot of money, but that is what was needed to set up this unique venue in Brick Lane, and Vincent has had to find every penny himself. Now audiences can visit and enjoy the food, the entertainment, the dancing and the atmosphere, or just sit and gaze at the beautiful interior of this Grade 2 listed building, which was derelict five years ago, and marvel at the success of the only dedicated Music Hall left in England. But Vincent admits he couldn't run the whole show alone. His main prop is Robert Dilbo who acts as his butler. Although it is surprising to find a man with 25 years experience on the QE2 liner (running the presidential suite) in completely different surroundings. Vincent described Robert as "indispensable" and allows him to get on with running the complications of show business which now includes a charity, and a demanding role as a performer and M.C. along with a family too. Like any big character Vincent has a travelled a unique path and embarked on so many varied enterprises he has moulded himself into a truly remarkable human being.
IN the Edwardian days the Old Time Music Hall was known as a 'blood tub' experience. There were no seats and audiences flocked there with their penny tickets to drink, and heckle and sing-a-along with the stars of the day. Marie Lloyd, Little Titch, and women impersonators, like Vesta Tilley, enthralled the crowds and were the big stars in a time before television and the cinema were even dreamed of. Comedians like Max Miller and Max Wall learned their craft from many of these performers who had lives as rich and varied as those they characatured in a variety songs and slapstick numbers.
Today there's only one real venue offering music hall to the masses and raising charity cash at the same time too - that's the Brick Lane Theatre run by the highly esteemed, the remarkable, the super-unique, the one and only Mister Chairman, Vincent Hayes.
Times theatre correspondent, EDWARD MARTYN. reports from the auditorium...
THOMAS Patrick Vincent Hayes is a man of great beliefs. Not to bring religion to darkest Africa, but to introduce music and laughter to Silvertown. But anyone who has tried to fill theatres knows the difficulties of attracting audiences to town centres, let alone the post-industrial landscape of east London. Vincent has had to scrape together every penny of his own money into converting an abandoned church into the only working music hall in the country, and has succeeded against all the odds. Born 53 years ago into a hardworking traditional Irish catholic family in Galway, his first piece of luck was relocation to a thriving community in Kilburn, north west London. Here the Irish population was alive and kicking its heels up at the Galtymore dancehall and the Metropolitan Theatre. At five years old he was taken to a show and fell in love with the idea of dressing up and performing, and when his mother took him around, as a dancer, to the Irish festivals at places like the York Hall in Bethnal Green, the only thing he couldn't understand was why the audience kept laughing at him when he was on stage. Unwittingly, he had discovered what Charlie Chaplin had stumbled on, that his personality caused people to smile and his antics made them laugh.
School however seemed irrelevant in these circumstances and instead of swotting, he channelled his energies into the church, where he became an altar boy, and even joined the prestigious Order of St. Stephen at the St.Thomas Moore's church in Swiss Cottage. Dressed in the robes and solemnly swinging a censer, his parents proudly imagined the honour of a son in the priesthood, but the sound of another drum was calling, and the Guildhall School Of Music And Drama was the recipient of his hopes and dreams.
He recalled: "The realities after graduation were hardly glamorous though. I studied jazz and tap-dancing and took singing lessons from a teacher who assured me after the first session that I 'would never' sing was not exactly encouraging. Then I did a stint as a children's entertainer, which meant long hours in the back of a van touring schools and sleeping on floors or in cheap digs in the provinces, whilst trying to involve fractious children in theatrical group activities."
However, it was a seemingly trivial incident that caused a major career change for Vincent. He was sitting in a pub in Stratford-upon-Avon with Frances De La Tour (who later went on to star in Rising Damp) and two other thespians, (where they were all appearing in Henry V with the Royal Shakespeare Company). Miserable from the long hours and the pressure of constant rehearsing, they were groaning into their beer. The sight of his fellow actors so obviously unhappy decided him that theatre "just wasn't enough fun."
