Let's Put On A Show!

Their story sounds straight out of La La Land. Two young men decide to open a new independent theatre in Manchester...but will it be a success, asks JANET REEDER

- Janet Reeder

IT’S the story of two guys who just wanted to make beautiful musicals together.

Will Whelton, 28, and Joe Houston, 27, came up to the north from London with a dream to open an independent theatre.

Will had grown up in Wincle, near Macclesfield, and when he was offered a job as an assistant manager in a restaurant the pair took the opportunity to make the move back to his family home.

Both Will and Joe trained in musical theatre and met in a smash hit all-male production of The Pirates of Penzance, which was touring Australia. But after several years living in London they felt it was time to do something new and more fulfilling.

Says Joe: ‘We were falling out of love with London a bit. We were struggling with it being an expensive place to live so I suppose the decision was made at the right time. I’d never been to Manchester before and so it was scary but also exciting.’

As luck would have it, they were asked to tour again with The Pirates of Penzance by the producer, Sasha Regan, so Will never had the chance to manage a restaurant at all.

With Sasha’s encouragement they began believing they could make a small independent theatre enterprise work and after Will had produced two successful pantos at Clonter Opera, near Congleton, bringing in a whole new audience at the opera venue, they went for it.

‘In London where we had been for seven or eight years there are 80 small theatres. Up here there were three or four. There really wasn’t much happening, so we thought we could make it work,’ says Will.