IT is to be assumed that when council leader Jenny Dawe talks about the possible sale of the King's Theatre she means as a going concern.
Although with £20 million of work required to bring it up to standard she may struggle to find anyone willing to take on such a mammoth undertaking.
Despite the massive programme of modernisation required on the 100-year-old building the King's
remains a viable business. It stages one of the most popular shows in the city – the annual Christmas Panto – and retains a key role in staging major drama during the International Festival.
But its success is largely due to its diversity as a venue where it has cornered a niche market in popular productions which have seen many household names including the likes of Nigel Havers, Penelope Keith and Felicity Kendall tread the boards in recent productions.
In doing so it performs a different function from the other city venues and provides a perfect foil for the cutting-edge drama which often features at the Lyceum, opera and dance at the Festival, blockbuster productions and big name acts at the Playhouse and classical concerts at the Usher Hall.
As such, the theatre is more than worthy of support and of the council's best efforts to find a solution to keep it open.
The most likely option would be to seek to broker a similar deal to that which has proved successful for its namesake in Glasgow where the London-based Ambassador Theatre Group has taken over the running of the King's while the council retains ownership. This has not only proved a winning formula commercially but through the partnership money is being found to continually upgrade the venue.
With Edinburgh city council having set aside £6.5m in last month's budget to improve the King's, perhaps this investment may provide the carrot to woo a would-be partner and share the costs of improving the much loved building. But if control is handed over it must be on the strict caveat that the building is used for no other purpose than as a theatre. Even the merest suggestion by Jenny Dawe that it might be sold off has been enough to spark concern. Today Stanley Baxter leads the calls for its future to be secured.
With so many venues seemingly available it would be wrong to say that the King's would not be missed, as it plays a key role during the Festival. Damage the Festivals and the whole city is damaged and that is something that no-one can countenance.
