Since its opening in 1911, Liverpool’s Playhouse has been inextricably linked to the history of the city in which it was built. The impetus to create it, Ros Merkin reveals in this chronicle of the oldest surviving repertory theater in Britain, grew out of the city’s new sense of civic pride and largesse in the early twentieth century. Her book asks both how the city has shaped the theater and what the theater has brought to the city, and along the way she dispels the myth that the Playhouse is Liverpool’s conservative theater, revealing that from its inception it was breaking new ground and issuing challenges.
