This must be the place: creating Savoy Theatre's Greene Room

It’s not very often that audience members get to visit backstage. Even rarer to enjoy a pre-show drink in a hidden, custom-built bar backstage.

The Savoy Theatre team used creativity and innovation to solve a logistical solution involving A Little Life’s 70 on-stage audience members. What emerged was The Greene Room - a beautiful, multi-purpose space which gives audiences one of the most unique experiences in the West End.

We caught up with Mike Leopold, Savoy Theatre’s Technical and Building Manager, to discuss the theatre’s new substage bar and how it developed...

Transforming any area of a 140-year-old building is an impressive feat, but even more impressive is that the bar is only temporary. Did that present an additional challenge?

Less and more challenging than you'd think. The fact it's temporary didn’t really make a difference, as the legislation we follow remains the same, so the build quality remained the same.

I approached this build not as one-time event, but as something that could return in different capacities in the future. It's been built in a modular fashion so that it can be remounted at any time. It also necessitated a concise front of house operation in terms of movement between the bar area, front of house and the stage, and the team do magnificently well with that.

Was there any design inspiration for the Greene Room Bar, and if so, where/what did it come from?

Inspired by the show, A Little Life, we explored making it an extension of Jude’s apartment and giving it a New York feel. As time went on, we worked out that this bar needed to be a safe space separate from the show.

Because it's a substage area, there are certain things that we can't hide: infrastructure, cables and technical equipment. Rather than trying to mask that, we wanted to embrace it as an experience for our customers. We’ve created a calm and comfortable space with deep blues making it cosy and warm, and balanced that with the back of house element. We never try to fool anyone in the space as to where they are - it’s under the stage and there’s something quite special about it because of that. It feels like a space that's always existed.

What’s your favourite part or feature of this new space?

My favourite piece of the entire bar is on the left-hand side, as you enter from stage left. When we did our final risk walkthrough, we identified a floor-level trip hazard that we never knew existed until Pretty Woman left the building. I had about 48 hours to fix it. I couldn't order anything in, and didn't have a piece of wood big enough to create another poser table... So, I had to do some creative carpentry, adding beautiful curves to make sense of the corner.

Other than that, the point at which it really came to life to us was when the neon sign came in. There was a whole committee deciding on the sign’s wording and what the centrepiece would look like, so there was a real moment when we installed it and lit it up for the first time. The space really came to life. Chris Keniger, our Chief LX, has done a fantastic job down there in lighting the space to create a cosy feel.

The biggest beauty of all was to see the the fruit of successful collaboration. I merely created a canvas and space that facilitated our needs and turned a challenging space into something tangible; the collaborative efforts of the Savoy team and the wealth of time and effort put in by our wider teams, with further support from our central colleagues is what has elevated this environment from a space to an atmosphere. This space is a testament to the hard work, commitment, creativity and panache of a phenomenal team.

You've mentioned that the blueprint and the infrastructure exists, should we want or need to rebuild the space. Was making the space reusable and thinking of a future past A Little Life a main focus for you?

The space was born of necessity. It was only when I started doing the groundwork that I worked out how special it could be. 

Now, it’s become a central hub where people have meetings, spend time after work, have their lunches etc. We're already beginning to investigate the next iteration of what it might be, and how we can improve it.

The Savoy Theatre is known for its colourful design with a bright silver auditorium, and yellow and green walls front of house. Talk us through how you designed a space completely untouched by all these other areas, but keeping the character of the Savoy Theatre and incorporating a bit of a character from A Little Life too?

 Unlike a lot of other theatres, which are painted black, our entire stage and substage area is painted Midnight Blue. So, we've really tried to hone in on that. There's a history of the Savoy Theatre being that colour and we've got a real deep-seated relationship with our history, down to old pairs of ballet pumps and signatures from people who used to work here.

So, to bring the back of house area to this new space just seemed fitting. The colours selected made the space feel smaller rather than cavernous, we added warmth with walnut wood, and we’ve tried to embrace more organic materials which complement the blue. It feels warm and safe there, which is the feeling that I wanted to instil in people who visit.

When A Little Life opened at the Savoy and the first audience entered that bar, how would you sum up that feeling in just a word?

 It was a very proud moment. I was going to say ‘relief’, but that suggests that I didn't believe it would happen! The word I’m actually going to go for is ‘warmth’.

As time goes on and people begin to form their own personal relationships with the space, and it gains significance in our building and our community, it brings me a lot of warmth that I could have been pivotal in its creation.