Playhouse Theatre in Whitstable and the Lindley Players

The Playhouse is Whitstable’s own theatre — a handsome converted church standing on the High Street, and, remarkably, run entirely by volunteers. It is home to the Lindley Players, the amateur company who own the building and stage plays, musicals and pantomimes there, alongside visiting productions and live screenings from the National Theatre.

What’s on at the Playhouse

The heart of the programme is the Lindley Players’ own productions, which range widely — hard-edged drama one month, a musical or the Christmas pantomime the next. Around them sits a busy calendar of visiting companies who hire the theatre, National Theatre Live screenings that bring London productions to the High Street, and the occasional music concert. The company’s talented youth group appears through the year too. Current dates and tickets are on the Playhouse’s own What’s On.

Where it is, and how to book

The Playhouse sits in the middle of the High Street — an intimate house of 182 seats, with a bar (the Lindley Room) open on performance nights and step-free access throughout. You can book in person, by phone or online, and there’s a Saturday coffee morning if you’d like to look round first. For ticket prices, box-office hours, parking and what’s coming up, see our Playhouse listing or the theatre’s own What’s On.

A theatre in a converted church

The building began life as the town’s Congregational Church, a nineteenth-century church on the High Street that later became the United Reformed Church. When it was put up for sale in 1978, a small group of Lindleys saw what it could be. They raised the money, bought it around 1980, and set about the long conversion — opening it as the Playhouse in 1982, with a first production of John Mortimer’s A Voyage Round My Father. The handsome exterior still gives little away; inside is a proper working theatre, complete with a filigree balcony, its own dressing rooms and a costume department.

The Lindley Players

The company goes back further than the building. Late in 1945, with the town turning its mind to renewing the social life the war had interrupted, the Vicar of Whitstable, Canon Hillyard, invited a man named Ralph Lindley to form a drama group from the congregation of All Saints Church. The group took shape early in 1946 and, naturally enough, took his name. Lindley ran it until he left the town in 1955; the company kept going without him, performing at various venues for the next two decades while a building fund quietly grew towards a theatre of their own.

What’s striking about the Playhouse is that all of it — from the leading roles through to the lighting, the sound, the costumes and the tea-making — is done by people giving their time and their skill for free. And it is not a hobby run at arm’s length from the real world: the theatre has to make money as a business to keep its doors open, so the volunteers have had to learn to run one. They build their own sets on site, and they are, as they put it, totally self-supporting. In a town that has changed a great deal, that a group of people still come together to do this, and do it to the standard that has won them awards at the Kent Drama Festival over the years, is quietly remarkable.

Getting involved

It’s an open, welcoming company, always glad of new hands — on stage or behind it — and the Saturday coffee morning is the easy way to find out more: turn up, have a look round, and see whether it’s for you. Our Playhouse listing has the details on membership and how to join.

The Playhouse is one of the real cornerstones of Whitstable, and one of the best-value evenings out in the town. If you’ve a memory of a show there, or you’re part of the company yourself, do share it with us.