“Well said, Grant. You've hit the nail on the head there: it's the people of Derby that are suffering throughout this. Derby Playhouse is for them, first and foremost. The situation for the city is beyond embarrassing. Let's get theatre back on that stage.”

“I have watched this debacle develop over the past few months with increasing dismay. Surely the time has come for the administrator to take a firm hold on this farcical sitaution. Whatever your views on the quality of the work produced at the Playhouse over the past few years, it is now failing in its remit - Derby does not have a working theatre.
The Board which took the company into administration failed. Either its members knew of the financial problems facing the company or they were not informed by the executive management - whichever it was, they didn't do their job, either by commission or omission. It is not appropriate to blame funding bodies for not coming up with money in advance, when you are already well into the red.
The executive management failed to balance the books, regardless of the all the hype we were given. I thought that they were employed, not only to produce first class theatre, but also to stabilise the financial position if the Playhouse.
It now seems that we have to stand on the sidelines while the players in this farce defend their own positions and waste time, with Derby and its theatre-going public deprived of a major venue.
None of the parties involved comes out of this particularly well, but the executive management had their opportunity and failed in a very significant element of their responsibility. In most normal operations, they would have been out of a job a long time ago.
The Board failed to get a handle on the situation.
The council (who had representation on the Board) ought to have been active in ensuring that the finances were brought under control.
The Arts Council dithered at best.
The plan put forward by Dr Powers, with the promise of £300,000 to creditors fell at the first hurdle - they finally didn't raise the money.
Assuming that there is a realistic proposal from the Council, the administrator should call time on the whole proceedings and ask the creditors to approve something which is tangible, guaranteed and can be done swiftly. There is no point in the dubious promise of jam sometime in the future, if the bread is already moldy,
The present team should bow out as gracefully as possible and let someone work on rebuilding a theatre for the community. Its time to put ego, pride and possibly even sheer bloody-mindedness aside. Derby deserves better.”

“This whole lease scenario is bizarre to say the least. When I questioned Mr Powers about the £300000 offer openly on this forum he would not talk about the lease and the administrators do not believe it is an asset otherwise it would be shown on the financial reports by Tenon for creditors.
Clearly the revival production has made a loss as it failed to reach its 65% audience target and DPL cannot mount further productions. So who would invest in such a company?
The DPL board have lost sight of the fact that they are custodians of a theatre building which was created for the people of Derby when the Eagle centre was built and as such they should hand back the keys and let the council get on with providing the Derby and wider audience with productions created with an audience in mind.”

“For those of you who are stating that DCC should have stepped in to prevent this occurance, have you forgotten their bid for Derby Live to take over which was severely hindered by the objection of the die hard fans of DP.
Surely it would be better to have someone in control who is actually likely to keep the venue open and producing theatre rather than have it either a) stay closed or b) be sold to yet another superstore?
People are continually criticising the Derby Live concept without I believe really understanding it.
I have extremely strong connections to Derby Playhouse and was as upset as anyone about the current situation but I was able to see the positive effects of Derby Live taking control.
Hopefully now it has come to this those close minded individuals who objected in the first place may now realise it is the lesser of the two evils if the opportunity for them to take over presents itself again.”

“As 'squandering' is a matter of perception, I don't think we're really going to agree!”

“I have no problem with that Steve, provided that squandering isn't defined simply as 'something I personally don't want/won't use etc.'. Squandering money is a bad thing.”

“Fair enough, Geoff, but because you're prepared to put up with your money being squandered and just accept it doesn't mean I should.”

“Well I don't live in Derby but I have been known to buy a lottery ticket and pay my taxes. That's where some of the public money would come from so the 'out of towner' argument falls down.

But the crucial point is that lots of things that public money is spent on provide nothing for me. So what? I didn't want the Olympics or the Quad but you can sleep easy knowing that some of my money will get spent on it Steve. That being so, I hope you'll forgive me for losing no sleep whatsoever if a little bit gets spent on something you're not too fussed about.

But what most of us commenting on here want is a theatre that provides accessible and popular theatre at the venue in question, so that hopefully there would be something to tickle even your jaded palate from time to time Steve.

And that ain't going to happen while DPL have their hands on the main asset, Derby Playhouse.”

“Some of the people who regularly comment on here would have public money (from the city council) spent on their pet concern, and the galling thing is that some of them don't even live in Derby! It's not their money to spend!”

“That's absolutely the problem, Joanne. It's comments like that that really don't help. "BHL,I have the definite impression you have not been involved with the Playhouse ever". You make assumptions, but actually I have been and will continue to be very much involved. I have bought tickets. I am a paying customer. A stakeholder, if you will. And as such I should get a say in how the business is run. What sort of organisation ignores their customer base? The programming has done just that for far too long now, and nobody's bought tickets! In a nutshell, that sort of misguided arrogance has helped put DPL in the position it's in. You moan about subsidy, yet I thought DPL would just raise the money anyway, and not be a burden on the tax-payer? What's 'plain and simple' is that they haven't done that, and they lost their subsidy because of their own poor financial and relationship management.”