Bristol Ooooooold Vic

With a building as old as we are, we’ve had many visitors throughout the years, some of which have made Bristol Old Vic their permanent home.

See it’s not just people who are welcome at Bristol Old Vic, it turns out that ghosts are rather partial to a spot of theatre too.    

Our relationship with ghosts spans throughout many years, some actors and staff have even had paranormal experiences here. Read on… if you dare...

The Ghost of Sarah Macready 

One instance of a paranormal encounter happened in the 90’s, when one actor came on stage 5 pages early because she felt safer on stage with the other actors, and in front of the 600 people in the audience, than in the wings (our ghosts are friendly, promise!).  

Several actors have seen a woman sat in the auditorium who disappears, or whom no one else can see. They all describe her in the same way ‘A long black dress, high black collar, hair tied up in a bun with a centre parting and no makeup'. People claim she is the famous 18th-century tragedian Sarah Siddons, but she only performed here a handful of times, so it makes more sense for it to be Sarah Macready, actress and manager of the theatre for almost 20 years.

Sarah’s Story 

Sarah’s relationship with our theatre started in 1819, when she was still Sarah Ashton Desmond and a member of William Macready’s touring theatre company. Although Sarah had a mixed response to her performances at other provincial theatres, she was well-received in Bristol. The Bristol Mercury deemed her portrayal of Lady Macbeth in May 1819 as ‘infinitely more striking’ than Sarah Siddons.  

William Macready and Sarah Ashton Desmond married in November 1821 and he left his theatre business to her when he died 8 years later.  

But, the proprietors’ didn’t think a woman could manage a theatre (we’ve had a word since) which meant the theatre endured two financially disastrous interim managers before making Sarah lessee and manager of the Bristol Theatre Royal in 1834.  

She was just what the theatre needed and it thrived under her stewardship. Having been an actor herself, Sarah was familiar with the unorthodox taste of the Bristol audience (nothing changes), and frequently travelled to London to drum up new entertainment and interesting new performances. Sarah was resourceful and kept the theatre afloat despite the economic decline of King Street and surrounding area.  

Playbills at the Bristol Archives show that if you stayed in your seats at the end of the second performance (which would finish at 11:30pm), you were then invited to witness a live sailors’ hornpipe dance to round off your evening’s entertainment. Now this was never a guarantee because Sarah would get the second show started, then exit the theatre and chat up the sailors, promising them a bottle of beer if they would come and dance on the stage! Since the only thing that made this work was Sarah’s natural charisma, it’s clear that she must have been a very charming lady indeed.  

As the manager of the theatre, part of Sarah’s job was to lock up the theatre at night after all the audience had gone home. This brings us back to the ghosts (after all, this wouldn’t be an article about ghosts without them!). 

Ghostly Goings On  

One night, Tony, the security guard (who didn’t believe in ghosts at all) was patrolling the dark theatre with his trusty companion, an Alsatian dog called Rex, when he felt a sudden draft. He thought someone had left a door open, but then he noticed Rex had rooted himself to the floor. It was very dark in the theatre and all he had was a beam of light from his torch, so he shone the light around. Suddenly, Rex began to bark and growl, so he turned round and said “be quiet” and just as he said it he heard a woman’s voice from behind him say “get out!”.  

Thinking that a door had been left open and this was just someone outside, he took another couple of steps forward. Suddenly, the temperature changed and he felt completely cold from head to toe. He was still going to ignore this, a door must be open after all (c’mon Tony! Think man!) – but suddenly a waft of musty lavender perfume came right across his face (poor old Rex began to go berserk). As Tony turned to walk forward he heard the same woman’s voice again, “Get Out!” - but this time as she spoke, he felt her breath on his face, as if she was right next to him.  

It was at that moment Tony turned and ran, with Rex in tow.  

So that’s why we believe the ghost is Sarah Macready and not Sarah Siddons, because her job as a house manager was to go down to the pit passageways and tell any people lurking after the show to ‘get out’. Maybe she thought Tony was an audience member who had just lost his way…

Famous friends 

This wasn’t the only time Sarah Macready’s ghost has been spotted at the theatre. Samantha Bond recalled her time as a student at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School in a 2012 interview with the Independent. She was busy working on her final degree show and said that during the dress rehearsal: “I was sure I had seen a figure in one of the boxes. I then bumped into a fellow student in a silken dress. When I turned my head to apologise, the fellow student simply wasn’t there! Was it the ghost of Sarah Siddons? I hope so! I still hope so”. Well Samantha, we believe it was definitely the ghost of a Sarah, but Sarah Macready.  

It seems Sarah Macready likes to surprise those who least expect it. During our redevelopment in 2012, the ghost of Sarah Macready also appeared to the architect leading the redevelopment, Andrzej Blonski. During an interview with the BBC, Andrzej said that “he has never believed in ghosts and - prior to their meeting - was not aware of her legacy at the Bristol Old Vic".  

She was wearing a long, white crinoline dress and had her black hair down, but when he tried to speak to her she vanished. While she appeared annoyed at the Security Guard and others who have seen her ghost, she smiled at Andrzej – we like to believe this was because she was pleased with the work and feels at home again. 

Extra Halloween bonus:  

Bristol Old Vic was built on marshland beyond the city wall. When the plague struck Bristol in the mid 1300s, a lot of bodies were thrown over the wall and buried in this area. This means we’ve found several skeletons around the site during various different renovations! One member of staff recalls leaving the theatre for lunch; he stopped to chat to the building works supervisor, only to be interrupted by a builder who approached them with a human skull on his shovel!  

They found 4 more skeletons before realising it was a mass grave for plague victims.