The time home-theatre performances competed with home-video

“Get the popcorn,” cried mum, as she settled down on the sofa with her arm hooked round her youngest.

Dad bustles into the living room and pops a big bowl of popcorn on the table.

Mum’s eyebrows raise at the hiss of an opening can of beer, dad smiles as he ignores her.

“Everyone ready?” he asks. There is a happy cry of ‘yes’

“Okay then, let’s go.”

The lights dim, the family falls silent and in the corner of the living room a small orchestra strikes up the overture for Phantom of the Opera.

The cast strides in from the dining room and so begins a wonderful evening of theatre…in a suburban living room.

“In 1988, home video was killing theatre,” remembers Stewart James, the man who opened a number of Theatrebox play rental outlets in the South of England.

“Oh sure, people would still come into London to watch Les Miserables, but reluctantly, they’d rather be watching a ten-part TV version without the songs, but as that was the stuff of a madman’s dreams, they’d come to the West End.”

“But, a few people coming to see Les Mis wasn’t enough. Theatre was in decline.”

One evening, Stewart was at home when his children decided to put on a play for the entertainment of their parents.

“It was awful,” remembered Stewart, “mainly a series of jokes about my youngest daughter’s flatulence, but it gave me an idea.”

He leased a huge retail space in the centre of Brighton, and hired a number of actors and small sets.

“We had sets for about six different plays set up in the main display area and actors would play short scenes from the plays continuously. People could pop in and watch the scenes and decide which plays to take home with them.”

Behind the store was a huge warehouse full of actors and sets, so there was always enough of the really popular plays.

“We’d charge thirty-five pounds a night, forty for a musical. Yes, it’s more than renting a video but loads cheaper than schlepping into the West End.”

The home-theatre performance was a hit and Stewart bought another Theatrebox and another until he had twelve different stores bringing plays into front rooms across the South of England.

“For a few years there in the mid-nineties, we gave home-video a run for it’s money.”

However, in 1998, ironically, it was a Hollywood actor that brought Theatrebox down.

“Nicole Kidman, in that bloody Blue Room play when she strides about in the altogether. Well, we couldn’t compete with that, and having a top Hollywood star come and take their clothes off in a play in your front room? It was just prohibitively expensive.”

With the only way to see Nicole Kidman in the nude being a trip to the theatre or to rent a mediocre Stanley Kubrick film, the public fell out of love with Theatrebox and in 2001, the final branch closed.

However, for a number of families, the nineties will be forever defined by Tony Blair, Blur vs Oasis, and a performance Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls in the front room.