Confidence high as Brighton Dome offers sparkling autumn season

Brighton Dome’s autumn season offers acclaimed performance, champions regional artists and hosts stars including Katherine Jenkins, Chris Ramsey, Joe Marler, Chris Packham and Susie Dent.

Crucially it builds on all the momentum of a record-breaking Brighton Festival this spring.

Lucy Davies, director & CEO of Brighton Dome, is delighted with the success of May’s packed programme and with all that that means for the autumn and winter months ahead.

“I really couldn't have been happier with the way things went in May. It was really successful, breaking records in terms of ticket income and numbers. And we did some new things. We produced a piece of theatre to open the Festival and it was a massive five-star hit. “The success was beyond my wildest dreams of thinking what we might be able to do, and it taught me so much about the festival. Festival 26 was our 60th, and we did so well.”

And to an extent the same programming principles now take the venues into the autumn/winter: “I think for the Brighton Festival losing the guest director really embedded the festival into the city. The feedback from audiences and the council was that it felt like Brighton Festival really belonged to the city. It was more a perception than a fact but I think with the idea of a guest director people thought that someone was producing something that was quite abstract from the city, but the perception this year was that it was really based in the city and that it was really for the city and rooted in the city and that it was really for the artists. And it had many local artists and some real quality international artists as well.

“And it was all about the live. The festival is a supercharged version of the live, and that's very much what we carry into the autumn.

“There is a programming team and what we try to do is bring the broadest range of high-quality but also surprising and perhaps experimental work to the widest possible audience. It's an important time of the year. More people are going out, and Christmas is very special to us, and we also try to think very much about families during half-term. We have also got the Brighton Dome Comedy Festival which is massive but amongst all that we have really been increasing the part of what we do which we call words. There seems to be a lot more demand for that, and there are a lot of really great writers who are very happy to speak about what they do. It has become a really rich element for us.”

It’s a big season ahead.

“The privilege of Brighton Dome is that we are a multi-arts forum so it becomes about how do we get that balance. Classical music is very much structured for us. There are certain things that are laced across the season in terms of classical music, plus also the Comedy Festival is a massive flagship for us, and as I say Christmas is very important so it becomes about how do you then put some new things into all that, and that's what we have tried to do.”

Crucially Lucy and the team have three venues at their disposal: “The Studio and the Corn Exchange opened in 2023 (after refurbishment) and we're really taking advantage of them. The Corn Exchange is a mid-scale space, 300 to 500 seats but it is enormous. It has got the most exquisite acoustic, and it's really flexible. You can fit in 1,000 people for a gig but it is also perfect for a string quartet on a Sunday morning. The Corn Exchange is a great gift.

“The Studio is developing more and more as a space for music and a fantastic theatre offering. It's great for us to be able to bring in mid-scale touring theatre.”

As for Brighton Dome itself, Lucy describes it as a lovely semi-circular environment: “Sandy Toksvig said that she felt that being there was like being hugged. It surrounds you. It's the architecture. And it's so important to people. It is really hard to find anybody in the street that doesn't have a genuine love for Brighton Dome.”