On Tour in Oxford: A Home for the Run

Touring companies have a word for where they sleep, and it is not a flattering one. Digs. The word carries decades of narrow single beds, shared bathrooms and landladies with views on noise after eleven. Actors and crew have been putting up with it because a run lasts weeks and the alternative, a hotel for a whole company, is out of reach for most productions.

We started hosting touring companies in Oxford almost by accident, when a company manager wrote to ask whether a three-bedroom apartment might take a small cast for a month. It could, and it did, and the requests kept coming. This is what we have learned about housing a production well.

Oxford as a touring city

Oxford’s two main houses, the Playhouse on Beaumont Street and the New Theatre on George Street, sit a few minutes’ walk apart in the centre. Runs range from a week to a month; rehearsal periods and get-ins add days at either end. The city is compact, walkable and, importantly for anyone working nights, quiet after the last train. Our Oxford apartments are within an easy walk or a short bus of both theatres, which matters at half past ten on a wet Tuesday.

Why apartments, not rooms

A production needs different things from its accommodation at different hours. Rest during the day, when a hotel is at its noisiest. A kitchen for the meal at midnight that no restaurant is open for. A living room where a company can read notes, run lines or simply sit together without booking a function suite. A washing machine, because costumes are not the only things that need laundering after a week of matinées.

Our apartments have two or three bedrooms, full kitchens, proper sofas and blackout-capable bedrooms. They are designed in a soft-minimal register, with oak, linen and calm colour, and they are quiet. Company managers tell us that cast members sleep, which is the point.

The arithmetic for a production

For a company of four to six, a serviced apartment for a month is usually a fraction of the cost of the equivalent hotel rooms, and the kitchen brings the per-diem down further. We price monthly stays as monthly stays, with weekly housekeeping and linen included. We do not add resort fees or charge for the third person on the sofa bed.

We can host an entire small company across a couple of apartments, or the principals in one and the crew in another. Where a run is shorter than a month, reach out and we will see what we can do.

How we work with company managers

One contact, one invoice, one set of keys per apartment with self check-in at whatever hour the get-in finishes. We will stock the kitchen for the first night if you send a list. Mid-run changes of personnel are fine; tell us who is arriving and when. If someone needs an extra week after the run ends, we will try to make it work.

We have hosted ensembles, two-handers, a touring opera’s chorus and a design team in for a fit-up. Each needed something slightly different, and the apartments flexed.

London, too

The same approach applies in London, where our apartments in Fitzrovia and Marylebone are within reach of the West End and the Bloomsbury rehearsal rooms. A company transferring from Oxford to town can keep the same standard in both cities, which is rarer than it should be.

A note for producers

If you are planning a tour that passes through Oxford or London next season, write to us early with the dates and the size of the company. We hold apartments for productions where we can and are honest when we cannot. A good run deserves good sleep.

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