Founded in 1939 as the Oldbury Technical School Players, the Oldbury Repertory Players puts on a year-round season of plays, musicals, studio productions and pantomime.

Now based on its own dedicated site at Spring Walk, Langley, the theatre has been developed from a disused Methodist chapel that had occupied the site since 1879. In 1956 the theatre was officially opened as the Barlow Playhouse by its then president Mrs. Jessie U. Barlow, in the presence of Sir Barry Jackson, founder of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. It now provides a main house auditorium seating 164, and a smaller studio theatre. The main feature is the auditorium, which in many respects is a miniature of the original Birmingham Repertory Theatre, with uninterrupted views of the stage. The seats themselves were bought from the Theatre Royal in Birmingham, and came from its Dress Circle. Backstage facilities, though complete, are somewhat less salubrious but the enthusiasm of the theatre's members ensures audiences are kept entertained year after year.

Back in 1939, the founders of the Oldbury players could hardly have imagined such achievements. Although there were already several amateur dramatic societies in the area, all were attached to churches, factories and schools. The fear was that the demands of wartime would mean the societies temporary closure.

Enter the founding father of the company, Harry Anderson, principal of the Oldbury Technical School. He invited Will Payne, the company's first Drama Director, to take over the School's elocution class so that those deprived by the loss of their existing dramatic societies could have a meeting point. Payne's enthusiasm ensured that things soon began to happen. Under the banner of Oldbury Technical School Players, in autumn 1939 the first production of three one-act plays was given in the Old Parish Rooms, Oldbury, entitled 'Tonight at 7.30.'

The next year saw the first full-length play, Ian Hay's comedy 'Damsel in Distress.' But audiences were kept away by that greatest of inconveniences, the Blitz, and ticket sales were poor. It seemed that the venture was doomed to failure until the production was offered to local churches, whose congregations supported performance's benefiting their own church funds by the box office's proceeds. During the war productions were extended to four nights, although the sound of air raids and explosions tended to disrupt both rehearsals and performances.

During the blackout, the company ventured outside with daytime "Plays in the Parks".

As the war drew to a close, thoughts turned to the future. In 1944 it was decided to formally establish an independent company in the name of the Oldbury Repertory Players. The move enabled the company to expand its own operations, a bold step given that it was still without a home for its productions.

Two of the company's first benefactors, Mr. and Mrs. Wilfred Edwards of Rounds Green, brought this home a step closer. They offered three rooms, rent free, at Ash Tree Cottage, which provided a rehearsal room and scene dock and became the company 5 base until 1950. By now the demand for seats for each production was such that extra performances had to be laid on. By the 1945/6 season, the programme had grown to six productions, each running for five nights with an audience membership of 400.

As audience demand intensified, the need for the company to have its own theatre grew. The severe limitations on the use of the Parish Rooms due to church functions increased this need. But then came a chance meeting.

Councillor Charles Barlow, well-respected local benefactor, together with his wife Jessie, were regular patrons of the company. One day he met Will Payne and asked him a simple but far-reaching question:
"Mrs. Barlow and I are giving a bit of money to one or two deserving causes and have put the Oldbury Rep down for a thousand. Will that be all right, do you think?" Through such generosity the initial means and motivation was given to the search for better premises. A lease was soon obtained on the Institute Hall at Langley, allowing the 1947/8 season to open with Robert's Wife for a run of seven nights.

The company's search for a theatre of its own took a new turn when, in May 1950, the Methodist Church and Schools in Spring Street, Langley (now Spring Walk), went up for sale. The property details ran thus: "A lofty chapel surrounded on three sides by a gallery, behind which a small vestry over which an organ loft and a schoolroom together with adjacent cottages." Of the purchase price of £1 700, Mr. Barlow - by now the company's president following the death of founder president Harry Anderson - provided £1530 as an interest-free loan. Members put their efforts into raising funds for the necessary work, hampered as it still was by wartime building license restrictions. After floors were torn out, staircases removed and foundations excavated, two rehearsal rooms were ready by the autumn of 1950, ready for the Institute's new season.

Eventually, after many frustrations, a building licence for Spring Street was obtained. The vestry was to be demolished and the chapel to be extended into the schoolroom. What had been the chapel was to become the foyer and auditorium, and the vestry and combined schoolrooms to become the stage and scene dock/workshop with dressing rooms and kitchen. The auditorium was a blaze of colour, with a pale blue ceiling, grey side walls and a proscenium wall in bright yellow.

Following her husband's death in July 1951, Jessie Barlow became president. She continued his very active and practical support of the theatre by discharging the debt of the loan made by Charles Barlow. Local industrialists, business people and private individuals contributed over £1000 and local companies contributed materials and even labour, notably Accles and Pollock, Metal Sections, Simplex Electric and Shipstones.

It would take another five and a half years to reach the goal, but in January 1956 the new theatre opened its doors with a triple bill of one-act plays, just as the founding group, the Oldbury Technical School Players, had done seventeen years earlier.

Oldbury Repertory Players finally had a home of its own. So began the greatest challenge to the theatre's existence, which continues today, that it must be self-supporting financially through the efforts of its members. Most of the cost of the productions, the maintenance of the building fabric and improvements to facilities have to be met from the basic income at the box office.

The 1960s saw more improvements, totalling £6000. Perhaps a bad omen of events to come, a fireproof wall was built between the stage and workshop. Also built was an outside store for scenery and stage properties, together with new dressing rooms, green room, kitchen and an entrance canopy. At this time the company's social calendar was busy. For members there were regular visits to professional theatres; there was an annual dinner dance; and end of season barbecues on the banks of the River Severn at Arley. All seemed set fair.

But in August 1972, disaster struck. A blaze started by an arsonist left the stage area roofless, the auditorium's original colour scheme blackened by smoke and thirty years' worth of effort in ruins. Members would have their work cut out for them to rebuild their most prized asset. But before any plans for the future could be realised, the company had to keep faith with its audience, which had now grown to over 1200. The productions would go on, as planned. So it was decided that the first three plays of the 1972/3 season would be held at other venues in the area.

Strangely, disasters can often turn out to be positive forces for change and regeneration. Coincidentally and somewhat fortuitously, the Warley Corporation had designated Langley for redevelopment, so the company linked up with the Corporation and embarked on an ambitious plan not only to refurbish the ruined theatre but modernise it for the future. With a building appeal fund of £35,000, down came the two cottages next to the theatre and up went a purpose-built bar attached to the auditorium, replacing the cramped "back bar" in the cottages. And future plans for a rehearsal room above the bar and a wardrobe store behind the stage were made.

So seventeen years after the opening of the Barlow Playhouse in 1956, it was reopened on 10 February 1973 with a seven-night run of Noel Coward's This Happy Breed.

The eventual completion of the extensions to the backstage facilities brought the opportunity to reorganise and expand the range of presentations. Space for storage, rehearsals and set construction had been, and remains, a severely limiting factor on the company, but with new wardrobe and rehearsal rooms, working conditions improved. It was no longer necessary, for instance, to rehearse in the cramped foyer while the sets were prepared onstage. Pantomimes and musicals were included in the ensuing seasons while a film club also operated in the 1970s, the projection box is visible today at the rear of the auditorium.

Further refurbishments and improvements were undertaken with the assistance of the Manpower Services Commission, the Black Country Development Corporation and the Urban Renewal Programme, including restoration of the Theatre's frontage.

By the 1980s the annual season had settled into a pattern of seven main house productions. In the 1990's studio theatre productions by both the main company and its youth theatre took place in the rehearsal room. The company began to look beyond its own four walls and placed successful entries in national One Act Play Festivals. The Barlow Theatre's facilities were also made available to local organisations needing performance space, schools, music groups, clubs, concerts and charity events. It has also become a regular home for the Sandwell Poets.

Over sixty years of achievement by a group of amateurs could not have been possible without the dedication of members, nor without the loyal support of audiences, on which the theatre depends. There are more plans in place to improve audience facilities and to ease working conditions backstage. Meanwhile, the non-stop work of play production will continue to provide accessible, quality live theatre in the heart of the community.

The 1972 fire

"It was summertime, about 10 o'clock in the evening. My husband and I were sitting outside, and the phone rang. I was just thinking of going to bed, so; I said: "If its for me, I'm not in". He answered and came back and said: "You are in, the theatre's on fire." So we galloped down there by the time we got to it, it was well and truly alight.

It was terrible because we'd been open only since the mid-1950s' we were just established, a new theatre. It was just a shame, no walls, and no roof. By the time we got permission to do anything we were going into the winter, and it rained when we were trying to get it back together again.

We were determined not to stop playing. It takes a long time to build up an audience. We felt that if we didn't continue to play somewhere we would lose them. But they faithfully came back to the parish rooms. The people who were in those plays after the fire had not been with us in the 1940s, and they could not believe how the company had really started from the parish rooms. It gave them a taste of what their predecessors had done to start off the Oldbury Rep."

Doreen Bastable, Chairman of Oldbury Repertory Players

"Where the bar is now was a passageway up to the backstage area and two cottages, and the yard in front of the cottages. The place was full of props and scenery of course. Apparently he got a wooden stick and some cloth and dipped it in some petrol, broke the window and threw it in.

The dreadful part about it was the amount of valuable stuff that you can't put a price on that went up. There was a beautiful grand piano given to us by the Barlows, and there was such a lot of knick-knacks that were given to us by various people. Thousands of pounds went up in the fire.

It was the actual scene dock that went, and the rest of the building was badly damaged by soot and water. We were very low. The roof had gone in, it was terrible."

Phil Smith, founder member of Oldbury Rep