The ‘incredible’ Upper Street venue was given a special send-off on Sunday

STARS of stage and screen bade an ­emotional farewell to the capital’s longest-serving pub theatre after the curtain came down at the venue for the final time.

Actors Mark Gatiss, Steven Berkoff, and Dame Janet Suzman were at the King’s Head in Upper Street, Angel, on Sunday.

The theatre, which has been going for 53 years, is moving into a new purpose-built, air-conditioned 200-seater room.

It was first set up by Dan Crawford, a trailblazing owner-founder, and has helped spawn the careers of acting greats including Hugh Grant, Alan Rickman, Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders.

Steven Berkoff [Jake Bush]

“There’s a flame here that needs to be preserved,” said Mr Gatiss, who has lived opposite the theatre since 1990.

He celebrated the theatre’s “incredible 53-year history of innovation and risk”, asking whether pub theatres, which he said were known as “black box theatres”, were becoming a thing of the past.

He said: “This kind of place has been with us forever, but it’s hard to know whether that sort of thing is vanishing now. Are people expecting something different?”

Hollywood “bad guy” Mr Berkoff, who has appeared in films including Beverly Hills Cop, Rambo and Octopussy, delivered a 25-minute speech without notes, detailing his love for the place and Mr Crawford.

Guest assistant directors Tom Ratcliffe and David Cumming with Sherlock actor Mark Gatiss

Speaking to the Tribune afterwards, he said: “I knew they were doing [the closing event] a few weeks ago and I felt I had to take part because the King’s Head was so much a part of my youth and I did plays here and I started experimenting; it was so much a part of my life [I thought] I’ve got to [be here].”

Mr Berkoff was a friend of Mr Crawford, who opened the KHT in 1970, and died from cancer, aged 62, in 2005. He, along with Tom Stoppard and Ned Sherrin, have all staged plays there.

Executive producer at the KHT, Sofi Berenger, said they had little choice but to move on to a new business model and leave their home of 50 years because they had stopped making money from alcohol sales since the pub was sold to Young’s in 2014.

Former Dr Who Companion Katy Manning

She explained how, when Mr Crawford started out, there were lots of independent pub owners who “just loved theatre” and ran small playhouses on the principle “the beer funded the theatre and the theatre funded the beer”, but said that “perfect eco-system” is now at risk.

“Big corporations kind of own everything now. London isn’t owned by independent people like that anymore,” she added.

Young’s plan to turn the old theatre room into a dining space.

Damien Devine, who has run the Old Red Lion theatre pub in St John Street for 23 years and leases the pub from Heineken, said pub playhouses should be cherished as the “lifeblood of theatre”.

Sofi Berenger with assistant producer Zoe Weldon

He added: “It’s where people for the first time cut their teeth, whether it’s writing a play the first time, directing a play, acting in a play, or some of the technical support.”

He warned the pub theatre model was “definitely at risk” and said without protection “they will die”. “And it will be like cutting a plant off at the roots,” he added. “You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone, and once it’s gone everyone will lament it and suddenly realise the function that it performed.”

He suggested the West End theatres could do more to support fringe stages.

Heather Jeffery, editor of London Pub Theatres magazine, which she founded eight years ago, said she was “very disappointed” the KHT had closed as it was a “very special space that everybody loved”.