Why there's bit of Bankside in Kingston-upon-Thames...

Benedict Nightingale writes in The Times:
"ROSE OF KINGSTON? That is an odd name for a new theatre, akin to calling an old cinema Trixie of Balham or Ethel of Tooting. But the explanation lies in the extraordinary enterprise that the burghers of Kingston-on-Thames showed when they decided to build a playhouse in their town centre.

"They have modelled their auditorium on the Rose Theatre as excavations in the Southwark of 1989 revealed it to have been four centuries earlier. Peter Hall was impressed enough to become the theatre’s first director. As his christening production shows, his judgment is as good as ever."