London Theatre: New New Cross theatre, London

Transpontine reports that a new fringe theatre is opening on the New Cross / Deptford borders, 443 New Cross Road.

Called the London Theatre (although they're trying to sell the naming rights), it will open in September and host plays and comedy productions.

The venue will be available to hire at a low cost, to make it accessible to artists, but team says they are more interested in staging rarely-performed classic plays than experimental theatre:

Our artistic director Harry Denford joined us after a number of years directing at regional theatres and has over 15 years experience in large scale theatre tours including directing a short season at London's Rose Theatre. He is also the artistic director for 'Shakespeare in The Park' which is a major large scale outside touring company, and co founder of Practical Productions which has had professional productions produced at over 180 UK theatres in the last 7 years.

Our artistic policy means that we don't take every production who wishes to hire the venue, in fact for many, we will do a 70/30 split if we feel the production is of interest to us and we could develop it for regional and larger theatre tours.

After the loss of the Hot Tap Theatre it's exciting to see a new arts venue spring up at this end of town.