“After years of surviving, and surviving handsomely, as a strictly commercial operation, the theatre is now one of the most generously subsidised regional theatres in the country, with an Arts Council grant of some £1.5 million this year. What’s more, over the past three few years, the theatre, built by the public subscription of local citizens in the early 1960s, and so often derided by some of my colleagues as being irredeemably safe and middle-class, has been winning golden critical opinions.” But the box office went wrong, the theatre’s leadership resigned, and now there’s someone new to try to fix things…