Charity number: 1105633
Company number: 04978880
(England and Wales)
Two's Company (theatre) Limited
Report of the Trustees and Unaudited Financial Statements
For the year ended 31 March 2024
Two's Company (theatre) Limited Contents Page For the year ended 31 March 2024
| Report of the Trustees | 1 to 6 |
|---|---|
| Independent Examiner's Report to the Trustees | 7 |
| Statement of Financial Activities | 8 |
| Statement of Financial Position | 9 |
| Notes to the Financial Statements | 10 to 12 |
Two's Company (theatre) Limited Report of the Trustees For the year ended 31 March 2024
The Trustees, who are also directors for the purposes of company law, have pleasure in presenting their report and the financial statements for the charitable company for the year ended 31 March 2024. The Trustees have adopted the provisions of Accounting and Reporting by Charities: Statement of Recommended Practice applicable to charities preparing their accounts in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and the Republic of Ireland (FRS 102) (effective 1 January 2019).
OBJECTIVES AND ACTIVITIES
Objectives and aims
Two’s Company (Theatre) Limited has the following aims and objectives:
To promote, maintain, improve and advance the education of the public by the encouragement and practice of the arts and in particular the arts of drama, dance, music, singing, literature, sculpture and painting.
The company sets out to achieve these aims by producing plays, principally forgotten new plays of the past plays which date from earlier times and were written from the author’s first-hand experience, which have fallen into unjust obscurity.
Equally important is our determination to reach as wide an audience as possible, particularly young people.
The trustees have considered the Charity Commision's guidance on public benefit, including the guidance 'public benefit: running a charity (PB2)'.
1 of 12
Two's Company (theatre) Limited Report of the Trustees Continued For the year ended 31 March 2024
ACHIEVEMENTS AND PERFORMANCE
Significant activities
After taking a break last year to consider new projects, we returned, this time to a new theatre, with Don't Destroy Me, the first play written by Michael Hastings, whose The Cutting of the Cloth we had premiered in 2015. Once again this grew from the company's aim of re-discovering and bringing to notice excellent plays from the past which have been forgotten. This time it was a play first seen in 1956 - Michael Hastings wrote it during his time as a tailor's apprentice, referred to in The Cutting of the Cloth. Despite being produced in New York it had not had a revival since. Our production was greeted with a great many excellent reviews:
Hastings was just 18 and a tailor's apprentice, yet in Tricia Thorns's punchily atmospheric revival we can see why his work's raw promise quickly led to interest from the Royal Court.
Alex Marker's meticulously observed design immerses us in the claustrophobia of a down-at-heel but respectable flat in postwar London.
In a professional stage debut, Eddie Boyce blazes into their lives as the 15-year-old Sammy
Where Hastings's play resonates most, though, is in depicting lives shattered by war. The Game of Thrones actress Nell Williams in particular excels as the 17-year-old daughter, Suki, living upstairs, escaping into a fantasy world as she grapples with her mother's mental illness.
Overall, this is a poignant, beautifully acted revival. A resonant piece of theatrical history that still ignites today. Rachel Halliburton, The Times ****
It is brilliantly performed by all the cast, but it's a young man's play and oddly shaped, too passionately overdrawn out at time. A few last scenes between Mrs Pond, Sammy and Suki make it feel as if it might move to a reconciliatory, youthful hope. But Sammy's final despairing question of the universe and its meaning is what leaves us, reeling slightly, after the boiling final act.
It is an oddity, not as accomplished as his later plays, but on a freezing night bus back along the Balls Pond Road it haunted me. The director Tricia Thorns of Two's Company has thrilled me with discoveries before, at the Finborough with London Wall and Go Bang Your Tambourine (1930s and 60s), at the Southwark Playhouse with an astonishing trio of contemporaneous WW1 plays about women's work and lives, and back in the late 50s Hastings' never-performed play - subtler than this one - about his real teenage life in an East End tailors' workshop. Her directorial eye is perfectly attuned to these contemporaneous realist plays: in an age of nostalgia, sanitized bonnet-drama and overimaginative 'reworkings it is good to have such productions, and to know and feel how it actually felt to be there, in 20s or 30s or 1950s. Libby Purves, Theatrecat
One of the welcome boons of this revival is that it incarnates a fresh-faced new generation in the form of debutant Eddie Boyce, who has charm in spades. ..
The simple good-nature of the dreamy boy-hero, just yearning to play his gramophone and seize the day, narrowly persists amid the claustrophobic fray, and I'll remember the hopeful gleam in Boyce's eyes long after the play itself has faded from mind.
Dominic Cavendish, The Telegraph
The strength of this play is in its characters. Here, Hastings created a range of complex and captivating personalities that are all so fantastically brought to life by the performers, and director, Tricia Thorns.
It would be unfair to say that a single member of the cast stole the show, they all excelled in bringing the flaws and follies to life, and that's as much of a testament to the director Thorns as it is the cast. A Young(ish) Perspective ****
It's hugely satisfying to see this lost-forever world of post-war Jewish Brixton revived. ..
Tricia Thorns's ambitious production vaults us powerfully back to a particular moment in Anglo-Jewish history. John Nathan, Jewish Chronicle
This is an outstanding debut play from Hastings and if it drifts from time to time over the two hours running time is swiftly gets back on track. As the youngest and possibly angriest of the emerging Angry Young Men - John Osborne was 27 at this point - the playwright has a lot of anger to express and is forcefully on point for the inability to escape the past, consolidate the now and work out a future that isn't just a tribute act for the societal mores of a generation subsumed in conflict and loss.
Tricia Thorns directs with a forensic eye for period sensibilities and choreographs her players so well in the playing area created by Alex Marker's inventive set design: they not only fit the interior of a Victorian townhouse into the Arcola stage, but make us all feel a part of it, almost embarrassed by the family truths and discomforts played out closely in front of us.
Eddie Boyce is extraordinary in this position and it's not understatement to say that he does not look out of place in this highly skilled and forceful set of players!
2 of 12
Two's Company (theatre) Limited Report of the Trustees Continued For the year ended 31 March 2024
I thank you theatre ****
Timely revival of Michael Hastings' unsettling 1956 play that examines the legacy of war on immigrants in postwar London. .. This is a smart rediscovery by 'Twos Company http://2scompanytheatre.co.uk/site/ director Tricia Thorns and her nervily responsive cast.
David Jays, The Guardian
Staged by Two's Company, it's a drama that hums with authenticity and Tricia Thorns, directing, achieves a grainy evocation of bomb site-riddled, postwar London. Hastings (who wrote the hit play Tom & Viv) expresses sharply too the tension between generations traumatised by war, but in conflicting ways. Leo wants peace and quiet; his son wants jazz. ..
Eddie Boyce, in a professional stage debut as Sammy, invests the young character with vivid, hopeful vulnerability and brittle uncertainty. There are lovely performances too from Paul Rider, as Leo, a man buckling under his experience, Nicholas Day as the bemused rabbi, and Sue Kelvin as a worldly-wise landlady.
Sarah Hemming, Financial Times
We were delighted to present the play at the Arcola Theatre, where we had never performed before. The stage space was particularly appropriate for the play and we were welcomed warmly by the theatre staff. However, despite the enthusiasm from critics, we did not quite meet our audience target. At the time the Gaza war provoked anti-Israel feeling in London and our play about a Jewish family suffered somewhat. Also we later discovered that the slot just after Christmas was the least favourable time to perform there. However, the response from audiences was excellent.
We are very grateful for the support for the production by two charitable trusts which have funded us repeatedly - the John S Cohen Foundation and Boris Karloff Charitable Foundation. In addition we received contributions from other trusts who have helped us before: the Foyle Foundation, the Golsoncott Foundation, the Sylvia Waddilove Foundation and the Unity Theatre Trust. We are specially grateful to our loyal and generous co-producers - Karl Sydow and Tilly Films Ltd.
The company continually researches plays which fit its main aim of uncovering forgotten works from earlier times. It has several projects at different stages of development and is actively preparing a new production, in a new venue, for 2025.
We have enjoyed building relationships with theatres across London and look forward to continuing production for the foreseeable future.
FINANCIAL REVIEW
Reserves
The balance sheet shows total reserves of £10,345 at 31 March 2024. All income is raised and earned separately for each project and the directors consider this a satisfactory situation. All reserves are applied to future productions.
REFERENCE AND ADMINISTRATIVE INFORMATION
Name of Charity Two's Company (theatre) Limited Charity registration number 1105633 Company registration number 04978880 Principal address 244 Upland Road London Se22 0Dn
Trustees
The trustees and officers serving during the year and since the year end were as follows:
Graham Cowley Patricia Ann Cowley Ian Clive Talbot (OBE)
3 of 12
Two's Company (theatre) Limited Report of the Trustees Continued For the year ended 31 March 2024
Independent examiners
Andrew M Wells FMAA T Counterculture Partnership LLP Bank Chambers, Main Street Hawes North Yorkshire DL8 3QL
Approved by the Board of Trustees and signed on its behalf by
==> picture [65 x 8] intentionally omitted <==
----- Start of picture text -----
21 October 2024
----- End of picture text -----
==> picture [28 x 7] intentionally omitted <==
----- Start of picture text -----
4of 12
----- End of picture text -----
Two's Company (theatre) Limited Independent Examiners Report to the Trustees For the year ended 31 March 2024
I report to the trustees on my examination of the accounts of the charitable company for the year ended 31 March 2024.
Responsibilities and basis of report
As the charity Trustees, who are also directors for the purposes of company law, are responsible for the preparation of the accounts in accordance with the requirements of the Companies Act 2006 ('the 2006 Act').
Having satisfied myself that the accounts of the Company are not required to be audited under Part 16 of the 2006 Act and are eligible for independent examination, I report in respect of my examination of your charity's accounts carried out under section 145 of the Charities Act 2011 ('the 2011 Act'). In carrying out my examination I have followed the Directions given by the Charity Commission under section 145(5)(b) of the 2011 Act.
Independent examiners statement
I have completed my examination. I confirm that no matters have come to my attention in connection with the examination giving me cause to believe that in any material respect:
-
accounting records were not kept in respect of the Company as required by section 386 of the 2006 Act; or
-
the accounts do not accord with those records; or
-
the accounts do not comply with the requirements of section 396 of the 2006 Act other than any requirement that the accounts give a 'true and fair view' which is not a matter considered as part of an independent examination; or
-
the accounts have not been prepared in accordance with the methods and principles of the Statement of Recommended Practice for accounting and reporting by charities applicable to charities preparing their accounts in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102).
I have no concerns and have come across no other matters in connection with the examination to which attention should be drawn in this report in order to enable a proper understanding of the accounts to be reached.
Andrew M Wells FMAAT Counterculture Partnership LLP Bank Chambers, Main Street Hawes North Yorkshire DL8 3QL
21 October 2024
5 of 12
Two's Company (theatre) Limited Statement of Financial Activities (including Income and Expenditure Account) For the year ended 31 March 2024
| Notes Income and endowments from: Donations and legacies 2 Charitable activities 3 Total Expenditure on: Charitable activities 4/5 Total Net income/expenditure Reconciliation of funds Total funds brought forward Total funds carried forward |
Unrestricted funds £ 10,450 59,546 69,996 (77,759) (77,759) (7,763) 18,108 10,345 |
2023 £ - - |
|---|---|---|
| - | ||
| - | ||
| - | ||
| - 18,108 |
||
| 18,108 |
6 of 12
Re&ist8rwJ Number.. 04978880 Two's Company {Iheatre) Llmfted ststement of Flnancial Position As at 31 March 2024 2024 2023 Curr•nt aM•ts Cash at bank in h8nd 11,425 18.108 18,108 Cr•dltor•'. amounts f•Nlng due twlthln one y• 10 (1,0801 N•t currnnt ss•ts 10.345 10.345 18.108 18.108 Total a•••ts lu• cwrent M•blllll•• 10.345 18.1D8 Th• lund3 of th• chwlty Unrestrl¢ted Income fimds 18.108 18,108 Totsl fund• 10.345 For the year endwj 31 Mwch 20241he corrp8ny was entilled lo exempkn wdil under seclwjn 477of th8 Companies Act 201X relfiling to smal ctsmpanies. The membw5 118ve not required the crynpany to obtsin an aJIt of ts for the year in ques1 In a(urdan¢e wlth seclion 478. Th6 tnjslees acknthvledg8 their resporiblili8s fty c(mptyiThJ ith tr fequirem8nts of Ihe 4X resFed lo accounting r8cord$ and the preparafjon of accInts. Thes8 acthunts have b8en tryared In arxudanrx with provisirffis applicable to companies subje( to the small c(¥nP8nies' regime. Th8 financlal statern8 were approvwj and au1hr*I for i58U8 by 8oar<l aThl sNjnl on lis behall by: Graham Ci)w Trustee 21 October 2024 7of12
Two's Company (theatre) Limited Notes to the Financial Statements For the year ended 31 March 2024
1. Accounting Policies
Basis of accounting
The financial statements have been prepared under the historical cost convention, except for investments which are included at market value and the revaluation of certain fixed assets and in accordance with the Charities SORP (FRS 102) ‘Accounting and Reporting by Charities: Statement of Recommended Practice applicable to charities preparing their accounts in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102) (effective 1 January 2019)', Financial Reporting Standard 102 the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102), and the Companies Act 2006.
Two's Company (theatre) Limited meets the definition of a public benefit entity under FRS 102. Assets and liabilities are initially recognised at historical cost or transaction value unless otherwise stated in the relevant accounting policy note(s).
Going concern
The financial statements are prepared, on a going concern basis, under the historical cost convention.
Funds
The charity maintains a general unrestricted fund which represents funds which are expendable at the discretion of the trustees in furtherance of the objects of the charity. Such funds may be held in order to finance both working capital and capital investment.
Designated funds comprise of unrestricted funds that have been set aside by the Trustees for particular purposes.
Restricted funds have been provided to the charity for particular purposes, and it is the policy of the board of trustees to carefully monitor the application of those funds in accordance with the restrictions placed upon them.
There is no formal policy of transfer between funds or on the allocation of funds to designated funds, other than that described above
Incoming resources
All incoming resources are included in the statement of financial activities when the Charity is entitled to the income and the amount can be quantified with reasonable accuracy.
Resources expended
Liabilities are recognised as resources expended when there is a legal or constructive obligation committing the Charity to the expenditure.
Taxation
As a registered charity, the company is exempt from income and corporation tax to the extent that its income and gains are applicable to charitable purposes only. Value Added Tax is not recoverable by the company, and is therefore included in the relevant costs in the Statement of Financial Activities.
2. Income from donations and legacies
| Unrestricted funds Donations received Grants received |
2023 2024 £ £ - 1,050 - 9,400 - 10,450 |
|---|---|
8 of 12
Two's Company (theatre) Limited Notes to the Financial Statements Continued For the year ended 31 March 2024
Analysis of grants received
| Boris Karloff Charitable Foundation Foyle Foundation Golsoncott Foundation John S Cohen Foundation Sylvia Waddilove Foundation Unity Theatre Trust ncome from charitable activities Unrestricted funds Theatre Costs Income from charitable activities osts of charitable activities by fund type Unrestricted funds Theatre Costs Production costs Theatre writing Actors, creative team, stage Publicity and marketing Support costs |
2024 £ 2,000 2,400 1,000 2,000 1,000 1,000 9,400 2024 £ 59,546 2024 £ 22,953 4,410 2,526 37,861 8,459 1,550 77,759 |
- - - - - - |
|---|---|---|
| - | ||
| 2023 £ - 2023 £ - - - - - - |
||
| - |
3. Income from charitable activities
4. Costs of charitable activities by fund type
9 of 12
Two's Company (theatre) Limited
Notes to the Financial Statements Continued For the year ended 31 March 2024
5. Costs of charitable activities by activity type
| Activities | Support | 2024 | 2023 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| undertaken | costs | |||
| directly | ||||
| £ | £ | £ | £ | |
| Support costs | ||||
| Theatre Costs | 22,953 | 1,550 | 24,503 | - |
| Production costs | 4,410 | - | 4,410 | - |
| Theatre writing | 2,526 | - | 2,526 | - |
| Actors, creative team, stage | 37,861 | - | 37,861 | - |
| Publicity and marketing | 8,459 | - | 8,459 | - |
| 76,209 | 1,550 | 77,759 | - |
6. Analysis of support costs
| Theatre Costs Finance Insurance and Administration Governance costs |
2024 £ 49 421 1,080 1,550 |
2023 £ - - - |
|---|---|---|
| - |
7. Net income/(expenditure) for the year
This is stated after charging/(crediting):
| This is stated after charging/(crediting): | ||
|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 2023 | |
| £ | £ | |
| Accountancy fees | 1,080 | - |
| articulars of employees | ||
| 2024 | 2023 | |
| Actors | 8 | 0 |
| Stage Management | 3 | 0 |
| 11 | 0 |
8. Particulars of employees
10 of 12
Two's Company (theatre) Limited Notes to the Financial Statements Continued For the year ended 31 March 2024
9. Comparative for the Statement of Financial Activities
The comparative year values on the Statement of Financial Activites are for unrestricted funds.
10. Creditors: amounts falling due within one year
| Accruals and deferred income Movement in funds Unrestricted Funds General General Unrestricted Funds - Previous year General General |
Balance at 01/04/2023 £ 18,108 18,108 Balance at 01/04/2022 £ 18,108 18,108 |
Incoming resources £ 69,996 69,996 Incoming resources £ - - |
2024 £ 1,080 1,080 Outgoing resources £ (77,759) (77,759) Outgoing resources £ - - |
2023 £ - |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| - | ||||
| Balance at 31/03/2024 £ 10,345 |
||||
| 10,345 | ||||
| Balance at 31/03/2023 £ 18,108 |
||||
| 18,108 |
11. Movement in funds
Purpose of unrestricted Funds
General
Maintained for the general running of the charity.
11 of 12
Two's Company (theatre) Limited Notes to the Financial Statements Continued For the year ended 31 March 2024
12. Analysis of net assets between funds
| Unrestricted funds General General Previous year Unrestricted funds General General |
Net current assets / (liabilities) Net Assets £ £ 10,345 10,345 |
|---|---|
| 10,345 10,345 |
|
| Net current assets / (liabilities) Net Assets £ £ 18,108 18,108 |
|
| 18,108 18,108 |
12 of 12