THE ASSOCIATE director of a theatre company based in Chiswick about to stage it's last production, fired a parting shot this week at local residents he believes have shown little interest in supporting them.

Siggi Lindal, from the Two Colour Theatre Company, which has been the resident group at the Tabard Theatre for four years, told the Times he had been disappointed with the lack of interest shown by local theatregoers: The demographics show that the people in Chiswick are theatre going people. For four years we've been running a high quality venue and shows, and still we find that at best ten per cent of our audience is local.

They want us to be here, but they don't want to come. I wonder why? Maybe it's a smaller venue and they want to go to the West End shows. But they can come here at a third of the price.''

The Icelandic actor and director showed his frustration ahead of the group's final production, a revival of their 2001 show A Walk in the Woods'.

When the play closes on May 17th, the group, which has staged 18 productions at the venue will take a sabbatical' before deciding their next venture. Siggi revealed how the entire company works without a wage, often on weekends, evenings and holidays, fitting it in between their day jobs.

He felt lack of support was one of the reasons they were moving on: The local council has no interest in subsidised theatre,'' he commented, adding that private sponsorship had also proved hard to secure, It's a great disappointment that people who work in multi-national, multi-million pound corporations don't contribute. This area is full of people with access to that money.''

Hamish Gray, director at the company took a more philosophical attitude, though he still expressed regret that more people from Chiswick had not come to visit: I don't want people to think we're moaning at the locals, and we do have a lot of loyal people in this area, and we have seen an increase but not as much as we'd like.''

Outside funding he added, had been hard to come by because of the kinds of productions the group staged: We could put on an Oscar Wilde, Chekov or Shakespeare and that would attract more people, but they're not the kind of show we want to do.The lease runs out in July and it's just time to move on.''

He revealed that owners of the venue, the Spirit Group, had been inundated with requests to take over at the theatre, but he knew little about the successful applicants.

A Walk in the Woods' opens at the Tabard Theatre on Bath Road, Chiswick, on April 29th. Call the box office on 020 8995 6035 for more details.

See page eight for the full interview with Siggi.