David Hemmings at the Royal Opera House, Leicester

The actor David Hemmings met and became engaged to his first wife Genista Ouvry, who acted under the name Jenny Lewes, during a two-week repertory engagement in Leicester in 1960. 

You'll know that if you've read a 2016 post on this blog about the obscure punk single Bored by The Stains.

And, sure enough, here is an advertisement for the play they were both in from the Leicester Chronicle of 21 May 1960, though I see Jenny Lewes came out as Jenny Lewis.

There is a piece of Leicester theatrical history in that advert, because Leicester's Royal Opera House had already closed once, and apparently for good, in 1953. 

However, the building proved impossible to sell and, when the Palace Theatre in Belgrave Gate closed in 1959, the Opera House reopened for a Christmas pantomime.

It stayed open for a few months more after that, and the final play to be staged before it went dark for ever was Five Finger Exercise, which you see trailed in the notice for Hemmings's play.

You can read about the history of the Royal Opera House, Leicester, on the Arthur Lloyd site. 

I've come across a couple of films about how theatre was kept alive in the city after Royal Opera House closed, leaving no commercial venues there, and will blog about them soon.