Leading theatre producer Nica Burns has praised chancellor Rishi Sunak’s extension of the furlough scheme until March as a “major step forward” for England’s theatres. Her venues have “been given their mojo back”, she said, despite a lockdown that will keep them dark until at least the first week of December. Burns welcomed audiences back to the Apollo in London last month with a short run for Adam Kay’s hit show about the NHS, This Is Going to Hurt. That production closed early due to the new lockdown restrictions, which have led to the postponed reopening of other shows at her company Nimax’s six West End venues, including The Play That Goes Wrong and the musicals Six and Everybody’s Talking About Jamie. Extending furlough would be “incredibly helpful for business planning and for people’s mental health”, said Burns. But she appealed for the government to give theatres as much advance notice as possible in the coming weeks about when they can reopen. Boris Johnson’s last-minute announcement, on Saturday, of a one-month extension to the furlough scheme, was followed by Sunak’s further extension on Thursday. Uncertainty had left theatres frustrated and unable to make long-term plans, said Burns. “It would have been a great deal better had the extension to furlough been announced sooner because so many companies were already in the redundancy process.” Within 48 hours of Johnson’s announcement, Burns’s theatres had rescheduled all their shows. “We are looking forward and trying to stay positive,” she said, emphasising that they had seen no dip in audience confidence despite the start of another lockdown. The vast majority of customers had exchanged their tickets for a later date rather than asked for a refund. “If I could have a dream scenario now, we would be able to reopen in December and they’d let us know in two weeks’ time,” said Burns. “And also we’d get a not-later-than date to reopen without social distancing before the end of the year.” Burns was referring to the long-awaited date for stage five of culture secretary Oliver Dowden’s theatre roadmap. Also vital for reopening major West End ensemble shows, she said, is the introduction of a government-backed insurance scheme. A significant number of winter theatre productions around England are poised to open, said the producer, but they would need to decide this month about going into rehearsals and have sufficient time to prepare. Burns stressed the importance of pantos being staged “in the regions in particular [where it is] a large part of the community”. Local theatres are at the heart of towns and cities, she added, and getting people back into them was vital, not just for those venues’ coffers. Although many of England’s beleaguered theatres have received emergency funding from the government, the second lockdown has brought severe challenges. Several theatres that had planned to welcome reduced capacity audiences, such as Home in Manchester and Southwark Playhouse in London, will now stream their shows online instead. On Wednesday, Oldham Coliseum announced that it will remain closed until 2021. The venue had planned a season of Covid-secure, socially distanced events for November but said: “We do not know for certain whether theatres will be permitted to reopen on 2 December, what the tier system will mean for the Coliseum, or if – as reported – the national lockdown is extended beyond that date.” Jon Morgan, the director of the Theatres Trust, welcomed the extension of the furlough scheme but stressed that even once lockdown has been lifted many venues will not be able to viably open with socially distanced audiences. “For those theatres in areas returning to tiers 2 and 3 after lockdown, where other night-time businesses will be closed and travel severely restricted,” he added, “reopening will be doubly challenging. Extending the job retention scheme is a lifeline for theatres and we would like to see it remain in place until stage five when theatres can welcome fuller audiences and reopen viably.”