Prince of Wales Theatre

• 1. Introduction

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  The Prince of Wales Theatre sits on Coventry Street, tucked between Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square in London, in one of the most coveted strips of real estate in the West End. On the 4th of November 1963, The Beatles stepped onto its stage during the Royal Variety Show and performed for the Queen Mother and her younger daughter. John Lennon asked the audience to rattle their jewellery rather than applaud. That single night captured something essential about this building: it has always drawn the biggest names of each generation to one of the most hospitable stages in London.

  What makes the Prince of Wales remarkable is not any single production but its staying power across three distinct physical lives. It opened in January 1884, was demolished and rebuilt in 1937, then gutted and reborn again in 2004. A show now playing within its walls has already surpassed four thousand performances. The questions worth asking are how a theatre rebuilds itself twice and keeps its audience, which productions shaped its identity, and whose hands have guided it from one era to the next.

• 2. The Phipps Years

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  C.J. Phipps designed the original building for actor-manager Edgar Bruce in January 1884, naming it the Prince's Theatre. It held just over a thousand people across a traditional three-tier layout. Two years later, in 1886, the theatre took the name Prince of Wales Theatre in honour of the future Edward VII.

  The opening production was a revival of W.S. Gilbert's The Palace of Truth, with Herbert Beerbohm Tree in the cast. A free adaptation of Ibsen's A Doll's House, retitled Breaking a Butterfly, followed shortly after. Then came a moment that would turn out to be historically significant: on the 23rd of December 1886, Henry Savile Clarke and Walter Slaughter's musical Alice in Wonderland debuted here, considered the first major stage production drawn from Lewis Carroll's books. Phoebe Carlo played Alice. Carroll himself attended a performance seven days later.

  The theatre's first genuine hit was the comic opera Dorothy, starring Marie Tempest, and its run was so profitable that its authors used the earnings to fund construction of the Lyric Theatre, to which Dorothy transferred in 1888. In 1892, George Edwardes presented In Town at the theatre, a piece often credited as the first English musical comedy. Edwardes returned the following year with A Gaiety Girl, which proved even more successful. The wordless mime play L'Enfant Prodigue had its premiere in 1891, and together with A Pierrot's Life in 1897, it brought a new respectability to mime performance in Britain.

  The years around the turn of the century brought further variety: Lillie Langtry, described as reputedly the first society lady to become an actress, played here in 1885. Maeterlinck's Pelléas et Mélisande arrived in 1898 with incidental music by Fauré. Marie Tempest returned in 1900-01 to take on three title roles in a single season, playing English Nell, Peg Woffington, and Becky Sharp in separate productions. By 1903 the theatre was hosting the Frank Curzon and Isabel Jay musical comedies, and during the First World War years, hits like Broadway Jones in 1914 and Yes, Uncle! in 1917 kept the seats filled.

• 3. Stars Between the Wars

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  Ivor Novello's first play, The Rat, opened on the 9th of May 1924, and Novello starred in it himself. That same period brought a string of revues whose casts read like a directory of the era's brightest performers: Gertrude Lawrence, Jack Buchanan, Beatrice Lillie, Stanley Holloway, and Jessie Matthews all appeared in productions between 1921 and 1924. Matthews also starred alongside Richard Hearne in Wild Rose, which featured the Jerome Kern song Look for the Silver Lining.

  The run of revues continued through the late 1920s. Alibi arrived in 1928, directed by Gerald du Maurier, with Charles Laughton playing Hercule Poirot. Journey's End followed in 1929. In 1930, Edith Evans took over as manager of the theatre, presenting and starring in Delilah, though that particular production was not a success.

  What did succeed, beginning in 1932, was a series of risqué Folies-style revues. Voila! Les Dames ran in 1935, and the series concluded with Encore les Dames in 1937. These shows drew large enough audiences that the profits paid for tearing the old building down and constructing an entirely new one on the same site.

• 4. Robert Cromie's Art Deco Stage

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  On the 17th of June 1937, Gracie Fields sang to the construction workers as she laid the foundation stone of the new theatre, designed by Robert Cromie in the Art Deco style. The building opened on the 27th of October that year. Where the old Phipps theatre had been considered too small at around 800 seats, Cromie's design provided about 1,100 seats, a larger stage, and a stalls bar whose counter measured 14 metres long, complete with a dance floor.

  The first productions in the new building were Les Folies de Paris et Londres, starring George Robey, and Folies De Can-Can in 1938, running continuously until 2 am every night. Then in 1941 came a moment the theatre's owner, Alfred Esdaile, could not have anticipated: the UK premiere of Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator. The film had been banned across much of Europe, and Esdaile was fined for screening it.

  In 1943, a revue called Strike a New Note introduced London audiences to Sid Field. He returned in Strike it Again in 1944, and then in Piccadilly Hayride in 1946, which ran for 778 performances. Diamond Lil starred Mae West in 1948. Harvey, Mary Coyle Chase's comedy about an imaginary rabbit, was a success in 1949. The 1950s brought a parade of variety performers including Norman Wisdom, Peter Sellers, Bob Hope, Benny Hill, Frankie Howerd, and Morecambe and Wise.

  In 1958, Bernard Delfont and Michael Dorfman took over the lease from Moss Empires. The following year, Paul Osborn's The World of Susie Wong ran for 832 performances, making it the longest-running play at the theatre at the time. Come Blow Your Horn, starring Michael Crawford, played in 1962. Martha Graham's dance company then brought the world premiere of her ballet Circe to the stage. Funny Girl arrived in 1966 with Barbra Streisand, followed by Sweet Charity in 1967 and Promises, Promises in 1969.

• 5. Record-Breaking Runs

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  Andrew Lloyd Webber's Aspects of Love opened on the 17th of April 1989 and ran until the 20th of June 1992, accumulating 1,325 performances and breaking every previous box-office record the theatre had set. That record stood for years, until a production imported from Sweden knocked it from the top.

  Sir Cameron Mackintosh, who owns the theatre today, oversaw an extensive refurbishment completed in 2004. The work raised the seating capacity slightly to 1,160 seats, rebuilt the auditorium entirely, added new bars, refurbished the backstage areas, and fitted the theatre's tower and exterior with new LED lighting. The building was grade II listed by English Heritage in April 1999, which shaped what could and could not be altered.

  The reopening production was ABBA's musical Mamma Mia!, which had originally premiered at the Prince Edward Theatre in Old Compton Street in 1999. On the 18th of August 2007, the production surpassed Aspects of Love's record by reaching its 1,326th performance at the Prince of Wales. On the 23rd of August 2007, the run celebrated its 3,500th performance overall since its 1999 world premiere. Mamma Mia! ultimately departed on the 1st of September 2012 and transferred to the Novello Theatre.

  The Book of Mormon arrived on the 25th of February 2013 and has since become the theatre's longest-running musical of all time. The COVID-19 pandemic forced the production to close in March 2020, but it reopened on the 15th of November 2021. On the 6th of June 2024, The Book of Mormon celebrated its 4,000th performance at the Prince of Wales Theatre.