West End theatre

• 1. Introduction

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  West End theatre has staged a single murder mystery without pause since 1952. Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap is the longest-running production not only in London but anywhere in the world. It plays at the St Martin's Theatre, one of about 40 venues clustered in and near the West End of London. Alongside New York City's Broadway, this district sits at the highest level of commercial theatre in the English-speaking world. In 2023, its audiences reached a record 17.1 million. Yet behind the grand façades sit cramped seats, ageing buildings, and ceilings that have, on occasion, fallen. How did a single theatre district come to define professional drama for the English-speaking stage? Why do so many of its musicals never seem to close, while plays rotate through on tight schedules? And what made one electric light, switched on in 1881, a turning point for the art of the stage?

• 2. From Shoreditch To Drury Lane

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  In 1576, a carpenter named James Burbage built the first permanent public playhouse in Shoreditch and called it, plainly, The Theatre. It was soon joined by The Curtain, and both are known to have been used by William Shakespeare's company. In 1599, the timber from The Theatre was carried across the river to Southwark and reused to raise the Globe, in a new district beyond the reach of the City corporation. The Puritans, who regarded theatre as sinful, shut the playhouses in 1642. Actors fought back in print. On the 24th of January 1643, they published a pamphlet titled The Actors remonstrance or complaint for the silencing of their profession, and banishment from their severall play-houses. After the Restoration of 1660, that Puritan legislation was declared null and void, and the stage exploded back to life. Two companies were licensed to perform: the Duke's Company and the King's Company. Some performances were held in converted buildings, such as Lisle's Tennis Court. The first true West End theatre, the Theatre Royal in Bridges Street, was designed by Thomas Killigrew and opened on the 7th of May 1663. A fire destroyed it nine years later. Christopher Wren designed its replacement, renamed the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, which remains the oldest theatre in London. Nell Gwyn, one of the first actresses to appear on the English stage, became a star of restoration comedy there.

• 3. Hits And Loopholes

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  John Gay's ballad opera The Beggar's Opera ran for 62 performances in 1728 and held the record for London's longest run for nearly a century. It has been called the most popular play of the eighteenth century. Nearly a hundred years later, in 1821, Tom and Jerry, or Life in London became the first London production to reach 100 consecutive performances. Its mix of a tour of the city laced with song and dance planted the seeds for later musical comedy and revue. In 1823, the English Opera House staged Presumption; or, the Fate of Frankenstein, the first adaptation of Mary Shelley's novel, by Richard Brinsley Peake, who introduced the line It lives. Shelley attended a performance on the 29th of August 1823 and afterward wrote, lo and behold, I found myself famous. The patent theatre companies held a duopoly on spoken drama well into the 19th century, leaving all other venues able to perform only musical entertainments. Presenters found a loophole. According to the British Library, unlicensed premises relied on silent or musically-accompanied action, physical theatre, animals and acrobatics, and so both melodrama and the Victorian pantomime were developed. The comic genre of the harlequinade drew crowds too. Its most famous performer, Joseph Grimaldi, who shaped the modern white-face clown, made his stage debut at Drury Lane in 1780.

• 4. Building Theatreland

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  The Adelphi opened in The Strand on the 17th of November 1806, one of many small theatres and halls that established the West End district. The Theatres Act 1843 relaxed the conditions for performing plays and quickened the district's growth. In 1844, the Adelphi hosted A Christmas Carol; or, Past, Present, and Future, adapted from the novella by Charles Dickens, who came to several rehearsals and made suggestions. His book had been published only weeks earlier, in December 1843. The Criterion Theatre opened on Piccadilly Circus on the 21st of March 1874. The year 1881 brought two new houses to the West End. The Savoy Theatre in The Strand was built by Richard D'Oyly Carte specifically to showcase the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan. It became the first theatre and public building lit by electric lights. The Times recorded that the success of the new mode of illumination was complete, and its importance for the development of scenic art can scarcely be overrated. Five days later the Comedy Theatre opened on Panton Street, then known as the Royal Comedy Theatre. On the 23rd of December 1886, Alice in Wonderland, the first major production of the Alice books, debuted at the Prince of Wales Theatre. Its author Lewis Carroll helped with the adaptation and attended a performance seven days later. The Duke of York's Theatre, opened in 1892, later gave J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up its debut on the 27th of December 1904.

• 5. Stars Of The Stage

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  Oscar Wilde premiered his second comedy, A Woman of No Importance, at the Haymarket Theatre in 1893, when he was among the most popular playwrights in London. His associate Lillie Langtry, the subject of widespread public and media interest, had made her West End debut in the comedy She Stoops to Conquer in 1881. In 1878, Ellen Terry joined Henry Irving's company as his leading lady, and for more than two decades she was considered the leading Shakespearean and comic actress in Britain. The New Theatre, opened in 1903, debuted The Scarlet Pimpernel in 1905, introducing a heroic figure with a secret alter ego to the public. That theatre was renamed the Noël Coward Theatre in 2006. Her Majesty's Theatre, constructed in 1897, hosted the premiere of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion in 1914, with Mrs Patrick Campbell originating the role of the Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle. In 1930, Laurence Olivier had his first important West End success in Noël Coward's Private Lives. Before the Second World War, John Gielgud, Alec Guinness, Vivien Leigh and Rex Harrison all made their West End debuts. Harrison's turn in Terence Rattigan's 1936 comedy French Without Tears at the Criterion established him as a leading light comedian. Through the 1950s and 1960s, many plays were staged in theatre clubs to evade censorship by the Lord Chamberlain's Office. The Theatres Act 1968 finally abolished stage censorship in the United Kingdom.

• 6. Grandeur And Decay

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  Names like Empire, Lyceum, Palladium, Alhambra and Hippodrome were chosen to emphasise a grandeur of scale. Many West End theatres date to the late Victorian or Edwardian era and remain privately owned, with grand neo-classical, Romanesque, or Victorian façades and luxurious interiors. The age of the buildings carries a cost. Leg room is often cramped, and bars and toilets are often far smaller than in modern theatres. Their protected status, confined urban locations, and financial constraints make substantial improvement very difficult. In 2003, the Theatres Trust estimated that £250 million over the following 15 years was needed for modernisation, and noted that 60 percent of theatres had seats without a full view of the stage. Starting in 2004, plasterwork began to fall and performances were cancelled for urgent repairs. These troubles culminated in the partial collapse of the ceiling of the Apollo Theatre in December 2013, where 76 people needed medical treatment for their injuries. Refurbishments followed. Delfont Mackintosh Theatres, owner of eight London theatres, began renovating with the Prince Edward Theatre in 1992. Its owner, Sir Cameron Mackintosh, later produced the stage musical Mary Poppins in that same theatre, having acquired the rights from the book's author P. L. Travers. The Dominion Theatre refurbishment was completed in 2017 with a new double-sided LED screen, the largest and highest resolution projecting screen on the exterior of a West End theatre.

• 7. Shows That Never Close

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  Les Misérables, produced by Cameron Mackintosh, has been running in London since October 1985, making it the longest-running musical in West End history. On the 9th of October 2006 it overtook Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats, which had closed in 2002 after 8,949 performances and 21 years. Other long-runners, including Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera, Willy Russell's Blood Brothers, and Catherine Johnson's ABBA-inspired jukebox musical Mamma Mia, have since passed Cats as well. The length of any West End show depends on ticket sales. Matilda the Musical, running since 2011 and adapted from Roald Dahl's book, won a then-record seven Olivier Awards in 2012. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, running since 2016, is a two-part play written by Jack Thorne from an original story by J. K. Rowling. It won a record-breaking nine Olivier Awards in 2017. The Laurence Olivier Awards, given each year, are widely recognised as the highest honour in professional London theatre. On the 16th of March 2020, following government advice during the COVID-19 pandemic, every West End theatre closed until further notice. Theatres were allowed to reopen with social distancing on the 17th of May 2021, and full capacity returned on the 19th of July. In October 2022, @sohoplace opened as the first new West End theatre in 50 years.

• 8. Beyond The Commercial Stage

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  The Royal Opera House, widely regarded as one of the world's great opera houses, opened its current incarnation in 1858 and is commonly known simply as Covent Garden. It is home to the Royal Opera, the Royal Ballet and a resident symphony orchestra. In 1735 its first season of operas, by George Frideric Handel, began, and many of his English oratorios were written specifically for the house and premiered there. The London Coliseum is the resident home of the English National Opera and the London base of the English National Ballet. London's leading non-commercial theatres carry great artistic prestige of a different kind. They include the National Theatre, the Barbican Centre, Shakespeare's Globe, the Old Vic, the Royal Court Theatre, Sadler's Wells Theatre, and the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre. The National Theatre staged David Hare's play Pravda, starring Anthony Hopkins, which The Telegraph described as one of the biggest hits in its history. Successful productions there sometimes transfer to a commercial West End house for an extended run. Outside the West End sits fringe theatre, the equivalent of off-Broadway, performed in venues from small theatres to rooms above pubs. The Donmar Warehouse staged the 1980 play Educating Rita, with Julie Walters in the title role before she reprised it in the 1983 film. London theatres also shaped the early history of drama schools. In 1833, the actress Frances Maria Kelly managed the Royal Strand Theatre, where she funded and ran the earliest recorded drama school in England.