West End theatre

History

Theatre in London flourished after the English Reformation. The first permanent public playhouse, known as The Theatre, was constructed in 1576 in Shoreditch by James Burbage. It was soon joined by The Curtain. Both are known to have been used by William Shakespeare's company. In 1599, the timber from The Theatre was moved to Southwark, where it was used to build the Globe Theatre in a new theatre district beyond the controls of the City corporation.

The Puritans, who regarded theatre as sinful, closed them in 1642. On 24 January 1643, actors protested the ban by writing a pamphlet, "The Actors remonstrance or complaint for the silencing of their profession, and banishment from their severall play-houses".

After the Restoration (1660), Puritan legislation was declared null and void, and theatre (among other arts) exploded. Two companies were licensed to perform: the Duke's Company and the King's Company. Performances were held in converted buildings, such as Lisle's Tennis Court. The first West End theatre, known as Theatre Royal in Bridges Street, was designed by Thomas Killigrew and built on the site of the present Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. It opened on 7 May 1663 and was destroyed by a fire nine years later. It was replaced by a new structure designed by Christopher Wren and renamed the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. One of the first actresses on the stage, Nell Gwyn, became a star of Restoration comedy.

Outside the West End, Sadler's Wells Theatre opened in Islington on 3 June 1683. Taking its name from founder Richard Sadler and monastic springs that were discovered on the property, it operated as a "Musick House", with performances of opera; as it was not licensed for plays. In the West End, the Theatre Royal Haymarket opened on 29 December 1720 on a site slightly north of its current location, and the Royal Opera House opened in Covent Garden on 7 December 1732. 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." Another musical show, Tom and Jerry, or Life in London (1821), was the first London production to reach 100 consecutive performances. Tom and Jerry's combination of a tour of London interspersed with song and dance, gave rise to numerous similar, loosely constructed entertainments, and "planted the seeds for later musical comedy and revue". In 1823, Presumption; or, the Fate of Frankenstein, the first adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, was staged at the English Opera House (renamed the Lyceum Theatre in 1834) by Richard Brinsley Peake, who also introduced the line "It lives!". Shelley attended a performance on 29 August 1823 and following the success of the play she wrote, "lo & behold! I found myself famous!".

Theatreland

"Theatreland", London's main theatre district, contains approximately 40 venues and is located in and near the heart of the West End of London. It is traditionally defined by the Strand to the south, Oxford Street to the north, Regent Street to the west, and Kingsway to the east. However, a few other nearby theatres are also considered "West End" despite being outside the area proper; an example is the Apollo Victoria Theatre, in Westminster. Prominent theatre streets include Drury Lane, Shaftesbury Avenue and the Strand. The works staged are predominantly musicals, classic and modern straight plays, and comedy performances.

Many theatres in the West End are of late Victorian or Edwardian construction and are privately owned. Many are architecturally impressive, and the largest and best maintained feature grand neo-classical, Romanesque, or Victorian façades and luxurious, detailed interior design and decoration. Theatre names, such as Empire, Lyceum, Palladium, Alhambra and Hippodrome, emphasised a grandeur of scale.

However, owing to the age of the buildings, leg room is often cramped, and audience facilities such as bars and toilets are often much smaller than in modern theatres. The protected status of the buildings and their confined urban locations, combined with financial constraints, make it very difficult to make substantial improvements to the level of comfort offered. Delfont Mackintosh Theatres, which owns eight London theatres, refurbished all of their theatres beginning with the Prince Edward Theatre in 1992, with the group's owner, Sir Cameron Mackintosh, later producing the stage musical Mary Poppins (having acquired the rights from the book's author P. L. Travers) in the same theatre. In 2003, the Theatres Trust estimated that an investment of £250 million over the following 15 years was required for modernisation, and stated that 60% of theatres had seats from which the stage was not fully visible.

Starting in 2004, there were several incidents of falling plasterwork, or performances being cancelled because of urgent building repairs being required. These events culminated in the partial collapse of the ceiling of the Apollo Theatre in December 2013. Of these earlier incidents, only one led to people being hurt, but at the Apollo 76 people needed medical treatment for their injuries. A number of West End theatres have undergone refurbishments, including the Victoria Palace Theatre following the run of Billy Elliot in 2016. The Dominion Theatre refurbishment was completed in 2017 with the unveiling of a new double-sided LED screen, the largest and highest resolution projecting screen on the exterior of a West End theatre.

Long-running shows

The length of West End shows depends on ticket sales. Agatha Christie's murder mystery play The Mousetrap is the longest-running production in the West End and the world, and has been performed continuously since 1952. The longest-running musical in West End history is Les Misérables, produced by Cameron Mackintosh, which has been running in London since October 1985. It overtook Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats, which closed in 2002 after running for 8,949 performances and 21 years, as the longest-running West End musical of all time on 9 October 2006. Other long-runners include Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera, Willy Russell's Blood Brothers, and Catherine Johnson's ABBA-inspired jukebox musical Mamma Mia! which have also subsequently overtaken Cats.

Running since 2011, Matilda the Musical, an adaptation of Roald Dahl's Matilda, won a then-record seven Olivier Awards in 2012. Running since 2016, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, a two-part play written by Jack Thorne based on an original story by J. K. Rowling, won a record-breaking nine Olivier Awards in 2017.

List of West End theatres

An * after the opening date indicates that the listed production has yet to open and is scheduled for the given date at that theatre.

An * after the closing date indicates that there is another show scheduled for that theatre.

If the next show planned is not announced, the applicable columns are left blank.

Upcoming productions

The following shows are confirmed as future West End productions. The theatre in which they will run is either not yet known or currently occupied by another show.

London's non-commercial theatres

The term "West End theatre" is generally used to refer specifically to commercial productions in Theatreland. However, the leading non-commercial theatres in London enjoy great artistic prestige. These include the National Theatre, the Barbican Centre, Shakespeare's Globe (including the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse), the Old Vic, Royal Court Theatre, Sadler's Wells Theatre, and the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre. These theatres stage a high proportion of straight drama, Shakespeare, other classic plays and premieres of new plays by leading playwrights—for example David Hare's play Pravda starring Anthony Hopkins which was described by The Telegraph as "one of the biggest hits in the history of the National Theatre." Successful productions from the non-commercial theatres sometimes transfer to one of the commercial West End houses for an extended run.

The Royal Opera House is widely regarded as one of the world's great opera houses, with its current incarnation opened in 1858. Commonly known simply as Covent Garden due to its location, it is home to the Royal Opera, Royal Ballet and a resident symphony orchestra, and hosts guest performances from other leading opera, ballet and performance companies from around the world. In 1735 its first season of operas, by George Frideric Handel, began and many of his English oratorios were specifically written for Covent Garden and had their premieres here.

Likewise, the London Coliseum is the resident home to the English National Opera. The theatre is also the London base for performances by the English National Ballet, who perform regular seasons throughout the year when not on tour. The Peacock Theatre is located on the edge of the Theatreland area. Now owned by the London School of Economics and Political Science, it is used in the evenings for dance performances by Sadler's Wells, who manage the theatre on behalf of the school.

Other London theatres

There are a great number of stage productions in London outside the West End. Much of this is known as fringe theatre (referred to as Off West End) which is the equivalent of off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway theatre in New York City. Among these are the Menier Chocolate Factory, Bush Theatre and the Donmar Warehouse. Fringe venues range from well-equipped small theatres to rooms above pubs, and the performances range from classic plays, to cabaret, to plays in the languages of London's ethnic minorities. The performers range from emerging young professionals to amateurs. Productions at the Donmar included the 1980 play Educating Rita which starred Julie Walters in the title role before she reprised the role in the 1983 film.

There are many theatres located throughout Greater London, such as the Lyric Hammersmith, Theatre Royal Stratford East, the Rose Theatre Kingston, the New Wimbledon Theatre, the Rudolph Steiner Theatre in Westminster, the Ashcroft Theatre in Croydon, the Secombe Theatre in Sutton, the Churchill Theatre in Bromley and the Hackney Empire in Hackney.

The theatre at the Royal Polytechnic Institution (now the University of Westminster) in Regent Street saw the first public demonstration of "Pepper's ghost"—a method of projecting the illusion of a ghost into a theatre (named after its developer John Henry Pepper)—during an 1862 Christmas Eve theatrical production of the Charles Dickens novel, The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain, which caused a sensation among those in attendance.

London theatres outside the West End also played an important role in the early history of drama schools. In 1833, actress Frances Maria Kelly managed the Royal Strand Theatre in Westminster where she funded and operated a dramatic school, the earliest record of a drama school in England. In 1840, she financed the Royalty Theatre in Soho which opened as Miss Kelly's Theatre and Dramatic School.

Awards

There are a number of annual awards for outstanding achievements in London theatre:

Laurence Olivier Awards

Standard Theatre Awards

WhatsOnStage Awards

Critics' Circle Theatre Awards

Ian Charleson Awards

National Dance Awards

West End Frame Awards