A report on West End theatre, Broadway theatre and John Gielgud

The Palace Theatre, in the City of Westminster, London, built in 1891

The John Golden Theatre, Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, and Booth Theatre on West 45th Street in Manhattan's Theater District

Gielgud as Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, 1959

The London Palladium in Soho opened in 1910. While the Theatre has a resident show, it also has one-off performances such as concerts. Since 1930 it has hosted the Royal Variety Performance 43 times.

Interior of the Park Theatre, built in 1798

Centre: Marion, Kate and Ellen Terry and, far right, Fred Terry at Ellen's Silver Jubilee matinée, Drury Lane, 12 June 1906. Everyone shown was a member of the Terry family.

Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Opened in May 1663, it is the oldest theatre in London.

The Black Crook (1866), considered by some historians to be the first musical. Poster for the 1873 revival by The Kiralfy Brothers.

Noël Coward with Lilian Braithwaite, his, and later Gielgud's, co-star in The Vortex

Original interior of Savoy Theatre in 1881, the year it became the first public building in the world to be lit entirely by electricity.

Sheet music to "Give My Regards to Broadway"

Mrs Patrick Campbell and Edith Evans, 1920s co-stars with Gielgud

The Lyceum Theatre, home to Disney's The Lion King.

The Old Vic (photographed in 2012), where Gielgud honed his skill as a Shakespearean

Queen's Theatre showing Les Misérables, running in London since October 1985

Broadway north from 38th St., New York City, showing the Casino and Knickerbocker Theatres ("Listen, Lester", visible at lower right, played the Knickerbocker from December 23, 1918, to August 16, 1919), a sign pointing to Maxine Elliott's Theatre, which is out of view on 39th Street, and a sign advertising the Winter Garden Theatre, which is out of view at 50th Street. All but the Winter Garden are demolished. The old Metropolitan Opera House and the old Times Tower are visible on the left.

Mabel Terry-Lewis, Gielgud's aunt and co-star in The Importance of Being Earnest

The restored facade of the Dominion Theatre, as seen in 2017

The St Martin's Theatre, home to The Mousetrap, the world's longest-running play.

Gielgud in a publicity photograph for Secret Agent (1936)

The Royal Court Theatre. Upstairs is used as an experimental space for new projects—The Rocky Horror Show premiered here in 1973.

Gielgud and Dolly Haas in Crime and Punishment, Broadway, 1947

West End theatres on Shaftesbury Avenue in 2016

Edmond O'Brien (Casca, left) and Gielgud (Cassius) in Julius Caesar (1953)

Gilbert and Sullivan play at the Savoy in 1881

Victoria Palace Theatre (showing Billy Elliot in 2012) was refurbished in 2017.

Much Ado About Nothing: Gielgud as Benedick and Margaret Leighton as Beatrice, 1959

Gielgud (left) as Joseph Surface, and Ralph Richardson as Sir Peter Teazle, The School for Scandal, 1962

Along with New York City's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English-speaking world.

- West End theatre

Broadway and London's West End together represent the highest commercial level of live theater in the English-speaking world.

- Broadway theatre

After studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art he worked in repertory theatre and in the West End before establishing himself at the Old Vic as an exponent of Shakespeare in 1929–31.

- John Gielgud

During the 1930s Gielgud was a stage star in the West End and on Broadway, appearing in new works and classics.

- John Gielgud

A number of other actors made their West End debut prior to the Second World War, including John Gielgud, Alec Guinness and Vivien Leigh.

- West End theatre

Classical revivals also proved popular with Broadway theatre-goers, notably John Barrymore in Hamlet and Richard III, John Gielgud in Hamlet, The Importance of Being Earnest and Much Ado About Nothing, Walter Hampden and José Ferrer in Cyrano de Bergerac, Paul Robeson and Ferrer in Othello, Maurice Evans in Richard II and the plays of George Bernard Shaw, and Katharine Cornell in such plays as Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, and Candida.

- Broadway theatre

2 related topics with Alpha

Noël Coward

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English playwright, composer, director, actor, and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".

Coward (left) with Lydia Bilbrook and Charles Hawtrey, 1911

Coward in The Knight of the Burning Pestle in 1920

Coward with Lilian Braithwaite, his co-star in The Vortex and the mother of his close friend Joyce Carey

Ivor Novello, top l., Alfred Lunt, top r., Lynn Fontanne, lower l. and Judy Campbell – stars of Coward premières of the 1920s–1940s

Coward, with Norman Hackforth at the piano, performing for sailors aboard in Ceylon, August 1944

"Dad's Renaissance": Coward's popularity surged in the 1960s; this poster features Al Hirschfeld's drawing of Coward rather than the stars of this 1968 revival.

Coward in his home in Switzerland in 1972

The Coward image: with cigarette holder in 1930

Coward played in the piece in 1911 and 1912 at the Garrick Theatre in London's West End.

Tonight at 8.30 was followed by a musical, Operette (1938), from which the most famous number is "The Stately Homes of England", and a revue entitled Set to Music (1938, a Broadway version of his 1932 London revue, Words and Music).

Relative Values (1951) addresses the culture clash between an aristocratic English family and a Hollywood actress with matrimonial ambitions; South Sea Bubble (1951) is a political comedy set in a British colony; Quadrille (1952) is a drama about Victorian love and elopement; and Nude with Violin (1956, starring John Gielgud in London and Coward in New York) is a satire on modern art and critical pretension.

George Bernard Shaw

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Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist.

Shaw's birthplace (2012 photograph). The plaque reads "Bernard Shaw, author of many plays, was born in this house, 26 July 1856".

William Archer, colleague and benefactor of Shaw

William Morris (left) and John Ruskin: important influences on Shaw's aesthetic views

Shaw in 1894 at the time of Arms and the Man

Gertrude Elliott and Johnston Forbes-Robertson in Caesar and Cleopatra, New York, 1906

Dublin city centre in ruins after the Easter Rising, April 1916

The rotating hut in the garden of Shaw's Corner, Ayot St Lawrence, where Shaw wrote most of his works after 1906

"The strenuous literary life—George Bernard Shaw at work": 1904 caricature by Max Beerbohm

In the 1890s Shaw's plays were better known in print than on the West End stage; his biggest success of the decade was in New York in 1897, when Richard Mansfield's production of the historical melodrama The Devil's Disciple earned the author more than £2,000 in royalties.

It was produced on Broadway in November, and was coolly received; according to The Times: "Mr Shaw on this occasion has more than usual to say and takes twice as long as usual to say it".

Although Shaw's works since The Apple Cart had been received without great enthusiasm, his earlier plays were revived in the West End throughout the Second World War, starring such actors as Edith Evans, John Gielgud, Deborah Kerr and Robert Donat.