A report on West End theatre

The Palace Theatre, in the City of Westminster, London, built in 1891
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.
Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Opened in May 1663, it is the oldest theatre in London.
Original interior of Savoy Theatre in 1881, the year it became the first public building in the world to be lit entirely by electricity.
The Lyceum Theatre, home to Disney's The Lion King.
Queen's Theatre showing Les Misérables, running in London since October 1985
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.
The exterior of the Old Vic
The Royal Court Theatre. Upstairs is used as an experimental space for new projects—The Rocky Horror Show premiered here in 1973.
West End theatres on Shaftesbury Avenue in 2016
Gilbert and Sullivan play at the Savoy in 1881
Victoria Palace Theatre (showing Billy Elliot in 2012) was refurbished in 2017.

Mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres in and near the West End of London.

- West End theatre
The Palace Theatre, in the City of Westminster, London, built in 1891

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Sadler's Wells Theatre, September 2015

Sadler's Wells Theatre

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Performing arts venue in Clerkenwell, London, England located on Rosebery Avenue next to New River Head.

Performing arts venue in Clerkenwell, London, England located on Rosebery Avenue next to New River Head.

Sadler's Wells Theatre, September 2015
Sadler's Wells, 1745 (Robert Chambers, p.73, 1832)
A performance at Sadler's Wells, circa 1808.
Sadler's Wells in 1879
Lilian Baylis, creator of the fifth Sadler's Wells theatre

Sadler's Wells is also responsible for the management of the Peacock Theatre in the West End, during times not used by the London School of Economics.

Poster from the 1968 Theatre De Lys production featuring a sketch of Coward

Private Lives

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1930 comedy of manners in three acts by Noël Coward.

1930 comedy of manners in three acts by Noël Coward.

Poster from the 1968 Theatre De Lys production featuring a sketch of Coward
Noël Coward and Gertrude Lawrence in the Broadway production of Private Lives (1931)
Coward in 1963
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were the headline stars in a 1983 Broadway production
Poster for the 1931 film, starring Norma Shearer and Robert Montgomery

A Broadway production followed in 1931, and the play has been revived at least a half dozen times each in the West End and on Broadway.

Prince of Wales Theatre showing Mamma Mia!

Prince of Wales Theatre

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Prince of Wales Theatre showing Mamma Mia!
The School for Scandal
Cover of the Vocal Score of Sidney Jones' King of Cadonia
Gracie Fields

The Prince of Wales Theatre is a West End theatre in Coventry Street, near Leicester Square in London.

Greek theatre in Taormina, Sicily, Italy

Theatre

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Collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage.

Collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage.

Greek theatre in Taormina, Sicily, Italy
A depiction of actors playing the roles of a master (right) and his slave (left) in a Greek phlyax play, circa 350/340 BCE
Mosaic depicting masked actors in a play: two women consult a "witch"
Rakshasa or the demon as depicted in Yakshagana, a form of musical dance-drama from India
Performer playing Sugriva in the Koodiyattam form of Sanskrit theatre
Public performance in Jade Dragon Snow Mountain Open Air Theatre
Rama and Shinta in Wayang Wong performance near Prambanan temple complex
Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in the West End. Opened in May 1663, it is the oldest theatre in London.
Billing for a British theatre in 1829
The "Little House" of the Vanemuine Theatre from 1918 in Tartu, Estonia.
Cats at the London Palladium
Theatrical masks of Tragedy and Comedy. Mosaic, Roman artwork, 2nd century CE. Capitoline Museums, Rome
Village feast with theatre performance circa 1600
A theatre stage building in the backstage of Vienna State Opera
The rotating auditorium of the open air Pyynikki Summer Theatre in Tampere, Finland
Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London, c. 1821
Interior of the Teatro Colón, a modern theatre
The "Little House" of the Vanemuine Theatre from 1918 in Tartu, Estonia.

The first West End theatre, known as Theatre Royal in Covent Garden, London, was designed by Thomas Killigrew and built on the site of the present Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.

Laurence Olivier Award, designed by the sculptor Harry Franchetti. It depicts Olivier as Henry V at the Old Vic in 1937.

Laurence Olivier Awards

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Annual ceremony in the capital.

Annual ceremony in the capital.

Laurence Olivier Award, designed by the sculptor Harry Franchetti. It depicts Olivier as Henry V at the Old Vic in 1937.
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The awards are given to individuals involved in West End productions and other leading non-commercial theatres based in London across a range of categories covering plays, musicals, dance, opera and affiliate theatre.

Piccadilly Circus

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Road junction and public space of London's West End in the City of Westminster.

Road junction and public space of London's West End in the City of Westminster.

Piccadilly Circus in 1896, with a view towards Leicester Square via Coventry Street. London Pavilion is on the left, and Criterion Theatre on the right
London's Piccadilly Circus in 1908. On the left is the old County Fire Office
Piccadilly Circus in 1949
Piccadilly Circus in 1962
Piccadilly Circus in 1970
Signs in 1992
Traffic at Piccadilly Circus
Panorama of Piccadilly Circus in 2015 from the southern side in front of Lillywhites
Illuminated signs of Piccadilly Circus at dawn, 2014
Tourists sitting on the steps of the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain
Facade of the London Pavilion in 2002
The view from Picadilly Circus onto Regent Street, December 2020
Roof of the County Fire Office, with dome and statue of Britannia
Inside Piccadilly Circus tube station
Ai Weiwei launches CIRCA 2020, chaired by Norman Rosenthal and founded by Josef O'Connor.
Signs in Piccadilly Circus, as seen in 2012.

The junction has been a very busy traffic interchange since construction, as it lies at the centre of Theatreland and handles exit traffic from Piccadilly, which Charles Dickens Jr. described in 1879: "Piccadilly, the great thoroughfare leading from the Haymarket and Regent-street westward to Hyde Park-corner, is the nearest approach to the Parisian boulevard of which London can boast."

The National Theatre from Waterloo Bridge

Royal National Theatre

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One of the United Kingdom's three most prominent publicly funded performing arts venues, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal Opera House.

One of the United Kingdom's three most prominent publicly funded performing arts venues, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal Opera House.

The National Theatre from Waterloo Bridge
Axis view of Royal National Theatre to Olivier Theatre fly tower
Detail of the National Theatre showing the grain of the formwork
Denys Lasdun's building for the National Theatre – an "urban landscape" of interlocking terraces responding to the site at King's Reach on the River Thames to exploit views of St Paul's Cathedral and Somerset House.
Laurence Olivier became the first Artistic Director of the National Theatre in 1963. Shown in a photograph by Carl Van Vechten, 1939
Facing east; towards the City of London, from Waterloo Bridge. Showing St. Paul's, and other major City buildings – to the right, the illuminated National Theatre.
An artistic lighting scheme illuminating the exterior of the building
The statue of Laurence Olivier as Hamlet was unveiled in September 2007
The terrace entrance between the mezzanine restaurant level and the Olivier cloakroom level, reached from halfway up/down Waterloo Bridge
The main entrance on the ground floor
The ensemble shows a varying range of geometric relationships.
River Thames and Waterloo Bridge, with National Theatre, centre-right

He went on to take over the Memorial Theatre at Stratford, and to create the permanent Royal Shakespeare Company, in 1960, also establishing a new RSC base at the Aldwych Theatre for transfers to the West End.

Act IV: Mrs Arbuthnot strikes Lord Illingworth

A Woman of No Importance

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A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde is "a new and original play of modern life", in four acts, first given on 19 April 1893 at the Haymarket Theatre, London.

A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde is "a new and original play of modern life", in four acts, first given on 19 April 1893 at the Haymarket Theatre, London.

Act IV: Mrs Arbuthnot strikes Lord Illingworth
Programme for the first run, 1893
Herbert Beerbohm Tree as Lord Illingworth, 1907 revival
Act II: Dr Daubeny and Lady Hunstanton
Act III: "He is your own father!"
Mrs Arbuthnot strikes Lord Illingworth
Viola Tree (Hester Worsley) and Charles Quartermaine (Gerald Arbuthnot), 1907 revival at His Majesty's

Wilde's first West End drawing room play, Lady Windermere's Fan, ran at the St James's Theatre for 197 performances in 1892.

Les Misérables (musical)

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Sung-through musical and an adaptation of Victor Hugo's 1862 novel of the same name, by Claude-Michel Schönberg , Alain Boublil, Jean-Marc Natel (original French lyrics) and Herbert Kretzmer (English lyrics).

Sung-through musical and an adaptation of Victor Hugo's 1862 novel of the same name, by Claude-Michel Schönberg , Alain Boublil, Jean-Marc Natel (original French lyrics) and Herbert Kretzmer (English lyrics).

The drawing of Cosette by Émile Bayard that served as the model for the musical's emblem.
Julie Lund as Éponine in a Danish production of the musical
John Owen-Jones as Jean Valjean
The Palais des Sports, now Dôme de Paris, in Paris where the musical was first performed.
Les Misérables at Sondheim Theatre in London

Its English-language adaptation by producer Cameron Mackintosh has been running in London since October 1985, making it the longest-running musical in the West End and the second longest-running musical in the world after the original Off-Broadway run of The Fantasticks.

The Criterion Theatre in 2007

Criterion Theatre

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The Criterion Theatre in 2007
Criterion Theatre in 2007

The Criterion Theatre is a West End theatre at Piccadilly Circus in the City of Westminster, and is a Grade II* listed building.