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| Address | Great Newport Street London, WC2 United Kingdom |
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| Coordinates | 51°30′43″N0°07′39″W / 51.511944°N 0.1275°W |
| Public transit |  Leicester Square |
| Owner | Consolidated Development [1] |
| Operator | JJ Goodman Ltd. |
| Type | West End theatre |
| Capacity | 350 |
| Production | The Choir of Man |
| Construction | |
| Opened | 20 April 1927 |
| Architect | P. Morley Holder |
| Website | |
| www | |
The Arts Theatre is a theatre in Great Newport Street, in Westminster, Central London.
It opened on 20 April 1927 as a members-only club for the performance of unlicensed plays, thus avoiding theatre censorship by the Lord Chamberlain's office. It was one of a small number of committed, independent theatre companies, including the Hampstead Everyman, the Gate Theatre Studio and the Q Theatre, which took risks by producing a diverse range of new and experimental plays, or plays that were thought to be commercially non-viable on the West End. The theatrical producer Norman Marshall referred to these as 'The Other Theatre' in his 1947 book of the same name.
The theatre opened with a revue by Herbert Farjeon entitled Picnic, produced by Harold Scott and with music by Beverley Nichols. Its first important production was Young Woodley by John Van Druten, staged in 1928, which later transferred to the Savoy Theatre when the Lord Chamberlain's ban was lifted. In 1938, a four-week revival of the Stokes brothers' Oscar Wilde , starring Francis L. Sullivan and produced by Ronald Adam, opened on 25 October. This coincided with a Broadway production of the play. In 1940 the ballet La fête étrange was staged at the theatre, choreographed by Andrée Howard. It has subsequently been performed over 200 times by The Royal Ballet, and by Scottish Ballet. [2]
In 1942, Alec Clunes and John Hanau took over the running of the theatre and for ten years produced a wide range of plays, winning a reputation as a 'pocket national theatre'. In 1946, Clunes teamed with author Peter Elstob to raise £20,000, which eventually put the theatre on a sound financial footing. [3]
Ronnie Barker made his West End début at the production of Mourning Becomes Electra at the Arts Theatre in 1955 which was directed by Sir Peter Hall, with whom Barker had worked at the Oxford Playhouse. Barker remained a West End actor for some years, appearing in numerous plays between 1955 and 1968. These included two performances each night as he played a gypsy in Listen to the Wind at the Arts Theatre in 1955. In August 1955, aged 24, Hall directed the English-language premiere of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot at the theatre. [4] This was an important turning point in modern theatre for Britain. Subsequently, from 1956 to 1959, Hall ran the Arts Theatre.
Between April 1962 and January 1967 the Arts Theatre was known as the New Arts Theatre. [5]
From 1967 to 1999 the Arts also became a home for the Unicorn children's theatre, under the direction of its founder Caryl Jenner. She took over the lease, initially for six years. [6] Meanwhile, adult performances continued in the evening, including Tom Stoppard's satirical double-bill Dirty Linen and New-Found-Land which, opening in June 1976, ran for four years at the Arts.
The theatre's lease was taken over by a consortium of UK and US producers in 2000 for a five-year period, and it was relaunched as a West End theatre with the anniversary production of Julian Mitchell's play Another Country , directed by Stephen Henry. Notable productions during this time included Closer to Heaven , the Jonathan Harvey/Pet Shop Boys musical, and The Vagina Monologues .
In 2011, the theatre was taken over by JJ Goodman and led by Artistic Director Mig Kimpton under the business management of Louis Hartshorn. The Arts now operates as the West End's smallest commercial receiving house, seating a maximum of 350 in a two-tier basement auditorium. [7]
In 2014, Louis Hartshorn took over from Mig Kimpton as Executive Director and alongside long standing business partner Brian Hook as Producer. Expanding over an additional floor the Arts Theatre now houses two rehearsal rooms and a 60-capacity studio theatre 'Above the Arts'.
Waiting for Godot is a play by Irish playwright Samuel Beckett in which two characters, Vladimir (Didi) and Estragon (Gogo), engage in a variety of discussions and encounters while awaiting the titular Godot, who never arrives. Waiting for Godot is Beckett's translation of his own original French-language play, En attendant Godot, and is subtitled "a tragicomedy in two acts".
Sir Nigel Ross Playfair was an English actor and director, known particularly as actor-manager of the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, in the 1920s.
Sir Peter Reginald Frederick Hall CBE was an English theatre, opera and film director. His obituary in The Times declared him "the most important figure in British theatre for half a century" and on his death, a Royal National Theatre statement declared that Hall's "influence on the artistic life of Britain in the 20th century was unparalleled". In 2018, the Laurence Olivier Awards, recognizing achievements in London theatre, changed the award for Best Director to the Sir Peter Hall Award for Best Director.
The Noël Coward Theatre, formerly known as the Albery Theatre, is a West End theatre in St. Martin's Lane in the City of Westminster, London. It opened on 12 March 1903 as the New Theatre and was built by Sir Charles Wyndham behind Wyndham's Theatre which was completed in 1899. The building was designed by the architect W. G. R. Sprague with an exterior in the classical style and an interior in the Rococo style.
His Majesty's Theatre is a West End theatre situated in the Haymarket in the City of Westminster, London. The building, designed by Charles J. Phipps, was constructed in 1897 for the actor-manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree, who established the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) at the theatre. In the early decades of the 20th century Tree produced spectacular productions of Shakespeare and other classical works, and the theatre hosted premieres by such playwrights as Bernard Shaw, J. M. Synge and, later, Noël Coward and J. B. Priestley. Since the First World War the wide stage has made the theatre suitable for large-scale musical productions, and His Majesty's has accordingly specialised in hosting musicals. It has been home to record-setting musical theatre runs such as the First World War hit Chu Chin Chow and Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera, which has run at His Majesty's since 1986, except during the COVID-19 pandemic theatre closures.
Marius Re Goring, was an English stage and screen actor. He is best remembered for the four films he made with Powell & Pressburger, particularly as Conductor 71 in A Matter of Life and Death and as Julian Craster in The Red Shoes. He is also known for playing the title role in the long-running TV drama series, The Expert. He regularly performed French and German roles, and was frequently cast in the latter because of his name, coupled with his red-gold hair and blue eyes. However, in a 1965 interview, he explained that he was not of German descent, stating that "Goring is a completely English name."
The Shaftesbury Theatre is a West End theatre, located in Shaftesbury Avenue, in the London Borough of Camden. It opened in 1911 as the New Prince's Theatre, with a capacity of 2,500. The current capacity is 1,416. The title "Shaftesbury Theatre" belonged to another theatre lower down the avenue between 1888 and 1941. The Prince's adopted the name in 1963.
Romeo and Juliet, Op. 64, is a ballet by Sergei Prokofiev based on William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet. First composed in 1935, it was substantially revised for its Soviet premiere in early 1940. Prokofiev made from the ballet three orchestral suites and a suite for solo piano.
Sir Donald Arthur Rolleston Albery was an English theatre impresario who did much to translate the adventurous spirit of London in the 1960s onto the stage.
Alexander Sheriff de Moro Clunes was an English actor and theatrical manager.
Margaret Rose Mount OBE was an English actress. As a child, she found acting an escape from an unhappy home life. After playing in amateur productions, she was taken on by a repertory company and spent nine years in various British towns, learning her craft. In 1955, she got her big break in the comic play Sailor Beware!: she created the leading role in a repertory production and, though unknown to London audiences, was given the part when the play was presented in the West End. She became known for playing domineering middle-aged women in plays, films and television shows.
Ronald Crichton was a music critic for the Financial Times in the 1960s and 1970s. He was a scion of the Earls of Erne. In his Times obituary he was described as "one of the last of the school of those cultured mandarins who were able to write and talk about all matters concerning the arts."
Dulcie Winifred Catherine Savage Denison,, known professionally as Dulcie Gray, was a British actress, mystery writer and lepidopterist.
The Piccadilly Theatre is a West End theatre located at the junction of Denman Street and Sherwood Street, near Piccadilly Circus, in the City of Westminster, London. It opened in 1928.
ODEON Covent Garden is a four-screen cinema in the heart of London's West End. Formerly known as The Saville Theatre, a former West End theatre at 135 Shaftesbury Avenue in the London Borough of Camden. The theatre opened in 1931, and became a music venue during the 1960s. In 1970 it became the two cinemas ABC1 Shaftesbury Avenue and ABC2 Shaftesbury Avenue, which in 2001 were converted to the four-screen cinema Odeon Covent Garden.
Andrée Howard, originally Louise Andréa Enriqueta Howard, was a British ballet dancer and choreographer. She created over 30 ballets.
London Ballet was a short lived British ballet company founded by the British choreographer and former Ballet Rambert dancer Antony Tudor in 1938, along with Rambert members Hugh Laing, Andrée Howard, Agnes de Mille, Peggy van Praagh, Maude Lloyd and Walter Gore.
Sailor Beware! is a comic play by Philip King and Falkland Cary. After a repertory company production in Worthing in 1954, it opened in the West End of London on 16 February 1955 and ran for 1,231 performances.
George Laurier Lister, OBE was an English theatre writer, actor, director and producer, best known for a series of revues presented in London in the late 1940s and 1950s. He was later associated with Laurence Olivier in the West End and at the Chichester Festival. From 1964 to 1975 he was director and administrator of the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford.
Bessie Love (1898–1986) was an actress whose career began in silent films, and continued into sound films, radio, and television. She was also active in the theatre. Her early career was exclusively in American film; after she moved to England in 1935, she performed in productions made only in the U.K., and British productions made in Europe.
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