1867 The Arches 1883 Hungerford Music Hall 1887 Gatti's under the Arches 1887 Gatti's Charing Cross Music Hall 1910-1923 Arena Cinema 1928-1939 Forum Cinema 1939-1945 fire station 1946 Players' Theatre | |
Address | Villiers Street Westminster, London |
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Coordinates | 51°30′27″N0°07′23″W / 51.5075°N 0.1231°W |
Owner | Gatti family |
Capacity | 400 seated and standing 300 seated in 1945 270 seated in 2005 |
Current use | Theatre and conference centre |
Production | Visiting productions |
Years active | 1867 - 1910 Music hall 1946 - 2002 Music hall 2002 - Studio theatre |
Website | |
www.newplayerstheatre.com |
The Charing Cross Music Hall was established beneath the arches of Charing Cross railway station in London in 1866 by brothers Giovanni and Carlo Gatti, to replace the former Hungerford Hall. The site had been acquired, together with Hungerford Market, by the South Eastern Railway in 1862, and incorporated into the railway station, which opened on 11 January 1864, resulting in the demolition of the hall. [1]
The music hall was built in the substantial two-level space formed by two of the arches of the undercroft of the station, and opened in 1867 as The Arches, renamed the Hungerford Music Hall in 1883, and in 1887 became known variously as the Charing Cross Music Hall, Gatti's under the Arches and Gatti's Charing Cross Music Hall. By 1895, the hall boasted an attached grand cafe and billiard saloon. [1]
As a young man, Rudyard Kipling lived in Villiers Street, and visited Gatti's, and wrote My One and Only, for a Lion Comique [2] at the hall. His experiences in the hall formed the basis for his Barrack-Room Ballads . [3] Kipling also wrote a story called My Great and Only (1890) describing a visit he made to Gatti's. [4] He wrote that the hall held four hundred “when it’s all full, sir”. A weekly periodical for artistes, The Music Hall and Theatre, provides a review on 23 November 1889 of a variety performance: [5]
Twixt Love and Duty, Leo Dryden [6] has his hands full, to say nothing of his voice, which is equally full . . . Charles Ross, of Gaiety fame, so well known as the Dainty Champion, [7] secures rounds of applause by the rendering of his new characteristic song entitled She’s a real good mother . . . James Fawn [8] wants to know who cuts the policemen out? Why the soldier whom Fawn impersonated to the very life. He does like to be in the know, you know, equally so with his hearers, who would willingly sit out a whole night with him if he’d keep them in the know all the time, but James must draw the line somewhere, so he draws it at Gatti’s. [9]
Baroness Orczy, creator of the Scarlet Pimpernel , described a visit to the hall at the turn of the century in her autobiography:
The only hall which appealed to we two inveterate Bohemians was a funny little one under the arches of Charing Cross Bridge where aspirants to fame were given a trial with a view to a possible engagement in one or the other of the important halls. Thus they were 'tried on the dog', as the ordeal was called, and many a famous artiste started his or her career under the 'old arches'.
I remember seeing there the début of the Levy sisters, who became such favourites and made such fortunes afterwards. There was no stage at the 'Old Arches', only a platform in the centre of the hall, where sat enthroned the manager at a rostrum when he announced each item of the programme together with the name of the artiste about to perform and tapped the desk before him with a wooden hammer. The audience sat on seats and benches all round the central platform, very much as they do round a prize-ring. A few privileged members in the audience were permitted to sit on the platform with the manager, but this privilege entailed the obligation to pay for that gentleman's drinks. [10]
Not all performers were tried on the dog. Flyers show many established artists performing, for instance, Rose Hamilton, Marie Loftus (1857-1840, mother of noted film actress Cecilia Loftus), and Harry Randall (1857–1932), [11] performed in the Whitsuntide bill for 1895. [12]
As the popularity of music hall declined, the theatre became the Arena Cinema between 1910 and 1923, and from 1928 to 1939 the Forum Cinema. During World War II it was used as a fire station, and a store for the Army Corps of Cinematography. [13]
After the war, it was acquired from the War Office by Leonard Sachs for the Players' Theatre. There were no fittings and none of the paraphernalia for a theatre, but it still opened within three weeks. Regular performers included Hattie Jacques, Bill Owen, Ian Carmichael, Clive Dunn, Ian Wallace and John Hewer, and featured newcomers including Daphne Anderson, Patsy Rowlands, Maggie Smith, Marian Studholme, Marion Grimaldi, and Margaret Burton. In 1953, Sandy Wilson provided a commissioned work for the theatre, The Boy Friend . In a full-length version this transferred to Wyndham's Theatre, and premièred in New York with Julie Andrews in the starring role. [14]
The Players' Theatre closed in 2002. New End Theatre attempted to revive the venue as the New Players' Theatre, but in 2005 relinquished the lease to The Pure Group, owners of the neighbouring Heaven . They continue to operate the 275-seat refurbished theatre for theatrical performance and as a conference centre.
Charing Cross is a junction in Westminster, London, England, where six routes meet. Clockwise from north these are: the east side of Trafalgar Square leading to St Martin's Place and then Charing Cross Road; the Strand leading to the City; Northumberland Avenue leading to the Thames Embankment; Whitehall leading to Parliament Square; The Mall leading to Admiralty Arch and Buckingham Palace; and two short roads leading to Pall Mall. Since the early 19th century, Charing Cross has been the notional "centre of London" and is now the point from which distances from London are measured.
Charing Cross railway station is a central London railway terminus between the Strand and Hungerford Bridge in the City of Westminster. It is the terminus of the Southeastern Main Lines to Dover via Ashford and Hastings via Tunbridge Wells. All trains are operated by Southeastern, which provides the majority of commuter and regional services to south-east London and Kent. It is connected to Charing Cross Underground station and is near to Embankment Underground station and Embankment Pier.
Music hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment that was most popular from the early Victorian era, beginning around 1850, through the Great War. It faded away after 1918 as the halls rebranded their entertainment as variety. Perceptions of a distinction in Britain between bold and scandalous Music Hall and subsequent, more respectable Variety differ. Music hall involved a mixture of popular songs, comedy, speciality acts, and variety entertainment. The term is derived from a type of theatre or venue in which such entertainment took place. In North America vaudeville was in some ways analogous to British music hall, featuring rousing songs and comic acts.
The Alhambra was a popular theatre and music hall located on the east side of Leicester Square, in the West End of London. It was built originally as the Royal Panopticon of Science and Arts opening on 18 March 1854. It was closed after two years and reopened as the Alhambra. The building was demolished in 1936. The name was also adopted by many other British music hall theatres located elsewhere; in Bradford, in Hull and in Glasgow etc. The name comes from association with the Moorish splendour of the Alhambra palace in Granada, Spain.
George Joseph Edwardes was an English theatre manager and producer of Irish ancestry who brought a new era in musical theatre to the British stage and beyond.
Wilhelm Meyer Lutz was a German-born British composer and conductor who is best known for light music, musical theatre and burlesques of well-known works.
John Handford Ryley was an English singer and actor, best known for his performances in the comic baritone roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, particularly in America. His second wife was D'Oyly Carte performer, actress and playwright Madeleine Lucette Ryley.
Carlo Gatti (1817–1878) was a Swiss-born British restaurateur in the Victorian era. He came to England in 1847, where he established restaurants and an ice importing business. He is credited with first making ice cream available to the general public and he then moved into the music hall business. He returned to Switzerland in 1871, leaving his businesses in the hands of members of his family and he died a millionaire.
Marion Hood was an English soprano who performed in opera and musical theatre in the last decades of the 19th century. She is perhaps best remembered for creating the role of Mabel in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance in London.
Hungerford Market was a produce market in London, at Charing Cross on the Strand. It existed in two different buildings on the same site, the first built in 1682, the second in 1832. The market was first built on the site of Hungerford House, next to Durham Yard, the town house of the Hungerford family. The house had burned down in 1669 as is recorded in the Diary of Samuel Pepys. It was replaced by a new Italianate market building by Charles Fowler, which opened in 1833. The new market was unsuccessful. It was damaged when the adjoining Hungerford Hall burned down in 1854, and was sold to the South Eastern Railway in 1862. Charing Cross railway station was built on the site and opened in 1864.
Hungerford Hall was a lecture theatre built beside Hungerford Market near Charing Cross in London in 1851. It was used for public entertainments, including demonstrations of magic, mesmerism and optical illusions. It burned down in 1854, badly damaging the adjoining Hungerford Market.
Villiers Street is a street in London connecting the Strand with the Embankment. It is partly pedestrianised; traffic runs northbound only up to John Adam Street, where vehicles must turn right. It was built by Nicholas Barbon in the 1670s on the site of York House, the property of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, whom the street commemorates. A watergate in nearby Embankment Gardens is the only remnant of the mansion and shows the original position of the north bank of the River Thames.
George Dryden Wheeler Sr., known as Leo Dryden, was an English music hall singer and vocal comic.
Bessie Bellwood was a popular music hall performer of the Victorian era noted for her singing of 'Coster' songs, including "What Cheer Ria". Her onstage persona was that of an abrasive but loveable character with an ability to argue down even the toughest of hecklers.
Marie Loftus was a British music hall entertainer of the late Victorian era often billed as "The Sarah Bernhardt of the Music Halls" and "The Hibernian Hebe". She became one of the leading stars of music hall from the 1880s to World War I.
Kitty Loftus was an English dancer, singer and actor-manager. A leading soubrette of the 1890s and 1900s in comedies, burlesque, pantomime and musical plays, at the height of her career she performed with her Kitty Loftus Company. One critic praised her as "a tricky sprite and a fantastic elf." In her last years, she performed in variety in music halls and on tour.
James Fawn was a British music hall comic entertainer, popular towards the end of the 19th century when he was often billed as 'The Prince of the Red Nosed Comedians'. His best known song was "Ask a P'liceman".
The Bohemian G-yurl and the Unapproachable Pole is a musical burlesque in two acts, with a score by Meyer Lutz to a libretto by Henry James Byron, which played under the management of John Hollingshead at the Gaiety Theatre in London in 1877. It was a parody of the popular opera The Bohemian Girl composed by Michael William Balfe with a libretto by Alfred Bunn.