This article needs additional citations for verification .(February 2008) |
![]() Phoenix Theatre in 2024 | |
![]() | |
Address | Charing Cross Road London, WC2 United Kingdom |
---|---|
Coordinates | 51°30′52″N0°07′46″W / 51.514444°N 0.129556°W |
Public transit | ![]() |
Owner | ATG Entertainment |
Type | West End theatre |
Capacity | 1,012 on 3 levels |
Production | Stranger Things: The First Shadow |
Construction | |
Opened | 24 September 1930 |
Architect | Giles Gilbert Scott, Bertie Crewe and Cecil Masey |
Website | |
www |
The Phoenix Theatre is a West End theatre in the London Borough of Camden, located in Charing Cross Road (on the corner of Flitcroft Street). The entrances are on Phoenix Street and Charing Cross Road. The Phoenix Theatre was built on the site of a former factory and then music hall Alcazar before. [1]
Built for Sidney Bernstein, Baron Bernstein, the theatre was designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, Bertie Crewe and Cecil Massey. It has a restrained neoclassical exterior, but an interior designed in an Italianate style by director and designer Theodore Komisarjevsky. Vladimir Polunin copied works by Tintoretto, Titian, Pinturicchio, and Giorgione. It has a safety curtain that holds Jacopo del Sellaio's The Triumph of Love. [2]
There are golden engravings in the auditorium, and red seats, carpets and curtains. This look is based on traditional Italian theatres. There are decorated ceilings and sculpted wooden doors throughout the building.
It opened on 24 September 1930 with the premiere of Private Lives by Noël Coward, who also appeared in the play, with Adrienne Allen, Gertrude Lawrence and Laurence Olivier. Coward returned to the theatre with Tonight at 8.30 , a series of ten [3] plays, in 1936 and Quadrille in 1952.
On 16 December 1969, the long association with Coward was celebrated with a midnight matinee in honour of his 70th birthday, and the foyer bar was renamed the Noel Coward Bar.
The Phoenix has had a number of successful plays including Norman Ginsbury's Viceroy Sarah in 1935, and John Gielgud's Love for Love during the Second World War. Harlequinade and The Browning Version , two plays by Terence Rattigan, opened on 8 September 1948 at the theatre. In 1950, it staged Frederick Lonsdale's final play The Way Things Go .
In the mid-1950s, Paul Scofield and Peter Brook appeared at the theatre. In 1968, a musical version of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales opened and ran for around two thousand performances. Night and Day , a 1978 play by Tom Stoppard, ran for two years.
The theatre hosted many musicals in the 1980s and 1990s, including The Biograph Girl with Sheila White, The Baker's Wife by Stephen Schwartz directed by Trevor Nunn, and Into the Woods by Stephen Sondheim, starring Julia McKenzie. There were also a number of plays by William Shakespeare. Its first pantomime was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs starring Dana in 1983.
The production of Blood Brothers , the Willy Russell musical that transferred from the Noël Coward Theatre in November 1991, ended a 21-year run on 10 November 2012 after becoming the longest-running production at the theatre, following limited engagements of Goodnight Mister Tom and Midnight Tango. The theatre then played host to the original West End production of Broadway musical Once , which opened in April 2013 and closed on 21 March 2015.
Bend It Like Beckham the Musical , Guys and Dolls and The Last Tango played in 2016, with Dirty Dancing and Peppa Pig's Surprise comprising the 2016 Christmas season.
The Girls , a musical by Gary Barlow and Tim Firth based on the Calendar Girls film, played at the Phoenix Theatre with previews from 28 January 2017, and officially opened on 21 February 2017. The production closed on 15 July 2017. [4]
Chicago opened at the Phoenix Theatre on 11 April 2018, starring Cuba Gooding Jr. as Billy Flynn, Sarah Soetaert as Roxie Hart, Josefina Gabrielle as Velma Kelly, and Ruthie Henshall as Mama Morton. [5] A cast change saw Martin Kemp take over the role of Billy Flynn, with Alexandra Burke as Roxie Hart and Mazz Murray as Mama Morton. Denise Van Outen was due to take over as Velma Kelly, however a foot injury meant that Josefina Gabrielle returned to the role. [6] [7] The show closed on 5 January 2019.
In June 2018, it was announced that the hit Broadway musical Come from Away would transfer to the Phoenix, which it did in February 2019. The production closed on 7 January 2023. [8]
Previews of Stranger Things: The First Shadow , based on the hit Netflix show, began on 17 November 2023. It officially opened on 14 December, with its first run scheduled to play into 2025. [9]
The theatre is owned by the Ambassador Theatre Group. Since 1973 it has been a Grade II Listed Building. [10]
Chicago is a 2002 American musical crime comedy film based on the 1975 stage musical of the same name which in turn originated in the 1926 play of the same name. It explores the themes of celebrity, scandal, and corruption in Chicago during the Jazz Age. The film stars an ensemble cast led by Renée Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Richard Gere. Chicago centers on Roxie Hart (Zellweger) and Velma Kelly (Zeta-Jones), two murderers who find themselves in jail together awaiting trial in 1920s Chicago. Roxie, a housewife, and Velma, a vaudevillian, fight for the fame that will keep them from the gallows. The film marks the feature directorial debut of Rob Marshall, who also choreographed the film, and was adapted by screenwriter Bill Condon, with music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb.
Chicago is a 1975 American musical with music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, and book by Ebb and Bob Fosse. Set in Chicago in the jazz age, the musical is based on a 1926 play of the same title by playwright and one-time reporter Maurine Dallas Watkins about actual criminals and crimes on which she reported. The story is a satire on corruption in the administration of criminal justice and the concept of the "celebrity criminal".
Michael Praed, birth name Michael David Prince, is a British actor and narrator, best remembered for his role as Robin of Loxley in the British television series Robin of Sherwood, which attained cult status worldwide.
Blithe Spirit is a comic play by Noël Coward, described by the author as "an improbable farce in three acts". The play concerns the socialite and novelist Charles Condomine, who invites the eccentric medium and clairvoyant Madame Arcati to his house to conduct a séance, hoping to gather material for his next book. The scheme backfires when he is haunted by the ghost of his wilful and temperamental first wife, Elvira, after the séance. Elvira makes continual attempts to disrupt Charles's marriage to his second wife, Ruth, who cannot see or hear the ghost.
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.
The Gielgud Theatre is a West End theatre, located on Shaftesbury Avenue, at the corner of Rupert Street, in the City of Westminster, London. The house currently has 994 seats on three levels.
Denise van Outen is an English actress, singer, dancer and presenter. She presented The Big Breakfast, played Roxie Hart in the musical Chicago both in the West End and on Broadway and finished as runner-up in the tenth series of the BBC One dancing show Strictly Come Dancing.
42nd Street is a 1980 stage musical with a book by Michael Stewart and Mark Bramble, lyrics by Al Dubin and Johnny Mercer and music by Harry Warren. The 1980 Broadway production won the Tony Awards for Best Musical and Best Choreography and it became a long-running hit. The show was also produced in London in 1984 and its 2001 Broadway revival won the Tony Award for Best Revival.
Valentine Ruth Henshall, known professionally as Ruthie Henshall, is an English actress, singer and dancer, known for her work in musical theatre. She began her professional stage career in 1986, before making her West End debut in Cats in 1987. A five-time Olivier Award nominee, she won the 1995 Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her role as Amalia Balash in the London revival of She Loves Me (1994).
The Woman in White is a musical with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, lyrics by David Zippel, and a book by Charlotte Jones. It is based on the 1860 novel of the same name by Wilkie Collins, as well as on elements of the 1866 short story "The Signal-Man" by Charles Dickens.
Janie Dee is a British actress. She won the Olivier Award for Best Actress, Evening Standard Award and Critics' Circle Theatre Award for Best Actress in a Play, and in New York the Obie and Theatre World Award for Best Newcomer, for her performance as Jacie Triplethree in Alan Ayckbourn's Comic Potential.
Martin Smith was a British actor, singer, and composer. He starred in many shows in London's West End, including Evita, March of the Falsettos, The Phantom of the Opera, Les Misérables, and Children of Eden. He died from complications of AIDS at the age of 37.
Roxanne "Roxie" Hart is a fictional character. She is the main character of the 1926 play Chicago and its various remakes and derivatives.
"All That Jazz" is a song from the 1975 musical Chicago. It has music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb, and is the opening song of the musical. The title of the 1979 film, starring Roy Scheider as a character strongly resembling choreographer/stage and film director Bob Fosse, is derived from the song.
The Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical is an annual award presented by the Society of London Theatre in recognition of achievements in commercial London theatre. The awards were established as the Society of West End Theatre Awards in 1976, and renamed in 1984 in honour of English actor and director Laurence Olivier.
Josefina Gabrielle Holmes, professionally known as Josefina Gabrielle, is a British actress and former ballet dancer, best known for her performances in West End musicals and plays.
Rachel Anne McDowall is an English actress.
Anna-Jane Casey is an English singer, dancer and actress best known for her work in musical theatre.
Anita Louise Combe is an Australian actress, singer, dancer who has worked extensively in the entertainment industry all around the world. Combe attended the Gwen Mackay School of Dancing and trained in the Cechetti method of ballet with Jennifer Pollard in Adelaide, South Australia before making her first professional appearance on stage as Sillabub in the Australian Premiere Production of Cats at the Theatre Royal in Sydney. She is one of the few people in the world to date who has played both roles of Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly in the production of Chicago in the West End. Anita created the role of Stephanie Mangano in the World Premiere Production of Saturday Night Fever opposite fellow Australian, Adam Garcia and produced by Adelaide born, Robert Stigwood.
Calendar Girls The Musical is a musical by Gary Barlow and Tim Firth, based on the 2003 film Calendar Girls, which is in turn based on a true story, and the original 2008 play adaptation by Firth.
{{cite web}}
: |last=
has generic name (help)