Address | West Street London, WC2 United Kingdom |
---|---|
Coordinates | 51°30′46″N0°07′39″W / 51.512778°N 0.1275°W Coordinates: 51°30′46″N0°07′39″W / 51.512778°N 0.1275°W |
Public transit | Leicester Square |
Owner | Lord Willoughby de Broke and Stephen Waley-Cohen |
Designation | Grade II listed |
Type | West End theatre |
Capacity | 550 |
Production | The Mousetrap (since 25 March 1974) |
Construction | |
Opened | 23 November 1916 |
Architect | W. G. R. Sprague |
Website | |
The Mousetrap official website |
St Martin's Theatre is a West End theatre which has staged the production of The Mousetrap since March 1974, making it the longest continuous run of any show in the world.
The theatre is located in West Street, near Shaftesbury Avenue, in the West End of London. It was designed by W. G. R. Sprague as one of a pair of theatres, along with the Ambassadors Theatre, also in West Street. Richard Verney, 19th Baron Willoughby de Broke, together with B. A. (Bertie) Meyer, commissioned Sprague to design the theatre buildings. Although the Ambassadors opened in 1913, construction of the St Martin's was delayed by the outbreak of the First World War. The theatre is still owned by the present Lord Willoughby de Broke and his family.
The first production at the St Martin's was the spectacular Edwardian musical comedy Houp La! , starring Gertie Millar, which opened on 23 November 1916. [1] [2] The producer was the impresario Charles B. Cochran, who took a 21-year lease on the new theatre. [3]
Many famous British actors passed through the St Martin's. In April 1923 Basil Rathbone played Harry Domain in R.U.R. and in June 1927 Henry Daniell appeared there as Gregory Brown in Meet the Wife. Successes at the theatre included Hugh Williams's play (later a film) The Grass is Greener , John Mortimer's The Wrong Side of the Park, and in 1970 the thriller Sleuth which starred Marius Goring for a long run as Andrew Wyke.
After Cochran, Bertie Meyer ran the theatre intermittently until 1967, when his son R. A. (Ricky) Meyer became administrator for the next two decades. The St Martin's has been listed Grade II on the National Heritage List for England since March 1973. [4] In March 1974 Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap transferred from the Ambassadors to the St Martin's, where it continued its run until 16 March 2020 when the show had to be suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom, holding the record for the longest continuously running show in the world. On 17 May 2021, the show was the first West End show to re-open [5] and as of October 2022 [update] has exceeded 26,000 performances at the St Martin's.
The Mousetrap is a murder mystery play by Agatha Christie. The Mousetrap opened in London's West End in 1952 and ran continuously until 16 March 2020, when the stage performances had to be temporarily discontinued during the COVID-19 pandemic. It then re-opened on 17 May 2021. The longest-running West End show, it has by far the longest run of any play in the world, with its 28,915th performance having taken place as of November 2022. Attendees at St Martin's Theatre often get their photo taken beside the wooden counter in the theatre foyer. As of 2022 the play has been seen by 10 million people in London.
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 Ambassadors Theatre, is a West End theatre located in West Street, near Cambridge Circus on Charing Cross Road in the City of Westminster. It is one of the smallest of the West End theatres, seating a maximum of 444, with 195 people in the dress circle and 251 in the stalls.
Broadway theatre, or Broadway, are the theatrical performances presented in the 41 professional theatres, each with 500 or more seats, located in the Theater District and the Lincoln Center along Broadway, in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Broadway and London's West End together represent the highest commercial level of live theater in the English-speaking world.
West End theatre is mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres in and near the West End of London. 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. Seeing a West End show is a common tourist activity in London. Famous screen actors, British and international alike, frequently appear on the London stage.
The Shaftesbury Theatre is a West End theatre, located on Shaftesbury Avenue, in the London Borough of Camden. Opened in 1911 as the New Prince's Theatre, it was the last theatre to be built in Shaftesbury Avenue.
This is a selected list of the longest-running musical theatre productions in history divided into two sections. The first section lists all Broadway and West End productions of musicals that have exceeded 2,500 performances, in order of greatest number of performances in either market. The second section lists, in alphabetical order, musicals that have broken historical long run records for musical theatre on Broadway, in the West End or Off-Broadway, since 1866, in alphabetical order.
Hugh Richard Bonneville Williams is an English actor. He is best known for portraying Robert Crawley, Earl of Grantham, in the ITV historical drama series Downton Abbey. His performance on the show earned him a nomination at the Golden Globes and two consecutive Primetime Emmy Award nominations, as well as three Screen Actors Guild Awards. He reprised his role in the feature films, Downton Abbey (2019), and Downton Abbey: A New Era (2022). He also appeared in the films Notting Hill (1999), Iris (2001), The Monuments Men (2014), and the Paddington films (2014-2023).
Sir Peter Saunders was an English theatre impresario, notable for his production of the long-running Agatha Christie murder mystery, The Mousetrap.
The Phoenix Theatre is a West End theatre in the London Borough of Camden, located in Charing Cross Road. 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.
The Peacock Theatre is a West End theatre in the City of Westminster, located in Portugal Street, near Aldwych. The 999-seat house is owned by, and comprises part of the London School of Economics and Political Science campus, who use the theatre for lectures, public talks, conferences, political speeches and open days.
Murder at the Vicarage is a 1949 play by Moie Charles and Barbara Toy based on the 1930 novel of the same name by Agatha Christie. Christie's official biography suggests that the play was written by Christie with changes then made by Charles and Toy, presumably enough for them to claim the credit. Whatever the truth of the authorship, Christie was enthusiastic about the play and attended its rehearsals and first night.
Alice Henriette Lapize, better known by her stage name, Alice Delysia and sometimes Elise Delisia, was a French actress and singer who made her career in English musical theatre. After performing in the chorus at the Moulin Rouge and other theatres in Paris from the age of 14, she became a chorus girl in Edwardian musical comedies, briefly on Broadway in 1905, then in London for several years and back in Paris in 1912.
Sir Stephen Harry Waley-Cohen, 2nd Baronet is an English theatre owner-manager and producer, following a career as a businessman and financial journalist. He manages the St. Martin's Theatre in London's West End and is the current producer of the world's longest running play The Mousetrap. He was Chairman of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) Council.
Jeeves and Wooster in Perfect Nonsense is a play written by David and Robert Goodale based on the 1938 novel The Code of the Woosters by P. G. Wodehouse. After try-out performances at the Richmond Theatre and the Theatre Royal, Brighton in October 2013, the play opened later that month at the West End's Duke of York's Theatre. The production won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Comedy in 2014.
Bertie Alexander Meyer was a British theatre producer and entrepreneur.
The Agatha Christie Memorial is a memorial to author and playwright Agatha Christie, located at the intersection of Cranbourn Street and Great Newport Street by St Martin's Cross near Covent Garden, in London, United Kingdom.
West Street is a street in London, that runs from Shaftesbury Avenue in the north to Upper St Martin's Lane in the south. It is joined by Litchfield Street on its south side and the pedestrian Tower Court on the north side. The east side of the street is in the London Borough of Camden and the western side in the City of Westminster.
Runs of several thousand performances were familiar in West End theatres in the 21st century. The closure of London theatres in the Covid-19 pandemic halted the continuous runs of eight shows that had been running for more than 4,000 performances. Such long runs were a phenomenon not seen before the late 20th century: in earlier years, much shorter runs were the norm, even for shows considered great successes.