West End theatre is mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres in and near the West End of London.[1] 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.[1]
Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, typically actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music, and dance. Elements of art, such as painted scenery and stagecraft such as lighting are used to enhance the physicality, presence and immediacy of the experience. The specific place of the performance is also named by the word "theatre" as derived from the Ancient Greek θέατρον, itself from θεάομαι.
The West End of London refers to a distinct region of Central London, west of the City of London and north of the River Thames, in which many of the city's major tourist attractions, shops, businesses, government buildings and entertainment venues, including West End theatres, are concentrated.
Broadway theatre, also known simply as Broadway, refers to the theatrical performances presented in the 41 professional theatres, each with 500 or more seats located in the Theater District and Lincoln Center along Broadway, in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Along with London's West End theatre, Broadway theatre is widely considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English-speaking world.
Society of London Theatre (SOLT) has announced that 2017 was a record year for the capital's theatre industry with attendances topping 15,000,000 for the first time since the organization began collecting audience data in 1986. Box office revenues also exceeded £700,000,000.[2] Famous screen actors, British and international alike, frequently appear on the London stage.[3]
Theatre in London flourished after the English Reformation. The first permanent public playhouse, known as The Theatre, was constructed in 1576 in Shoreditch by James Burbage. It was soon joined by The Curtain. Both are known to have been used by William Shakespeare's company. In 1599, the timber from The Theatre was moved to Southwark, where it was used in building the Globe Theatre in a new theatre district formed beyond the controls of the City corporation. These theatres were closed in 1642 due to the Puritans who would later influence the interregnum of 1649.
The English Reformation was a series of events in 16th-century England by which the Church of England broke away from the authority of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church. These events were, in part, associated with the wider European Protestant Reformation, a religious and political movement that affected the practice of Christianity across western and central Europe. Causes included the decline of feudalism and the rise of nationalism, the rise of the common law, the invention of the printing press and increased circulation of the Bible, and the transmission of new knowledge and ideas among scholars, the upper and middle classes and readers in general. However, the various phases of the English Reformation, which also covered Wales and Ireland, were largely driven by changes in government policy, to which public opinion gradually accommodated itself.
The Theatre was an Elizabethan playhouse in Shoreditch, just outside the City of London. It was the second permanent theatre ever built in England, after the Red Lion, and the first successful one. Built by actor-manager James Burbage, near the family home in Holywell Street, The Theatre is considered the first theatre built in London for the sole purpose of theatrical productions. The Theatre's history includes a number of important acting troupes including the Lord Chamberlain's Men, which employed Shakespeare as actor and playwright. After a dispute with the landlord, the theatre was dismantled and the timbers used in the construction of the Globe Theatre on Bankside.
Shoreditch is a district in the East End of London, which is divided between the London boroughs of Hackney and Tower Hamlets. It is part of the traditional county of Middlesex, but for administrative purposes became part of the County of London following the passing of the Local Government Act 1888, and part of Greater London in 1965. It has been known as an entertainment quarter since the 16th century, and today hosts a number of pubs, nightclubs and bars; while to the east of Shoreditch High Street and north of Brick Lane are primarily residential.
After the Restoration (1660), two companies were licensed to perform, the Duke's Company and the King's Company. Performances were held in converted buildings, such as Lisle's Tennis Court. The first West End theatre, known as Theatre Royal in Bridges Street, was designed by Thomas Killigrew and built on the site of the present Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. It opened on 7 May 1663 and was destroyed by a fire nine years later. It was replaced by a new structure designed by Christopher Wren and renamed the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.[4][5]
The Restoration of the English monarchy took place in 1660 when King Charles II returned to England after the Interregnum, which started after the end of the Second English Civil War, with the execution of his father, Charles I on 30 January 1649. The term Restoration is also used to describe the period of several years after, in which a new political settlement was established. It is very often used to cover the whole reign of Charles II (1660–1685) and often the brief reign of his younger brother James II (1685–1688). In certain contexts it may be used to cover the whole period of the later Stuart monarchs as far as the death of Queen Anne and the accession of the Hanoverian George I in 1714; for example Restoration comedy typically encompasses works written as late as 1710.
The Duke's Company was a theatre company chartered by King Charles II at the start of the Restoration era, 1660. Sir William Davenant was manager of the company under Prince James, Duke of York's patronage. During this period, theatres began to flourish again after being closed due to restrictions throughout the Interregnum and English Civil War.
The King's Company was one of two enterprises granted the rights to mount theatrical productions in London at the start of the English Restoration. It existed from 1660 to 1682.
Original interior of Savoy Theatre in 1881, the year it became the first public building in the world to be lit entirely by electricity.
Outside the West End, Sadler's Wells Theatre opened in Islington on 3 June 1683. Taking its name from founder Richard Sadler and monastic springs that were discovered on the property,[7][8] it operated as a "Musick House", with performances of opera; as it was not licensed for plays. In the West End, the Theatre Royal Haymarket opened on 29 December 1720 on a site slightly north of its current location, and the Royal Opera House opened in Covent Garden on 7 December 1732.
Sadler's Wells Theatre is a performing arts venue in Clerkenwell, London, England located on Rosebery Avenue. The present-day theatre is the sixth on the site since 1683. It consists of two performance spaces: a 1,500-seat main auditorium and the Lilian Baylis Studio, with extensive rehearsal rooms and technical facilities also housed within the site. Sadler's Wells is renowned as one of the world's leading dance venues. As well as a stage for visiting companies, the theatre is also a producing house, with a number of associated artists and companies that produce original works for the 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.
The London Borough of Islington is a London borough in Inner London, England. The borough includes a significant area to the south which forms part of central London. Islington has an estimated population of 215,667. It was formed in 1965 by merging the former metropolitan boroughs of Islington and Finsbury.
Richard Sadler is a producer, scenarist and film director.
The Patent theatre companies retained their duopoly on drama well into the 19th century, and all other theatres could perform only musical entertainments. By the early 19th century, however, music hall entertainments became popular, and presenters found a loophole in the restrictions on non-patent theatres in the genre of melodrama. Melodrama did not break the Patent Acts, as it was accompanied by music. Initially, these entertainments were presented in large halls, attached to public houses, but purpose-built theatres began to appear in the East End at Shoreditch and Whitechapel.
The patent theatres were the theatres that were licensed to perform "spoken drama" after the Restoration of Charles II as King of England, Scotland and Ireland in 1660. Other theatres were prohibited from performing such "serious" drama, but were permitted to show comedy, pantomime or melodrama. Drama was also interspersed with singing or dancing, to prevent the whole being too serious or dramatic.
Music hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment that was popular from the early Victorian era, beginning around 1850. It ended, arguably, after the First World War, when the halls rebranded their entertainment as variety. Perceptions of a distinction in Britain between bold and scandalous Victorian 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.
A melodrama is a dramatic work wherein the plot, which is typically sensational and designed to appeal strongly to the emotions, takes precedence over detailed characterization. Melodramas typically concentrate on dialogue, which is often bombastic or excessively sentimental, rather than action. Characters are often simply drawn and may appear stereotyped. Melodramas are typically set in the private sphere of the home, and focus on morality and family issues, love, and marriage, often with challenges from an outside source, such as a "temptress", or an aristocratic villain. A melodrama on stage, film or television is usually accompanied by dramatic and suggestive music that offers cues to the audience of the drama being presented.
The West End theatre district became established with the opening of many small theatres and halls, including the Adelphi in The Strand on 17 November 1806. South of the River Thames, the Old Vic, Waterloo Road, opened on 11 May 1818. The expansion of the West End theatre district gained pace with the Theatres Act 1843, which relaxed the conditions for the performance of plays, and The Strand gained another venue when the Vaudeville opened on 16 April 1870. The next few decades saw the opening of many new theatres in the West End. The Criterion Theatre opened on Piccadilly Circus on 21 March 1874, and in 1881, two more houses appeared: the Savoy Theatre in The Strand, built by Richard D'Oyly Carte specifically to showcase the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan, opened on 10 October (the first theatre to be lit by cooler, cleaner electric lights), and five days later the Comedy Theatre opened as the Royal Comedy Theatre on Panton Street in Leicester Square. It abbreviated its name three years later.[5] The theatre building boom continued until about World War I.
During the 1950s and 1960s, many plays were produced in theatre clubs, to evade the censorship then exercised by the Lord Chamberlain's Office. The Theatres Act 1968 finally abolished censorship of the stage in the United Kingdom.
"Theatreland", London's main theatre district, contains approximately forty venues and is located in and near the heart of the West End of London. It is traditionally defined by The Strand to the south, Oxford Street to the north, Regent Street to the west, and Kingsway to the east, but a few other nearby theatres are also considered "West End" despite being outside the area proper (e.g. The Apollo Victoria Theatre, in Westminster). Prominent theatre streets include Drury Lane, Shaftesbury Avenue, and The Strand. The works staged are predominantly musicals, classic and modern straight plays, and comedy performances.[10]
Many theatres in the West End are of late Victorian or Edwardian construction and are privately owned. Many are architecturally impressive, and the largest and best maintained feature grand neo-classical, Romanesque, or Victorian façades and luxurious, detailed interior design and decoration.
However, owing to their age, leg room is often cramped, and audience facilities such as bars and toilets are often much smaller than in modern theatres. The protected status of the buildings and their confined urban locations, combined with financial constraints, make it very difficult to make substantial improvements to the level of comfort offered. In 2003, the Theatres Trust estimated that an investment of £250million over the following 15 years was required for modernisation,[11] and stated that 60% of theatres had seats from which the stage was not fully visible.[12] The theatre owners unsuccessfully requested tax concessions to help them meet the costs.
From 2004 onwards there were several incidents of falling plasterwork or performances being cancelled because of urgent building repairs being required. These events culminated in the partial collapse of the ceiling of the Apollo Theatre in December 2013.[13] Of these earlier incidents, only one led to people being hurt,[14] but at the Apollo Theatre 76 people needed medical treatment for their injuries.[15]
In 2012, gross sales of £529,787,692 were up 0.27% and attendances also increased 0.56% to 13,992,773-year-on-year[16] In 2013, sales again rose this time by 11% to £585,506,455,[17] with attendances rising to 14,587,276.[18] This was despite slightly fewer performances occurring in 2013.[19]
The length of West End shows depend on ticket sales. The longest-running musical in West End history is Les Misérables. It overtook Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats, which closed in 2002 after running for 8,949 performances and 21 years, as the longest-running West End musical of all time on 8 October 2006. Other long-runners include Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera and Willy Russell's Blood Brothers which have also subsequently overtaken Cats. However the non-musical Agatha Christie play The Mousetrap is the longest-running production in the world, and has been performed continuously since 1952.
List of West End theatres
If no show is currently running, the play listed is the next show planned (dates marked with an *).
If the next show planned is not announced, the applicable columns are left blank.
The following have been announced as future West End productions. The theatre in which they will run is either not yet known or currently occupied by another show.
The Royal Opera House is widely regarded as one of the greatest opera houses in the world, comparable with the Palais Garnier, La Scala and the Metropolitan Opera House. Commonly known simply as Covent Garden due to its location, it is home to the Royal Opera, Royal Ballet and a resident symphony orchestra, and hosts guest performances from other leading opera, ballet and performance companies from around the world.
There are a great number of theatre productions in London outside the West End. Much of this is known as fringe theatre which is the equivalent of Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway theatre in New York. Among these are the Bush Theatre and the Donmar Warehouse. Fringe venues range from well-equipped small theatres to rooms above pubs, and the performances range from classic plays, to cabaret, to plays in the languages of London's ethnic minorities. The performers range from emerging young professionals to amateurs.
The Palace Theatre is a West End theatre in the City of Westminster in London. Its red-brick facade dominates the west side of Cambridge Circus behind a small plaza near the intersection of Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road. The Palace Theatre seats 1,400.
Sir Cameron Anthony Mackintosh is a British theatrical producer and theatre owner notable for his association with many commercially successful musicals. At the height of his success in 1990, he was described as being "the most successful, influential and powerful theatrical producer in the world" by the New York Times. He is the producer of shows such as Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera, Mary Poppins, Oliver!, Miss Saigon,Cats, and Hamilton.
Half a Sixpence is a musical comedy based on the 1905 novel Kipps by H. G. Wells, with music and lyrics by David Heneker and book by Beverley Cross. It was written as a vehicle for British pop star Tommy Steele.
Jenna Johan Russell is an English actress and singer. She has appeared on the stage in London in both musicals and dramas, as well as appearing with the Royal Shakespeare Company. She performed the role of Dot in Sunday in the Park with George in the West End and on Broadway, receiving the Tony Award nomination and the 2006 Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her role. She has also appeared in several television series, including Born and Bred and EastEnders.
Ramin Karimloo is an Iranian-Canadian actor and singer, recognised mainly for his work in London's West End. He has played the leading male roles in both of the West End's longest running musicals: the Phantom and Raoul, Vicomte de Chagny in The Phantom of the Opera, and Jean Valjean, Enjolras, and Marius Pontmercy in Les Misérables. He also originated the roles of Gleb in Anastasia and the Phantom in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Love Never Dies, which continues the story of The Phantom of the Opera.
Nick Winston is an internationally renowned English stage director and choreographer working in theatre, opera and television. His extensive credits include, Stage Director & Choreographer for The Royal Variety Performance at The London Palladium (ITV); choreographer for Sondheim at 80, starring Dame Judi Dench at the Royal Albert Hall (BBC); Shakespeare Live, From The RSC, which received a BAFTA nomination for Live Entertainment (BBC) and Theatre Druid’s award-winning production of Waiting For Godot which played at the Lincoln Center in New York.
Summer Peta Vaigncourt-Strallen is an English actress who has performed various roles on stage and screen. Her most notable theatre credits include Meg Giry in the West End production of Love Never Dies and Maria von Trapp in Andrew Lloyd Webber's revival of The Sound of Music at the London Palladium.
Kerry Jane Ellis is an English actress and singer who is best known for her work in musical theatre and subsequent crossover into music. Born and raised in Suffolk, Ellis began performing at an early age before attending Laine Theatre Arts from the age of 16.
Hannah Waddingham is an English actress and singer, best known for her contribution to West End musical theatre, particularly her performances in the original London production of Spamalot, the 2010 Regent's Park revival of Into the Woods, and most recently, The Wizard of Oz. She has received three Olivier Award nominations for her work. She has also had a successful film and television career. In 2015 she joined the cast of the fifth season of the HBO series Game of Thrones as Septa Unella, as well as appearing in the 2012 feature film adaptation of Les Miserables and 2018 British psychological thriller Winter Ridge in a primary role.
Alex Gaumond is a Canadian actor, singer and songwriter known mainly for his involvement in West End theatre.
The Bodyguard is a 2012 stage musical written by Alexander Dinelaris, based on the 1992 film The Bodyguard, with the score featuring songs recorded by Whitney Houston including "One Moment in Time", "I Wanna Dance with Somebody" and her cover version of Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You". The show began previews at the Adelphi Theatre in London's West End, on 6 November 2012, and officially opened on 5 December 2012.
Michael D. Xavier is an English actor and singer.
The Audience is a play by the British playwright and screenwriter Peter Morgan. The play centres on weekly meetings, called audiences, between Queen Elizabeth II, played by Dame Helen Mirren, and her prime ministers and premiered in the West End in 2013, at the Gielgud Theatre. A Broadway production opened in 2015, also starring Mirren. A West End revival played in London in 2015 starring Dame Kristin Scott Thomas in the lead role.
Top Hat the Musical is a 2011 stage musical based on the 1935 film of the same name, featuring music and lyrics by Irving Berlin with additional orchestration by Chris Walker. The show opened on 16 August 2011 at the Milton Keynes Theatre, touring the United Kingdom before transferring to the Aldwych Theatre in London's West End. Top Hat won multiple 2013 Laurence Olivier Awards after receiving seven nominations. The musical closed in London on 26 October 2013, with a UK and Ireland tour commencing in August 2014.
The Commitments is a musical written by Roddy Doyle, based on the 1987 novel of the same name, also written by Doyle. Like the novel, the musical is about a group of unemployed Irish youths who start a soul music band. It premiered in 2013 at the Palace Theatre in London's West End.
Fatal Attraction is a 2014 play adapted from his original screenplay by James Dearden. It is based on the 1987 film Fatal Attraction, and it opened in London's West End at the Theatre Royal Haymarket on 25 March 2014, following previews from 8 March.
Bend It Like Beckham the Musical is a musical with music by Howard Goodall, lyrics by Charles Hart, and a book by Gurinder Chadha and Paul Mayeda Berges. Based on the 2002 film of the same name, the musical made its West End and world premiere at the Phoenix Theatre in May 2015.
Mrs Henderson Presents is a musical comedy with music by George Fenton and Simon Chamberlain, with lyrics by Don Black and a book by Terry Johnson. Based on the 2005 film Mrs Henderson Presents, the musical received its world premiere at the Theatre Royal, Bath in 2015 and transferred to the West End's Noel Coward Theatre in February 2016. The film was based on the true story of Laura Henderson and London's Windmill Theatre.
Local Hero is a musical with music and lyrics by Mark Knopfler, and a book by Bill Forsyth and David Greig. The musical is based on the 1983 film of the same name, written by Bill Forsyth. It tells the story of an American oil company representative who is sent to the fictional village of Furness on the west coast of Scotland to purchase the town and surrounding property for his company.
Cassidy Janson is a British actress, best known for her work in musical theatre.
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