• Adelphi Theatre
• Agatha Christie
• Albery Theatre
• Aldwych Theatre
• Almeida Theatre
• Ambassadors Theatre
• Andrew Lloyd Webber
• Apollo Theatre
• Arcola Theatre
• Arts Theatre
• Artsdepot
• Ashcroft Theatre
• Barbican Centre
• Barbican Theatre
• Barons Court Theatre
• Beck Theatre
• Bloomsbury Theatre
• Bridewell Theatre
• Broadway theatre
• Bromley
• Brookside Theatre
• Bush Theatre
• Cabaret (musical)
• Cambridge Theatre
• Canal Cafe Theatre
• Cats (musical)
• Central London
• Chariots of Fire
• Chelsea Theatre
• Chicago (musical)
• Chicken (play)
• Christopher Wren
• Churchill Theatre
• City of London
• Cochrane Theatre
• Coliseum Theatre
• Comedy Theatre
• Compass Theatre
• Constellations
• Covent Garden
• Criterion Theatre
• Croydon
• Dominion Theatre
• Donmar Warehouse
• Drury Lane
• Duchess Theatre
• Duke's Company
• East End
• Edwardian era
• Ellaline Terriss
• Ellen Terry
• English interregnum
• English language
• English Reformation
• Erith Playhouse
• Etcetera Theatre
• Ethnic minorities
• Evita (musical)
• Finborough Theatre
• Fortune Theatre
• Fringe theatre
• Garrick Theatre
• Gatz
• Ghost The Musical
• Gielgud Theatre
• Gilbert and Sullivan
• Globe Theatre
• Greater London
• Greenwich Playhouse
• Greenwich Theatre
• Hackney Empire
• Hampstead Theatre
• Hay Fever
• Haymarket Theatre
• Henry Irving
• Hoxton Hall
• Intimate Theatre
• Jacksons Lane
• James Burbage
• Jersey Boys
• John Lawrence Toole
• John Liston
• Julius Caesar (play)
• Jumpy
• King's Company
• Kingsway (London)
• Landor Theatre
• Leicester Square
• Lennie Dean
• Let It Be
• Lisle's Tennis Court
• Little Angel Theatre
• London
• London Palladium
• Lyric Hammersmith
• Mamma Mia!
• Marie Brema
• Marie Tempest
• Matilda the Musical
• Me and My Girl
• Melodrama
• Mercury Fur
• Mermaid Theatre
• Millfield Theatre
• Miss Saigon
• Music hall
• Musical theatre
• Nell Gwynne
• Nellie Farren
• New Diorama Theatre
• New End Theatre
• New London Theatre
• New York City
• Nimax Theatres
• Noises Off
• Novello Theatre
• Noël Coward Theatre
• Off Broadway
• Old Red Lion Theatre
• Old Vic
• Oliver!
• One Man, Two Guvnors
• Open Air Theatre
• Orange Tree Theatre
• Oval House Theatre
• Oxford Street
• Palais Garnier
• Patent theatre
• Peacock Theatre
• Pentameters Theatre
• Piccadilly Circus
• Piccadilly Theatre
• Players' Theatre
• Playhouse Theatre
• Pleasance
• Portal London
• Posh (play)
• Private Peaceful
• Public house
• Queen's Theatre
• Really Useful Group
• Regent Street
• Restoration comedy
• Richard D'Oyly Carte
• Richard Sadler
• Richmond Theatre
• River Thames
• Riverside Studios
• Royal Court Theatre
• Royal Opera House
• Royal Opera, London
• Savoy Theatre
• Seymour Hicks
• Shaftesbury Avenue
• Shaftesbury Theatre
• Shakespeare
• Shakespeare's Globe
• Shaw Theatre
• Shoreditch
• Shrek the Musical
• Singin' in the Rain
• Soho Theatre
• Soul Sister
• South Downs (play)
• South London Theatre
• Southwark
• Southwark Playhouse
• Spamalot
• St Martin's Theatre
• Starlight Express
• Stomp (dance troupe)
• Strand, London
• Stratford Circus
• Tabard Theatre
• Teatro alla Scala
• The 39 Steps (play)
• The Bob Hope Theatre
• The Curtain
• The Drill Hall
• The Mousetrap
• The Old Vic
• The Place
• The Questors Theatre
• The Royal Ballet
• The Scoop
• The Space (Theatre)
• The Sunshine Boys
• The Theatre
• The Woman in Black
• Theatre
• Theatre 503
• Theatres Act 1843
• Theatres Act 1968
• Thomas Killigrew
• Thriller - Live
• Top Hat
• Tourism
• Trafalgar Studios
• Tricycle Theatre
• Troxy
• Uncle Vanya
• Unicorn Theatre
• Vaudeville Theatre
• Victorian era
• War Horse (play)
• Warehouse Theatre
• West End of London
• West End theatre
• Western canon
• Westminster
• Whitechapel
• Wicked (musical)
• Wikipedia Link rot
• William Shakespeare
• Willy Russell
• Wilton's Music Hall
• World War I
• Wyndham's Theatre
• Yes, Prime Minister
• Young Vic
• 
  

• 
  Adelphi Theatre
  The Adelphi Theatre is a 1500-seat West End theatre, located on the Strand in the City of Westminster. The present building is the fourth on the site. The theatre has specialised in comedy and musical theatre, and today it is a receiving house for a variety of productions, including many musicals. The theatre was Grade II listed for historical preservation on 1 December 1987.
  It was founded in 1806 as the Sans Pareil ("Without Compare"), by merchant John Scott, and his daughter Jane (1770–1839). Jane was a British theatre manager, performer, and playwright. Together, they gathered a theatrical company and by 1809 the theatre was licensed for musical entertainments, pantomime, and burletta. She wrote more than fifty stage pieces in an array of genres: melodramas, pantomimes, farces, comic operettas, historical dramas, and adaptations, as well as translations. Jane Scott retired to Surrey in 1819, marrying John Davies Middleton (1790–1867).
  On 18 October 1819, the theatre reopened under its present name, which was adopted from the Adelphi Buildings opposite.
  
  wn.com/Adelphi_Theatre
• 
  Aldwych Theatre
  The Aldwych Theatre is a West End theatre, located on Aldwych in the City of Westminster. The theatre was listed Grade II on 20 July 1971. Its seating capacity is 1,200 on three levels, a fairly large auditorium.
  The theatre was built as a pair with the Waldorf Theatre now known as the Novello Theatre, both being designed by W.G.R. Sprague. Funded by Seymour Hicks, in association with the American impressario Charles Frohman, and built by Walter Wallis of Balham. The ornate decorations were in the Georgian style. The theatre was constructed on the newly built Aldwych.
  The Aldwych theatre opened on 23 December 1905 with a production of Blue Bell, a new version of Hicks' popular pantomime Bluebell in Fairyland. In 1906, Hicks' The Beauty of Bath, followed in 1907 by The Gay Gordons, played at the theatre. In February 1913 the theatre was used by Serge Diaghilev and Vaslav Nijinsky for the first rehearsals of Le Sacre du Printemps before its controversial première in Paris later that year. In 1920, Basil Rathbone played Major Wharton in The Unknown. From 1925-1933, it became the home of Ben Travers's farces, also known as The Aldwych Farces. Members of Travers's company included Ralph Lynn, Tom Walls, Yvonne Arnaud, Norma Varden, Mary Brough, Winifred Shotter and Robertson Hare. In 1933, Richard Tauber presented and starred in a new version of Das Dreimäderlhaus at the Aldwych under the title Lilac Time. From the mid-1930s until about 1960, the theatre was owned by the Abrahams family.
  
  wn.com/Aldwych_Theatre
• 
  Almeida Theatre
  The Almeida Theatre, opened in 1980, is a 325 seat studio theatre with an international reputation which takes its name from the street in which it is located, off Upper Street, in the London Borough of Islington. The theatre produces a diverse range of drama and holds an annual summer festival of contemporary opera, music and theatre. Successful plays are often transferred to West End theatres.
  The theatre was built in 1837 for the newly formed Islington Literary and Scientific Society and included a library, reading room, museum, laboratory, and a lecture theatre seating 500. The architects were the fashionable partnership of Robert Lewis Roumieu and Alexander Dick Gough. The library was sold off in 1872 and the building disposed of in 1874 to the Wellington Club (Almeida Street then being called Wellington Street) which occupied it until 1886. In 1885 the hall was used for concerts, balls, and public meetings. The Salvation Army bought the building in 1890, renaming it the Wellington Castle Barracks (Wellington Castle Citadel from 1902). To suit the building's new purpose, the front-facing lecture hall's tiered benches were replaced so that the congregation was seated in the conventional position, facing away from the front, and a balcony added. The Salvationists remained there until 1955. For a few years from 1956 the building was a factory and showroom for Beck's British Carnival Novelties, then remained empty until in 1972 a campaign began to turn it into a theatre.
  
  wn.com/Almeida_Theatre
• 
  Ambassadors Theatre
  The Ambassadors Theatre (formerly the New Ambassadors Theatre), is a West End theatre located in West Street, near Cambridge Circus on the Charing Cross Road in the City of Westminster. It is one of the smallest of the West End theatres, seating a maximum of 195 people in the Dress Circle and 251 in the Stalls.
  The theatre was, along with the adjacent St Martin's conceived by their architect, W. G. R. Sprague, as companions, born at the same time in 1913, but the First World War interrupted the construction of the latter for three years. The Ambassadors was built with the intention of being an intimate, smaller theatre and is situated opposite the renowned restaurant The Ivy, favourite haunt of the theatrical elite.
  The theatre was Grade II listed by English Heritage in March 1973.
  
  In 1996, the venue was bought by its namesake the Ambassador Theatre Group, now the largest operator of theatres in the West End.^{[citation needed]} It was first split into two small spaces, by creating a false floor at circle level, and used by the Royal Court. Then in 1999 the venue was renamed the New Ambassadors and hosted niche works and plays not normally seen outside of smaller fringe venues. However, within a few years the theatre had largely reverted to playing material seen as more commercially viable for its location in the West End.
  
  wn.com/Ambassadors_Theatre
• 
  Apollo Theatre
  The Apollo Theatre is a Grade II listed West End theatre, on Shaftesbury Avenue in the City of Westminster. Designed by architect Lewin Sharp for owner Henry Lowenfield, and the fourth legitimate theatre to be constructed on the street, its doors opened on 21 February 1901 with the American musical comedy The Belle of Bohemia. The production was followed by John Martin-Harvey's season, including A Cigarette Maker's Romance and The Only Way, an adaptation of Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities.
  The first London theatre built in the Edwardian period, the Apollo was renovated by Schaufelberg in 1932, and a private foyer and anteroom was installed to the Royal Box. The sculpted work on the stone fascia is by T. Simpson, the building is of plain brick to the neighbouring streets. The theatre has a first floor central loggia. Inside there is a three galleried auditorium with elaborate plasterwork. The theatre seats 796, and the balcony on the 3rd tier is considered the steepest in London.
  The Stoll Moss Group purchased the Apollo Theatre in 1975 and sold it to Andrew Lloyd-Webber's Really Useful Group and Bridgepoint Capital in 2000. Nica Burns and Max Weitzenhoffer purchased the theatre and several others in 2005, creating Nimax Theatres, which still owns the theatre.
  
  wn.com/Apollo_Theatre
• 
  Arcola Theatre
  Arcola Theatre is a studio theatre in Dalston, in the London Borough of Hackney. The theatre's ambition is to create and present high-quality theatre with a social and political relevance to its multicultural local community as well as a wider audience.
  The theatre features two studios seating up to 240 persons and two rehearsal rooms. There is a café and bar in the foyer. The theatre also runs a number of community arts activities including youth drama and a writers' programme.
  Arcola Theatre was founded by artistic director Mehmet Ergen, in September 2000. The building was formerly a textile factory and celebrated this with its fifth anniversary production, The Factory Girls by Frank McGuinness.
  Since its inception the theatre has won the Peter Brook Empty Space Award two years in succession and was awarded Time Out Live Awards in 2003 and 2006. Many productions at the theatre have been selected as Time Out Critic’s Choice.
  In 2007, an Arcola co-production of Mojo Mickeybo by Owen McCafferty became its first West End transfer to the Trafalgar Studios. 2007 also marked the first season of the Arcola's Grimeborn, an opera and musical theatre festival that runs for two weeks in August. In January 2011 the Arcola moved its theatre to a former paint-manufacturing workshop on Ashwin Street in Dalston, marking the event by premiering The Painter, a play about J. M. W. Turner by Rebecca Lenkiewicz.
  
  wn.com/Arcola_Theatre
• 
  Arts Theatre
  The Arts Theatre is a theatre in Great Newport Street, in Westminster, Central London. It now operates as the West End's smallest commercial receiving house.
  The Arts Theatre seats 350 in a two-tier basement auditorium. 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 stage. The theatrical producer Norman Marshall referred to these as ‘The Other Theatre’ in his 1947 book of the same name.
  The theatre opened with Picnic a revue by Herbert Farjeon, produced by Harold Scott and 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 1942 Alec Clunes and John Hanau took over running of the theatre, and for ten years produced a wide range of plays, winning a reputation as a 'pocket national theatre.'
  
  wn.com/Arts_Theatre
• 
  Artsdepot
  The artsdepot is a multi-purpose cultural centre located in North Finchley, in the London borough of Barnet. It was officially opened on 23 October 2004 for the enjoyment and development of the arts in North London.
  The venue comprises two main theatre spaces, The Pentland Theatre with 395 seats and a Studio Theatre with 158 seats. The building also contains dance and drama studios, a gallery space and a cafe. The programme of performances ranges from theatre, to live music, comedy, dance, visual art, spoken word and children's events.
  artsdepot also runs a programme of an educational courses for children and adults. Outreach programmes also include working with local schools, artistic companies, other venues, and festivals.
  The artsdepot was initially conceived in 1996 at the Barnet 2000 conference, which addressed what new and improved services the borough’s residents would like to see in Barnet at the new Millennium. What emerged from Barnet 2000 was a need for more professional arts facilities to supplement the facilities at the existing Bull Arts Centre in High Barnet, which was at that time the only professional, if small, arts centre in the borough.
  
  wn.com/Artsdepot
• 
  Ashcroft Theatre
  The Ashcroft Theatre is a theatre located within the Fairfield Halls, Croydon, South London. The theatre was named after Croydon-born Dame Peggy Ashcroft and is a proscenium theatre with a stepped auditorium. The mural on its fire curtain is by the artist Henry Bird. A variety of productions are held throughout the year such as drama, ballet, opera and pantomime. The venue has a seating capacity of 749 and can be converted into a cinema as it has a large screen giving full Cinemascope and standard film format.
  
  
  
  wn.com/Ashcroft_Theatre
• 
  Barbican Centre
  The Barbican Centre is the largest performing arts centre in Europe. Located in the City of London, England, the Centre hosts classical and contemporary music concerts, theatre performances, film screenings and art exhibitions. It also houses a library, three restaurants, and a conservatory. The London Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Symphony Orchestra are based in the Barbican Centre's concert hall.
  The Barbican Centre is owned, funded, and managed by the City of London Corporation, the third-largest arts funder in the United Kingdom. It was built as the city's gift to the nation at a cost of £161 million (equivalent to £400 million in 2007), and opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 3 March 1982.
  The second-floor library is one of the five City of London libraries. It is one of the largest public libraries in London and has a separate arts library, a large music library and a children's library which regularly conducts free events. The Barbican Library houses the 'London Collection' of historical books and resources, some of which date back 300 years, all being available on loan. The library presents regular literary events and has an art exhibition space for hire. The music library has a free practice piano for public use.
  
  wn.com/Barbican_Centre
• Beck Theatre
  The Beck Theatre is a 600 seat theatre in Hayes, in the London Borough of Hillingdon. It was built in 1977 at a cost of £2.5 million.
  It was one of 40 buildings considered for the Royal Institute of British Architects London region award in 1978, and won an Access Award from Hillingdon Council for its resources for disabled and elderly people.
  A fund shortage threatened its future in 1984, when it was saved by a local petition and taken over in 1986 by impresario Charles Vance. The management contract later passed to Hetherington Seelig, followed by Apollo Leisure in 1992 (later bought out by Clear Channel Entertainment). In 2006 The Beck reverted back to Hetherington Seelig in a partnership with Qdos Entertainment called HQ Theatres.
  The Beck continues to be run on behalf of the local council by HQ Theatres and is very much a community theatre, offering one night concerts, drama, comedy, dance, musicals, children's shows, films, opera, pantomime and a famous children's summer project.
  In June 1991, the Beck Theatre was the scene of an attempted IRA bombing, before a performance by the Blues and Royals band.
  
  wn.com/Beck_Theatre
• 
  Bloomsbury Theatre
  The Bloomsbury Theatre is a theatre on Gordon Street, Bloomsbury, in the London Borough of Camden, owned by University College London.
  The Theatre has a seating capacity of 535 and offers a professional programme of innovative music, drama, comedy and dance all year round.
  Funded by a UGC grant and a considerable private donation, the theatre was opened in 1968 as the Collegiate Theatre, and was renamed the Bloomsbury Theatre in 1982. Between 2001 and 2008, the theatre was known as The UCL Bloomsbury, to emphasise links with UCL, who use it for student productions 12 weeks a year. The Bloomsbury Theatre recently returned to the logo designed by cartoonist Gerald Scarfe which it had used for nearly twenty years until 2001.
  The theatre building also provides access to the UCL Union Fitness Centre and Clubs and Societies Centre on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th floors. The basement also holds one of the three University Shops. A UCL Union-run cafe is on the Ground Floor. Access to the Main UCL Wilkins Building (Octagon Building) and the UCL Refectory is possible through the theatre building.
  
  wn.com/Bloomsbury_Theatre
• 
  Broadway theatre
  Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in 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.
  The Broadway theatre district is a popular tourist attraction in New York. According to The Broadway League, Broadway shows sold approximately $1.081 billion worth of tickets in calendar year 2011, compared with $1.037 billion for 2010. Attendance in 2011 was 12.13 million.
  New York did not have a significant theatre presence until about 1750, when actor-managers Walter Murray and Thomas Kean established a resident theatre company at the Theatre on Nassau Street, which held about 280 people. They presented Shakespeare plays and ballad operas such as The Beggar's Opera. In 1752, William Hallam sent a company of twelve actors from Britain to the colonies with his brother Lewis as their manager. They established a theatre in Williamsburg, Virginia and opened with The Merchant of Venice and The Anatomist. The company moved to New York in the summer of 1753, performing ballad operas and ballad-farces like Damon and Phillida. The Revolutionary War suspended theatre in New York, but thereafter theatre resumed in 1798, the year the 2,000-seat Park Theatre was built on Chatham Street (now called Park Row). The Bowery Theatre opened in 1826, followed by others. Blackface minstrel shows, a distinctly American form of entertainment, became popular in the 1830s, and especially so with the arrival of the Virginia Minstrels in the 1840s.
  
  wn.com/Broadway_theatre
• 
  Bromley
  Coordinates: 51°24′25″N 0°01′16″E / 51.4070°N 0.0210°E / 51.4070; 0.0210
  Bromley is a large suburban district of south east London, England and the administrative headquarters of the London Borough of Bromley. It was historically a market town, and prior to 1963 was in the county of Kent and formed the administrative centre of the Municipal Borough of Bromley. Although technically in London, it is regarded by locals and Londoners alike as in the county of Kent. Its location on a coaching route and the opening of a railway station in 1858 were key to its development and the economic history of Bromley is underpinned by a shift from an agrarian village to commercial and retail hub. As part of the suburban growth of London in the 20th century, Bromley significantly increased in population and has formed part of Greater London since 1963. It has developed into one of a handful of regionally significant commercial and retail districts outside central London. It is located 9.3 miles (15 km) south east of Charing Cross and is one of the major metropolitan centres identified in the London Plan. Bromley has a number of affluent areas and is regarded as being one of the richest London Boroughs. There are a number of gated communities within the borough, most noticeably Keston Park (in Keston, Orpington), Farnborough Park (Farnborough, Orpington) and Bickley Park (in the affluent areas of Bickley and Chislehurst)
  
  wn.com/Bromley
• 
  Bush Theatre
  The Bush Theatre is based in Shepherd's Bush, in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. It was established in 1972 and has since become one of the most celebrated new writing theatres in the world.
  A seedbed for the best new playwrights, many of whom have gone on to become established names in the industry, The Bush has won over 100 awards, and also continues to attract major acting and directing talent, regularly touring its work nationally and internationally and transferring productions into the West End.
  Jenny Topper 1977-1988 joint with Nicky Pallot 1979-1990
  Dominic Dromgoole 1990-1996
  Mike Bradwell 1996-2007.
  Josie Rourke 2007-2012
  Madani Younis 2011-present
  In 1972 the theatre was established above The Bush public house on the corner of Goldhawk Road and Shepherd's Bush Green, in what was once the dance studio's of Lionel Blair. It was established by a maverick actor Brian McDermott who used to tour the Fringe. The venue, despite its fame and massive output, was intimate only holding a maximum audience of approximately 80.
  
  wn.com/Bush_Theatre
• 
  Cambridge Theatre
  The Cambridge Theatre is a West End theatre, on a corner site in Earlham Street facing Seven Dials, in the London Borough of Camden, built in 1929-30. It was designed by Wimperis, Simpson and Guthrie; interior partly by Serge Chermayeff, with interior bronze friezes by sculptor Anthony Gibbons Grinling. The theatre is built in steel and concrete and is notable for its elegant and clean lines of design. The theatre was refurbished in 1950—the original gold and silver décor was painted over in red, and candelabras and chandeliers were added. In 1987, in order to restore the original décor, the theatre was once again refurbished, this time by Carl Toms. The theatre has a circular entrance foyer, with Grinling's bronze frieze depicting nude figures in exercise poses, the theme continues into the main foyer, with dancing nudes, marble pilaster up lighters and concealed lighting.
  English Heritage notes
  the Cambridge Theatre is a rare, complete and early example of a London theatre adopting the moderne, expressionist style pioneered in Germany during the 1920s. It marked a conscious reaction to the design excesses of the music hall and contemporary cinemas. Theatres looked for a new style appropriate to the greater sophistication of their entertainment and found it in the Germanic moderne forms of simple shapes enlivened by concealed lighting, shiny steelwork and touches of bright colour; this was not taken up by cinema designers until 1935.
  
  wn.com/Cambridge_Theatre
• 
  Chelsea Theatre
  Chelsea Theatre is a studio theatre located on the Kings Road in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London. It presents, commissions, and produces new work and is the only theatre in London dedicated to Performance Art. The theatre is also focused on working within the local community.They produces the live art and contemporary practice Sacred Festival.
  The 2006/7 season, SACRED, consisted of new work commissioned by artists including: Goat Island (performance group), Ron Athey, Mem Morrison, Kazuko Hohki of the Frank Chickens, Gary Carter and Third Angel. These artists mentored emerging theatre makers, including: Silke Mansholt, Dominic Johnson, Sheila Ghelani, Meline Danielewicz, Helena Hunter and Action Hero.
  In 2007 Chelsea Theatre presented work from live artists including Roland Loomis and Annie Sprinkle.
  In April and May 2008 Chelsea Theatre produced and presented a new season of contemporary performance, with works from Curious, Richard Dedomenici, Marcella Puppini of the Puppini Sisters, Lois Weaver, Dries Verhoeven, Gustavo Ciriaco & Andrea Sonnberger, Julia Bardsley, Yara El-Sherbini, Rajni Shah, Dr Roberts' Magic Bus (including Olivier Award winner Miss High Leg Kick, Breathe and Chris Dobrowolski), Ernst Fischer and Helen Spackman. There was also a complementary series of critical symposia curated by the Live Art Development Agency, Artsadmin and New Work Network.
  
  wn.com/Chelsea_Theatre
• 
  Churchill Theatre
  The Churchill Theatre in Bromley, south east London was built by the London Borough of Bromley to designs by its borough architect's department.
  It is carefully integrated into the central library complex overlooking Church House Gardens and Library Gardens. The slope of the site has been cleverly used; the auditorium is essentially below ground level and entered by descending staircases from the foyer.
  The theatre was opened on 19 July 1977 by HRH Prince of Wales, and seats 785. It is now run on a contract currently held by the Ambassador Theatre Group and is successful commercially, acting as both a receiving and producing house, with many of its own productions transferring to the West End or touring nationally. An example, being recent tours of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It was also the home of the first two series' of The Brian Conley Show before moving to The London Studios, and there is an annual pantomime season.
  The Churchill is an example of a repertory theatre built in the style of European opera houses, with a large stage and sub-stage workshops. It was built on the side of a hill which disguises the number and size of the lower levels and gives the impression that it is smaller than it actually is.
  
  wn.com/Churchill_Theatre
• 
  City of London
  The City of London is an area in central London, England. In the medieval period it constituted most of London, but the conurbation has grown far beyond it. As the City’s boundaries have remained almost unchanged since the Middle Ages, it is now only a tiny part of the metropolis, though it remains a notable part of central London, holds city status in its own right, and is a separate ceremonial county.
  It is often referred to as the City (often written on maps as "City") or the Square Mile, as it is just over one square mile (1.12 sq mi/2.90 km²) in area. These terms are also often used as metonyms for the United Kingdom's financial services industry, which continues a notable history of being based in the City.
  The term London now refers to a much larger conurbation roughly corresponding to Greater London, a local government area which includes 32 London boroughs including the City of Westminster as well as the City of London. The local authority for the City, the City of London Corporation, is unique in the United Kingdom, and has some unusual responsibilities for a local authority in Britain, such as being the police authority for the City. It also has responsibilities and ownerships beyond the City's boundaries. The Corporation is headed by the Lord Mayor of the City of London, an office separate from (and much older than) the Mayor of London.
  
  wn.com/City_of_London
• 
  Cochrane Theatre
  The Cochrane Theatre is a receiving and producing theatre that aims to present all aspects of the performing arts within a proscenium arch. The theatre is situated in Holborn, London.
  The theatre opened in 1964 and was named after its founder, Jeannetta Cochrane, who was a theatre practitioner specialising in costume and scenery design. She taught at the former Central School of Art and Design, presently known as the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, and through her persistence persuaded the London County Council to build a theatre attached to the school. The Cochrane Theatre is now owned by the University of the Arts London. It is used for productions and presentations by students on various courses.
  The theatre has a traditional proscenium arch and fly tower consisting of 41 counterweight flying bars, orchestra pit and a fully functioning paint frame (a rarity in London theatres).
  Unfortunately, the Cochrane Theatre has now closed after the decision was to move with the university of which it is part off (University of the Arts London - Central Saint's Martin), to the new site in Kings Cross. With the move the name of the theatre has changed to the Platform Theatre. And the Cochrane Theatre remains closed until its new owners decide on it future.
  
  wn.com/Cochrane_Theatre
• 
  Coliseum Theatre
  The London Coliseum (also known as the Coliseum Theatre) is an opera house and major performing venue on St. Martin's Lane, central London. It is one of London's largest and best-equipped theatres and opened in 1904, designed by theatrical architect Frank Matcham (designer of the London Palladium), for impresario Oswald Stoll. Their ambition was to build the largest and finest 'People's palace of entertainment' of its age.
  The inaugural performance was a variety bill on 24 December 1904. In 1911, dramatist W. S. Gilbert produced his last play here, The Hooligan.
  The theatre changed its name from the London Coliseum to the Coliseum Theatre between 1931 and 1968 when 651 performances of the musical comedy White Horse Inn started on 8 April 1931). It reverted to the original name when the Sadler's Wells Opera Company (having moved from Sadler's Wells Theatre) moved to the Coliseum in 1968. The Company changed its name to the English National Opera in 1974 and bought the freehold of the building for £12.8m.
  
  wn.com/Coliseum_Theatre
• 
  Compass Theatre
  The Compass Theatre is a 158 seat theatre in Ickenham, in, and owned by, the London Borough of Hillingdon.
  Middlesex County Council bought Ickenham Hall and its grounds in 1948 in order to convert it into a youth centre. In 1968 a theatre was built behind the hall, later named the Compass Theatre by the Theatre Director John Sherratt. The two buildings were connected by a new building in 1976.
  The theatre was refurbished in 1990 and reopened by HRH Prince Edward.
  The theatre predominantly receives hires by local amateur dramatic groups, as well as films, professional shows for children and other arts activities. It also hosts 360 Youth Theatre, the Hillingdon Music Service and the administration of Dance Challenge.
  Regularly appearing groups include Argosy Players, Ruislip Dramatic Society, Hillingdon Musical Society, Players 2, Pastiche Musical Theatre and Purple Theatre, as well as professional companies Big Wooden Horse Theatre and Tall Stories.
  Until 2009, Tall Stories, producers of The Gruffalo, were a theatre company in residence.
  
  wn.com/Compass_Theatre
• 
  Covent Garden
  Coordinates: 51°30′43″N 0°07′22″W / 51.51197°N 0.1228°W / 51.51197; -0.1228
  Covent Garden ( /ˈkɒvənt/) is a district in London on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St. Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit and vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and the Royal Opera House, which is also known as "Covent Garden". The district is divided by the main thoroughfare of Long Acre, north of which is given over to independent shops centred on Neal's Yard and Seven Dials, while the south contains the central square with its street performers and most of the elegant buildings, theatres and entertainment facilities, including the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and the London Transport Museum.
  
  wn.com/Covent_Garden
• 
  Criterion Theatre
  The Criterion Theatre is a West End theatre situated on Piccadilly Circus in the City of Westminster, and is a Grade II* listed building. It has an official capacity of 588.
  In 1870, the caterers Spiers and Pond began development of the site of the White Bear, a seventeenth-century posting inn. The inn was located on sloping ground stretching between Jermyn Street and Piccadilly Circus, known as Regent Circus. A competition was held for the design of a concert hall complex, with Thomas Verity winning out of 15 entries. He was commissioned to design a large restaurant, dining rooms, ballroom, and galleried concert hall in the basement. The frontage, which was the façade of the restaurant, showed a French Renaissance influence using Portland stone.
  After the building work began, it was decided to change the concert hall into a theatre. The composers' names, which line the tiled staircases, were retained and can still be seen. The redesign placed the large Criterion Restaurant and dining rooms above the theatre, with a ballroom on the top floor.
  
  wn.com/Criterion_Theatre
• 
  Croydon
  Coordinates: 51°22′22″N 0°06′36″W / 51.3727°N 0.1099°W / 51.3727; -0.1099
  Croydon is a large town in South London, England, located within the London Borough of Croydon to which it gives its name. It is situated 9.5 miles (15.3 km) south of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 11 metropolitan centres in Greater London.
  Croydon is located on the natural transport corridor between London and England's south coast, just to the north of two gaps in the North Downs, one followed by the route of the A23 Brighton Road from Purley to Merstham and the other followed by the A22 from Purley to the M25 Godstone interchange.
  Historically a part of Surrey, at the time of the Norman conquest of England Croydon had a church, a mill and around 365 inhabitants (as recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086). Croydon expanded during the Middle Ages as a market town and a centre for charcoal production, leather tanning and brewing. The Surrey Iron Railway from Croydon to Wandsworth opened in 1803 and was the world's first public horse-drawn railway, which later developed into an important means of transport – facilitating Croydon's growth as a commuter town for the City of London and beyond. By the early 20th century, Croydon was an important industrial area, known for car manufacture, metal working and its airport. In the mid 20th century these sectors were replaced by retailing and service economy, brought about by massive redevelopment which saw the rise of office blocks and the Whitgift shopping centre. Croydon was amalgamated into Greater London in 1965. Road traffic is now diverted away from a largely pedestrianised town centre, but its main railway station, East Croydon, is still a major hub within the national railway transport system. The town is expected to have its urban planning changed as part of Croydon Vision 2020.
  
  wn.com/Croydon
• 
  Dominion Theatre
  The Dominion Theatre is a West End theatre on Tottenham Court Road close to St Giles Circus and Centre Point Tower, in the London Borough of Camden.
  The Dominion was built in 1928–29, designed by W and TR Milburn with a steel-framed construction and a concave Portland stone facade. It was built as a theatre for live shows, but after faltering business in the early 1930s, the building was converted to also allow it to show films. The theatre was built on the location of the former Horse Shoe Brewery, which was the site of the 1814 London Beer Flood.
  During the 1980s it became a popular venue for music concerts. Tangerine Dream's album Logos was recorded there in 1982, and contains a tune called "Dominion" in tribute, and Dolly Parton's 1983 concert at the Dominion was filmed and released as a television special, Dolly in London. In the mid-1980s the Dominion hosted the musical Time, and the interior was extensively reconstructed to accommodate the shows effects.
  Since the early 1990s the venue has played host to David Ian and Paul Nicholas' new production of Grease, Scrooge: The Musical, Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake, Disney's Beauty and the Beast, a return of Grease, and Notre Dame de Paris among others. Bernadette The Musical, written by Maureen and Gwyn Hughes, also enjoyed a short run in 1990.
  
  wn.com/Dominion_Theatre
• 
  Donmar Warehouse
  Donmar Warehouse is a small not-for-profit theatre in the Covent Garden area of London, with a capacity of 251.
  Under the artistic leadership of Sam Mendes, Michael Grandage and now Josie Rourke the theatre has presented some of London’s most memorable award-winning theatrical experiences, as well as garnered critical acclaim at home and abroad. The theatre has a diverse artistic policy that includes new writing, contemporary reappraisals of European classics, British and American drama and small-scale musical theatre.
  Over the past 20 years the theatre has created a reputation associated with artistic excellence: it has showcased the talent of some of the industry’s premier creative artists, and built an unparalleled catalogue of work. As well as presenting at least six productions a year at its home in Covent Garden, the Donmar presents work nationally and internationally. Every year the Donmar tours one in-house production in the UK.
  Theatrical producer Donald Albery formed the Donmar company in 1953, the name reputedly formed from the first three letters of the names Donald Albery and Dame Margot Fonteyn, the prima ballerina and a friend.
  
  wn.com/Donmar_Warehouse
• 
  Drury Lane
  Drury Lane is a street on the eastern boundary of the Covent Garden area of London, running between Aldwych and High Holborn. The northern part is in the borough of Camden and the southern part in the City of Westminster.
  It took its start from the west end of Wych Street, redeveloped in the later 19th century as Aldwych. The lane led to the house built by Sir William Drury, Knight of the Garter in Queen Elizabeth's reign. Drury House, with a coachyard in front and a garden in back, was a scene of the intrigues that led to the ill-fated rebellion of the Queen's favourite, the Earl of Essex. In the 17th century it was the London house of the Earl of Craven, then a public house under the sign of his reputed mistress, the Queen of Bohemia, but by the 18th century Drury Lane had become one of the worst slums in London, dominated by prostitution and gin palaces. The area was eventually cleared to make way for the developments of Kingsway and Aldwych.
  The name of the street is often used to refer to the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, which has in different incarnations been located in Drury Lane since the 17th century. Also in Drury Lane is the New London Theatre.
  
  wn.com/Drury_Lane
• 
  Duchess Theatre
  The Duchess Theatre is a West End theatre in the City of Westminster, London, located in Catherine Street, near Aldwych.
  The theatre opened on 25 November 1929 and is one of the smallest 'proscenium arched' West End theatres. It has 479 seats on two levels.
  The Duchess theatre was designed by Ewen Barr, and constructed by F. G. Minter Ltd, for Arthur Gibbons. The theatre is built with the stalls below street level, to overcome the scale of the site, and the rights of neighbours to Ancient lights. The theatre opened on 25 November 1929 with a play called Tunnel Trench by Hubert Griffith. The interior decoration scheme was introduced in 1934 under the supervision of Mary Wyndham Lewis, wife of J. B. Priestley.
  
  wn.com/Duchess_Theatre
• 
  Erith Playhouse
  Erith Playhouse is a non-professional theatre based in Erith, in the London Borough of Bexley. Set on the bank of the River Thames in South-East London, in between The White Hart and The Cross Keys public houses on Erith High Street, it is the largest public theatre in the London Borough of Bexley, with an auditorium seating 195 people.
  The theatre's own repertory members present approximately 13 shows each year, including a Pantomime every January, and a musical in July. The theatre is also available for hire to external societies.
  The building was originally the Oxford Cinema, which opened on 27 July 1913, showing silent movies. It continued as a cinema until 1938, when it closed, opening again as a news cinema for a short time. During the Second World War it was used as a store for furniture from the bombed homes in the locality, and it is rumoured to have had some more salacious uses at other times, bearing in mind its proximity to the river and nearby wharf, with their workforce of sailors!
  
  wn.com/Erith_Playhouse
• 
  Etcetera Theatre
  The Etcetera Theatre is a fringe venue for theatre and comedy. It was founded in 1986 and is situated above The Oxford Arms pub in Camden Town, in the London Borough of Camden.
  The Theatre won the 1996 Guinness Ingenuity Award for Pub Theatre and was nominated for the 1996 Peter Brook Empty Space Award.
  The Etcetera is a key venue in August's Camden Fringe.
  Over 2,500 productions have been staged at the Etcetra, including runs by Russell Brand, Simon Amstell, AlMurray, Milton Jones, Mark Thomas, Robin Ince, We Are Klang, Bill Bailey, Jerry Sadowitz, Russell Howard and Richard Herring.
  premieres held at the theatre include The Westwoods by Alan Ayckbourn, Between The Lines by Paul Todd and Blue Jam by Chris Morris. Kafka's Dick by Alan Bennett, was rewritten by Bennett for performance at the Etcetera.
  
  
  Coordinates: 51°32′26″N 0°08′40″W / 51.5406°N 0.1444°W / 51.5406; -0.1444
  
  
  
  wn.com/Etcetera_Theatre
• 
  Finborough Theatre
  The Finborough Theatre is a fifty seat theatre in the Earls Court area of London, United Kingdom (part of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea), which presents new British writing, UK and premieres of new plays, primarily from the English speaking world including North America, Canada, Scotland and Ireland, music theatre, and rarely seen rediscovered 19th and 20th century plays.
  The Finborough Arms was built in 1868 to a design by George Godwin. It was one of five public houses built by Corbett and McClymont in the Earls Court area during the West London development boom of the 1860s.
  June Abbott opened the theatre above the Finborough Arms Public House in June 1980. In its first decade, artists working at the new theatre included Clive Barker, Kathy Burke, Ken Campbell, Mark Rylance, and Clare Dowie who appeared in the world première of her own play Adult Child/Dead Child.
  From 1991-1994, the theatre was best known for new writing with Naomi Wallace’s first play The War Boys ; Rachel Weisz in David Farr’s Neville Southall’s Washbag,Elton John’s Glasses;Holding Back the Ocean by Godfrey Hamilton; and three plays by Anthony Neilson: The Year of the Family; Normal: The Düsseldorf Ripper; and Penetrator, which transferred from the Traverse and went on to play at the Royal Court Upstairs. From 1994, the theatre was run by The Steam Industry under Artistic Director Phil Willmott. Productions included new plays by Tony Marchant, David Eldridge, Mark Ravenhill, and Phil Willmott. New writing development includied Mark Ravenhill’s Shopping and Fucking (Royal Court, West End and Broadway) and Naomi Wallace’s Slaughter City (Royal Shakespeare Company), the UK première of David Mamet’s The Woods, and Anthony Neilson’s The Censor, which transferred to the Royal Court.
  
  wn.com/Finborough_Theatre
• 
  Fortune Theatre
  The Fortune Theatre is a 432 seat West End theatre in Russell Street, near Covent Garden, in the City of Westminster, built in 1922-4 by Ernest Schaufelberg for impresario Laurence Cowen. The façade is principally bush hammered concrete, with brick piers supporting the roof. The theatre is entered through bronze double doors, internally, there is a foyer of grey and red marble, with a beaten copper ticket booth. The theatre is situated next to Crown Court Church and opposite the Theatre Royal. It was the first theatre to be built in London after the end of World War I.
  The theatre opened, as the Fortune Thriller Theatre on August 8, 1924, with Sinners by Lawrence Cowen. An author and playwright, Cowen commissioned the theatre in an Italianate style, that stands on the site of the old Albion Tavern, a public house that was frequented by Georgian and Victorian actors.
  During World War II, the theatre hosted performances by ENSA, entertainers drawn from the armed forces. Since the war, the theatre has been a receiving house, with actors such as Dame Judi Dench, Dirk Bogarde and Maureen Lipman appearing. The Fortune also hosted shows from Flanders and Swann and Beyond the Fringe. Nunsense played at the theatre in 1987.
  
  wn.com/Fortune_Theatre
• 
  Garrick Theatre
  The Garrick Theatre is a West End theatre, located on Charing Cross Road, in the City of Westminster. It opened on 24 April 1889 with The Profligate, a play by Arthur Wing Pinero. In its early years, it appears to have specialised in the performance of melodrama, and today the theatre is a receiving house for a variety of productions. The theatre is named for David Garrick, considered the most influential Shakespearean actor.
  The Garrick Theatre was financed in 1889 by the playwright W. S. Gilbert, the author of over 75 plays, including the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas. It was designed by Walter Emden, with C. J. Phipps brought in as a consultant to help with the planning on the difficult site, which included an underground river. Originally the theatre had 800 seats on 4 levels, but the gallery (top) level has since been closed and the seating capacity reduced to 656.
  A proposed redevelopment of Covent Garden by the GLC in 1968 saw the theatre under threat, together with the nearby Vaudeville, Adelphi, Lyceum and Duchess theatres. An active campaign by Equity, the Musicians' Union, and theatre owners under the auspices of the Save London Theatres Campaign led to the abandonment of the scheme.
  
  wn.com/Garrick_Theatre
• 
  Gielgud Theatre
  The Gielgud Theatre is a West End theatre, located on Shaftesbury Avenue in the City of Westminster, London, at the corner of Rupert Street. The house currently has 889 seats on three levels.
  The theatre opened on December 27, 1906 as the Hicks Theatre in honour of actor, manager and playwright Seymour Hicks, for whom it was built. Designed by W.G.R. Sprague in Louis XVI style, the theatre originally had 970 seats, but over the years boxes and other seats have been removed. The theatre is a pair with the Queen's Theatre, which opened in 1907 on the adjacent street corner.
  The first play at the theatre was a musical called The Beauty of Bath by Hicks and Cosmo Hamilton. My Darling, another Hicks musical, followed in 1907, followed by the successful London production of the Straus operetta, A Waltz Dream in 1908. An astonishing event occurred midway through the run of the theatre's next major work, The Dashing Little Duke (1909), which was produced by Hicks. Hicks' wife, Ellaline Terriss, played the title role (a woman playing a man). When she missed several performances due to illness, Hicks stepped into the role — possibly the only case in the history of musical theatre where a husband succeeded to his wife's role.
  
  wn.com/Gielgud_Theatre
• 
  Globe Theatre
  This article is about the Globe Theatre of Shakespeare. For the modern reconstruction in London, see Shakespeare's Globe. For other uses, see Globe Theatre (disambiguation).
  The Globe Theatre was a theatre in London associated with William Shakespeare. It was built in 1599 by Shakespeare's playing company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, and was destroyed by fire on 29 June 1613. A second Globe Theatre was built on the same site by June 1614 and closed in 1642.
  A modern reconstruction of the Globe, named "Shakespeare's Globe", opened in 1997 approximately 750 feet (230 m) from the site of the original theatre.
  Examination of old property records has identified the plot of land occupied by the Globe as extending from the west side of modern-day Southwark Bridge Road eastwards as far as Porter Street and from Park Street southwards as far as the back of Gatehouse Square. However, the precise location of the building remained unknown until a small part of the foundations, including one original pier base, was discovered in 1989 beneath the car park at the rear of Anchor Terrace on Park Street. The shape of the foundations is now replicated on the surface. As the majority of the foundations lies beneath 67—70 Anchor Terrace, a listed building, no further excavations have been permitted.
  
  wn.com/Globe_Theatre
• 
  Greater London
  Greater London is the top-level administrative division of England covering London. It was created in 1965 and spans the City of London and the 32 London boroughs. This territory has the same boundaries as the London Government Office Region and the London European Parliament constituency. The region has by far the highest GVA per capita in the United Kingdom. It covers 1,572 km² (607 sq mi) and had a 2009 mid-year estimated population of 7,753,600. The term Greater London was in use before 1965 to refer to a variously defined area, larger than the County of London and often similar to the Metropolitan Police District.
  In addition to its administrative and statistical functions, Greater London (excluding the City of London) is one of the 48 ceremonial counties of England, and is under the Greater London Lieutenancy.
  Instead of forming a single political unit, London is divided into the small, interior City of London and the much wider Greater London. This arrangement has come about because as the area of London grew and absorbed neighbouring settlements, a series of administrative reforms did not fully amalgamate the City of London with the metropolitan area, and its unique political structure was retained. Outside the limited boundaries of the old city, a variety of arrangements governed the wider area since 1855, culminating with the creation of the Greater London administrative area in 1965.
  
  wn.com/Greater_London
• 
  Greenwich Playhouse
  The Greenwich Playhouse in the central Greenwich district of the Royal Borough of Greenwich is an eighty-four seat studio theatre which opened in 1990. It is situated above and has its entrance within, the St. Christopher’s Inn Pub. The pub is situated on the east side of the forecourt of Greenwich station.
  The Galleon Theatre Company was founded as a touring company in 1988 by Alice de Sousa and Bruce Jamieson. In December 1995, they became the resident company at the Prince Theatre. In September 1998, the theatre closed and was to be lost. The theatre was revived after a campaign to save it, and re-opened with new facilities on 30 May 2000. In January 2012 its closure as a producing theatre was again announced, effective from April 2012.
  
  
  
  wn.com/Greenwich_Playhouse
• 
  Greenwich Theatre
  The Greenwich Theatre is a local theatre located in Croom's Hill close to the centre of Greenwich in south-east London.
  The building was originally a music hall created in 1855 as part of the neighbouring Rose and Crown public house, but the Rose and Crown Music Hall was reconstructed in 1871 and renamed 'Crowder's Music Hall'.
  It briefly rejoiced in the name 'Crowder's Music Hall and Temple of Varieties', but was renamed in 1879 as 'Royal Borough Theatre of Varieties'. This name lasted less than 20 years. After a brief spell as the 'Greenwich Hippodrome', it was rebuilt in 1898 and became the 'Parthenon Theatre of Varieties'.
  Having shown both live performances and films since 1915, in 1924 it was converted into a cinema. In 1949, the building was closed and it took a concerted campaign to save it from demolition during the 1960s. After substantial alterations, the building eventually reopened as the Greenwich Theatre in 1969 under Artistic Director Ewan Hooper and Director Alan Vaughan Williams, who directed the opening production and world premiere of Martin Luther King, written by Ewan Hooper.
  
  wn.com/Greenwich_Theatre
• 
  Hackney Empire
  The Hackney Empire is a theatre on Mare Street, in the London Borough of Hackney, built in 1901 as a music hall.
  Hackney Empire is a grade II* listed building. The theatre was built as a music hall in 1901, designed by the architect Frank Matcham.
  Charlie Chaplin, WC Fields, Stanley Holloway, Stan Laurel and Marie Lloyd all performed there, when the Hackney Empire was a music hall.
  ATV bought the theatre to use as studios in the 1950s, and shows such as Take Your Pick and Oh, Boy! were broadcast live. Some scenes from Emergency - Ward 10 were also filmed there. From 1963 to 1984 the theatre was used by the Mecca Organisation as a bingo hall.
  In 1984, Mecca found the building too expensive to maintain as a bingo hall, and it was offered to C.A.S.T, a satirical touring theatre group, headed by Claire and Roland Muldoon, as a London base. They also mounted successful variety nights headlined by a new breed of alternative comedy acts, such as Ben Elton, Dawn French, and Jennifer Saunders.
  The theatre was threatened with demolition, and in 1986, actor-manager Roland Muldoon mounted a campaign to acquire the freehold and to re-open the Hackney Empire as a permanent performance space; allowing the theatre to return to theatrical use for its 85th anniversary.
  
  wn.com/Hackney_Empire
• 
  Hampstead Theatre
  Hampstead Theatre is a theatre in the vicinity of Swiss Cottage and Belsize Park, in the London Borough of Camden. It specialises in commissioning and producing new writing, supporting and developing the work of new writers. In 2009 it celebrated its 50 year anniversary.
  The original theatre (The Hampstead Theatre Club) was created in Moreland Hall in 1959. James Roose-Evans was the first Artistic Director, and the 1959–1960 season included The Dumb Waiter and The Room by Harold Pinter, Eugene Ionesco's Jacques and The Sport of My Mad Mother by Ann Jellicoe. In 1962 the company moved to a portable cabin in Swiss Cottage where it remained for nearly 40 years, before, in 2003, the new purpose-built Hampstead Theatre opened in Swiss Cottage. The main auditorium now seats between 150 and 325 people. The studio theatre, the Michael Frayn Space, seats up to 80 people and hosts Heat&Light, Hampstead Theatre's Young Company for ages 10-25. Heat&Light produces 12 productions each year, including, previously, new plays by Bola Agbaje, Mike Bartlett, Joel Horwood, Jane Bodie, Ed Hime, Nick Grosso and John Donnelly.
  
  wn.com/Hampstead_Theatre
• 
  Haymarket Theatre
  The Theatre Royal Haymarket (also known as Haymarket Theatre or the Little Theatre) is a West End theatre in the Haymarket in the City of Westminster which dates back to 1720, making it the third-oldest London playhouse still in use. Samuel Foote acquired the lease in 1747, and in 1766 he gained a royal patent to play legitimate drama (meaning spoken drama, as opposed to opera, concerts or plays with music) in the summer months. The original building was a little further north in the same street. It has been at its current location since 1821, when it was redesigned by John Nash. It is a Grade I listed building, with a seating capacity of 888. The freehold of the theatre is owned by the Crown Estate.
  The Haymarket has been the site of a significant innovation in theatre. In 1873, it was the venue for the first scheduled matinée performance, establishing a custom soon followed in theatres everywhere. Its managers have included Benjamin Nottingham Webster, John Baldwin Buckstone, Squire Bancroft, Cyril Maude, Herbert Beerbohm Tree, and John Sleeper Clarke, brother-in-law of John Wilkes Booth, who quit America after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Famous actors who débuted at the theatre included Robert William Elliston (1774–1831) and John Liston (1776–1846).
  
  wn.com/Haymarket_Theatre
• 
  Hoxton Hall
  Hoxton Hall is a community centre and performance space in Hoxton, at 130 Hoxton Street, in the London Borough of Hackney.
  A grade II* listed building, the theatre was first built as a Music hall in 1863, as MacDonald's Music hall. It is an unrestored example of the saloon-style. In the theatre, an iron-railed, two tier galleried auditorium rises on three sides, supported on cast iron columns, above a small, high, multi-tiered stage. It survives, largely in its original form, as for many years it was used as a Quaker meeting house.
  The music hall lost its performance licence in 1871, due to complaints by the police; it was sold, and the new owners applied for a licence in 1876, but were again rejected. William Isaac Palmer (1824–1893) purchased it on behalf of the Blue Ribbon Gospel Temperance Mission in 1879. Palmer was an heir to the Huntley and Palmer biscuit family and spent much of his fortune on charity. On Palmer's death, the hall passed to the Bedford Institute, a Quaker organisation dedicated to running adult schools and alleviating the results of poverty.
  
  wn.com/Hoxton_Hall
• Intimate Theatre
  The Intimate Theatre was a repertory theatre in Palmers Green, London from 1937 to 1987, and is the name commonly used for St. Monica's Church Hall.
  St. Monica's Church Hall was built in 1931, and the actor John Clements turned the building into the Intimate Theatre in 1935. It became a full-time professional repertory theatre in 1937.
  After he was demobbed, Roger Moore was a member of the repertory company, and earned about £10 per week. In the late 1940s, the BBC televised 14 plays from the theatre.
  During the 1960s, the repertory company put on a new play each week, although Max Rietmann's Hot and Cold in all Rooms played to a capacity audience for three weeks in 1962.
  In 1968, David Bowie acted the role of Cloud in Pierrot In Turquoise at the theatre.
  In 1969, the building reverted for a short time to its use as a church hall before returning to its use as a theatre.
  In 1987, the usage as a theatre was reduced to allow the church to hold other events.
  It has a current capacity of 435 Today (2012) the theatre is used by The London Pantomimers, Acorn Theatre Company, Saint Monica's Players, and other amateur drama groups. It is located in Green Lanes.
  
  wn.com/Intimate_Theatre
• Jacksons Lane
  Jacksons Lane is a pioneering multi-arts venue in Highgate, North London.
  Jacksons Lane is a multi-arts venue in Highgate, North London. Housed in a striking red-brick gothic church conversion, the building is home to a 160 capacity theatre, a large scale dance and rehearsal studio, a cafe-bar and four other multi-purpose spaces.
  
  Jacksons Lane is a theatre, a centre for participation, and a space for new circus theatre companies and artists to create and perform.
  
  The venue has a rich history of innovative work including a wealth of experimental visual theatre companies, as well as a strong history in contemporary dance and circus. Established names and companies such as Complicite, The Mighty Boosh, Shared Experience, Stephen Merchant, Out of Joint and Frantic Assembly have all performed or developed work at Jacksons Lane, and Matt Lucas and David Walliams (Little Britain) performed their first ever show as a duo at Jacksons Lane. Lately it has forged a strong identity for producing and promoting contemporary circus work and supports some 20 companies a year. Five Jacksons Lane-supported companies were shortlisted for the pioneering Jeune Talents Cirques Europe in 2010, and was hailed as 'The Innovator' and 'a breeding ground for fast-rising talent' By Time Out London magazine.
  
  
  wn.com/Jacksons_Lane
• 
  Leicester Square
  Coordinates: 51°30′37″N 0°7′49″W / 51.51028°N 0.13028°W / 51.51028; -0.13028
  Leicester Square ⁱ/ˈlɛstər/ is a pedestrianised square in the West End of London, England. The Square lies within an area bound by Lisle Street , to the north; Charing Cross Road, to the east; Orange Street, to the south; and Whitcomb Street, to the west. The park at the centre of the Square is bound by Cranbourn Street, to the north; Leicester Street, to the east; Irving Street, to the south; and a section of road designated simply as Leicester Square, to the west. It is within the City of Westminster, and about equal distances (about 400 yards / 370 metres) north of Trafalgar Square, east of Piccadilly Circus, west of Covent Garden, and south of Cambridge Circus.
  The Square is named after Robert Sidney, 2nd Earl of Leicester, who purchased four acres (1.6 hectares) in St. Martin's Field in 1630; by 1635, he had built himself a large house, Leicester House, at the northern end. The area in front of the house was then enclosed, depriving inhabitants of St Martin in the Fields parish of their right to use the previously common land. The parishioners appealed to King Charles I, and he appointed three members of the Privy Council to arbitrate. Lord Leicester was ordered to keep part of his land (thereafter known as Leicester Field and later as Leicester Square) open for the parishioners.
  
  wn.com/Leicester_Square
• 
  Little Angel Theatre
  The Little Angel Theatre is a puppet theatre catering for children, families and adults, off Upper Street in the London Borough of Islington.
  The 100 seat theatre, in a former Temperance hall, was opened on 24 November 1961, by founder John Wright. In January 2006, Peter Glanville took over as artistic director.
  The theatre is both a producing and receiving house, showing work throughout the year other than for a short time in the summer. The theatre also runs participation activities for adults, teenagers and children on a termly basis. Professional development of puppeteers and the development of new work is supported by a continuing programme of work. In 2007, the company participated with the RSC in a production of Venus and Adonis using Japanese Bunraku puppets.
  
  
  
  wn.com/Little_Angel_Theatre
• 
  London
  London ⁱ/ˈlʌndən/ is the capital city of England and the United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its founding by the Romans, who named it Londinium. London's ancient core, the City of London, largely retains its square-mile mediaeval boundaries. Since at least the 19th century, the name London has also referred to the metropolis developed around this core. The bulk of this conurbation forms the London region and the Greater London administrative area, governed by the elected Mayor of London and the London Assembly.
  London is a leading global city, with strengths in the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, professional services, research and development, tourism and transport all contributing to its prominence. It is the world's leading financial centre alongside New York City and has the fifth-largest city GDP in the world (and the largest in Europe). London has been described as a world cultural capital. It was the world's most visited city during 2011 and London Heathrow is the world's busiest airport by number of international passengers. London's 43 universities form the largest concentration of higher education in Europe. In 2012 London will become the first city to host the modern Summer Olympic Games three times.
  
  wn.com/London
• 
  London Palladium
  The London Palladium is a 2,286 seat West End theatre located off Oxford Street in the City of Westminster. From the roster of stars who have played there and many televised performances, it is arguably the most famous theatre in London and the United Kingdom, especially for musical variety shows.
  Walter Gibbons, an early moving pictures manager, built the Palladium in 1910 to compete with Edward Moss's London Hippodrome and Oswald Stoll's London Coliseum. The facade (originally that of Argyll House, which is why the pub opposite is called The Argyll Arms) dates back to the 19th century. Formerly it was a temporary wooden building called Corinthian Bazaar, which featured an aviary and aimed to attract customers from the recently closed Pantheon Bazaar (now Marks and Spencers) on Oxford Street. The theatre was rebuilt a year later by Fredrick Hengler, the son of a tightrope walker, as a circus venue that included an aquatic display in a flooded ring. Next it became the National Skating Palace - a skating rink with real ice. However the rink failed and the Palladium was redesigned by Frank Matcham, a famous theatrical architect who also designed the Coliseum, for a site that previously housed Hengler’s Circus. The building now carries Heritage Foundation commemorative plaques honouring Lew Grade and Frankie Vaughan.
  
  wn.com/London_Palladium
• 
  Mermaid Theatre
  The Mermaid Theatre was a theatre at Puddle Dock, in Blackfriars, in the City of London and the first built there since the time of Shakespeare. It was, importantly, also one of the first new theatres to abandon the traditional stage layout; instead a single tier of seats surrounded the stage on three sides.
  The 20th-century theatre was the life's work of actor Bernard Miles with his wife, Josephine Wilson. His original Mermaid Theatre was a large barn in his house in the St. John's Wood area of London. This seated 200 people, and during 1951-1952 it was used for concerts, plays and a celebrated opera production of Dido and Aeneas with Kirsten Flagstad, Maggie Teyte and Thomas Hemsley, conducted by Geraint Jones, which was recorded by HMV. For the third season in 1953, the Mermaid Theatre was moved to the Royal Exchange.
  Miles was encouraged to build a permanent theatre and raising money from public subscriptions, he oversaw the creation of the new building on land formerly occupied by a warehouse. This site was close to the location of an abortive attempt to build a theatre (named Porter's Hall) for the amalgamation of the Children of the Queen's Revels and Lady Elizabeth's Men, during the Jacobean era. This project, undertaken by Philip Rosseter with distant backing from Henslowe and Alleyn, was ended because of complaints from the neighborhood's residents.
  
  wn.com/Mermaid_Theatre
• 
  Millfield Theatre
  Millfield Theatre opened in 1988 in the grounds of Millfield House on Silver Street in Edmonton, North London. It seats up to 362 in a variety of stage layouts.
  The theatre has a lively and broad based programming policy and presents drama, dance, musicals, alternative cabaret, variety, popular music and children's events. Millfield also presents a major professional pantomime which is produced in-house. The theatre is reopening on October 1, 2009 following significant refurbishment, gaining a new cafe bar, performance space, toilet block and box office.
  Millfield Theatre is owned, managed and funded entirely by London Borough of Enfield. It has 12 full time staff working on site at the theatre, and employs many more casual staff. Ushers at the theatre are all volunteers.
  Millfield Theatre is marketed under the umbrella of Millfield Arts Centre, which encompasses Millfield Theatre and Millfield House. Millfield House contains rooms which are available for hire, and also plays host to a number of educational classes and workshops for children and adults. This is marketed under the banner of Millfield Education.
  
  wn.com/Millfield_Theatre
• 
  New London Theatre
  The New London Theatre is a West End theatre located on the corner of Drury Lane and Parker Street in Covent Garden, in the London Borough of Camden. The Winter Garden Theatre formerly occupied the site until 1965.
  The modern theatre is built on the site of previous taverns and music hall theatres, where a place of entertainment has been located site since Elizabethan times. Nell Gwynn was associated with the tavern, which became known as the Great Mogul by the end of the 17th century, and presented entertainments in an adjoining hall, including "glee clubs" and "sing-songs". The Mogul Saloon was built on the site in 1847, which was sometimes known as the "Turkish Saloon or the "Mogul Music Hall." In 1851, it became the Middlesex Music Hall, known as The Old Mo. This in turn was rebuilt as the New Middlesex Theatre of Varieties, in 1911 by Frank Matcham for Oswald Stoll.
  In 1919, the theatre was sold to George Grossmith, Jr. and Edward Laurillard, refurbished and reopened as the Winter Garden Theatre. They produced Kissing Time (1919, with a book by P. G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton and music by Ivan Caryll), followed by A Night Out (1920), both starring Stanley Holloway. Grossmith and Laurillard also became managers of the Apollo Theatre in 1920. But expanding their operation caused Grossmith and Laurillard to end their partnership, with Grossmith retaining control of the Winter Garden.
  
  wn.com/New_London_Theatre
• 
  New York City
  New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. The city is referred to as New York City or The City of New York to distinguish it from the State of New York, of which it is a part. As a global power city, New York exerts a significant impact upon commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and entertainment. The home of the United Nations Headquarters, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has been described as the cultural capital of the world.
  Located on one of the world's largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, each of which comprises a state county. The five boroughs—The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island—were consolidated into a single city in 1898. With a Census-estimated 2011 population of 8,244,910 distributed over a land area of just 305 square miles (790 km²), New York is the most densely populated major city in the United States. As many as 800 languages are spoken in New York, making it the most linguistically diverse city in the world. The New York City Metropolitan Area's population is the United States' largest, with 18.9 million people distributed over 6,720 square miles (17,400 km²), and is also part of the most populous combined statistical area in the United States, containing 22.1 million people as of the 2010 Census.
  
  wn.com/New_York_City
• 
  Novello Theatre
  The Novello Theatre is a West End theatre on Aldwych, in the City of Westminster.
  The theatre was built as one of a pair with the Aldwych Theatre on either side of the Waldorf Hotel, both being designed by W. G. R. Sprague. The theatre opened as the Waldorf Theatre on 22 May 1905, and was renamed the Strand Theatre, in 1909. It was again renamed as the Whitney Theatre, in 1911 before again becoming the Strand Theatre, in 1913. In 2005, the theatre was renamed by its owners (Delfont Mackintosh Theatres) the Novello Theatre in honour of Ivor Novello, who lived in a flat above the theatre from 1913 to 1951.
  The black comedy Arsenic and Old Lace had a run of 1337 performances here in the 1940s, and Sailor, Beware! ran for 1231 performances from 1955. Stephen Sondheim's musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum opened here on the day of Kennedy's assassination, running for nearly two years. In 1971, the comedy No Sex Please, We're British opened here, remaining for over 10 years of its 16-year run until it transferred to the Garrick Theatre in 1982.
  
  wn.com/Novello_Theatre
• 
  Noël Coward Theatre
  The Noël Coward Theatre, formerly known as the Albery Theatre, is a West End theatre on St. Martin's Lane in the City of Westminster. 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 architect W. G. R. Sprague with an exterior in the classical style and an interior in the Rococo style.
  In 1973 it was renamed the Albery Theatre in tribute to the late Sir Bronson Albery who had presided as its manager for many years. Since September 2005, the theatre has been owned by Delfont-Mackintosh Ltd. It underwent major refurbishment in 2006, and was renamed the Noël Coward Theatre when it re-opened for the London premiere of Avenue Q on 1 June 2006. Noël Coward, one of Britain's greatest playwrights and actors, appeared in his own play, I'll Leave It To You, at the then New Theatre in 1920, the first West End production of one of his plays.
  The theatre seats 872 patrons on four levels. The building is now a Grade II Listed structure.
  
  wn.com/Noël_Coward_Theatre
• 
  Old Red Lion Theatre
  The Old Red Lion Theatre is a fringe theatre, situated above a pub at The Angel, in the London Borough of Islington.
  It was founded in 1948 as the Old Red Lion Theatre Club.
  The pub in itself is one of the oldest in London, having first been built in 1415 in what was then the rural village of Islington in open countryside and fields. A house called Goose Farm and some nearby cattle pens (for herds being driven to Smithfield Market) were the only structures to adjoin it, and St John Street (then called Chester Road) was a country lane.
  In the late 18th century Chester Road became notorious for highwaymen, with patrols being provided to protect those travelling along it at night. At this time descriptions state that the Old Red Lion was a small brick house with three trees in its forecourt, visited by William Hogarth (who portrayed it in the middle distance of his painting "Evening", with the foreground being Sadler's Wells), Samuel Johnson and Thomas Paine (who wrote The Rights of Man in the shade of the trees in its forecourt).
  
  wn.com/Old_Red_Lion_Theatre
• 
  Orange Tree Theatre
  The Orange Tree Theatre is a 172-seat theatre at 1 Clarence Street, Richmond in south west London, built specifically as a theatre in the round.
  Exclusively presenting its own productions (and occasional co-productions with the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough), it specialises in staging new plays and neglected classics. It also operates an educational programme called Shakespeare for Schools, part of the Primary Shakespeare Project first devised by Sarah Gordon (director) and Christopher Geelan in 1989. which tours fully costumed adaptations, given by professional actors, in school halls around south west London and Surrey.
  Since 1986 the theatre has run a Trainee Director scheme, each year appointing two young assistant-directors, who direct and present a showcase production at the end of their term. Graduates of this arrangement have included Rachel Kavanaugh, Timothy Sheader, Sean Holmes, Dominic Hill and Anthony Clark.
  As a company the Orange Tree Theatre, then known as the Richmond Fringe, was founded on 31 December 1971 by its present artistic director, Sam Walters, and his actress wife Auriol Smith, in a small room above the Orange Tree pub, close to Richmond railway station.
  
  wn.com/Orange_Tree_Theatre
• 
  Oxford Street
  Oxford Street is a major thoroughfare in the City of Westminster in the West End of London, United Kingdom. It is Europe's busiest shopping street, and as of 2011 had approximately 300 shops. The street was formerly part of the London-Oxford road which began at Newgate, City of London, and was known as the Oxford Road. Today it forms part of the A40 trunk road, although like many roads in central London which are no longer through routes it is not signposted with the road number.
  Roughly halfway along Oxford Street is Oxford Circus, a busy intersection with Regent Street. A diagonal crossing at Oxford Circus opened in 2009, currently the only one of its kind in central London.
  Common sights on Oxford Street include preachers (such as Philip Howard) and political demonstrations (such as the 2001 May Day protests).
  Oxford Street runs for approximately one and a half miles (two and a half kilometres) from Marble Arch at the north east corner of Hyde Park, through Oxford Circus to St Giles Circus, at the intersection with Charing Cross Road and Tottenham Court Road. Eastwards, the road then becomes New Oxford Street until it runs into High Holborn. Oxford Street intersects with other London roads including Park Lane, New Bond Street and Regent Street. West of Marble Arch, Oxford Street becomes Bayswater Road, then Notting Hill Gate and Holland Park Avenue until it becomes the Uxbridge Road at Shepherd's Bush Roundabout. At Uxbridge it becomes the Oxford Road again, all the way to Oxford, save for some short sections where it has been given a local name.
  
  wn.com/Oxford_Street
• 
  Peacock Theatre
  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 utilise the theatre for lectures, public talks, conferences, political speeches and open days. The university has a long lease with London's principal centre for contemporary dance, Sadler's Wells, with whom it has negotiated a deal to bring in dance companies under the banner 'Sadler's Wells in the West End'. The venue often plays host to dance performances, conferences, ballet, pop concerts and award ceremonies. The stage is approximately 36 feet (11 m) by 33 feet (10 m).
  Gibbon's Tennis Court became used as a theatre on this site in the 17th century. In 1911, the London Opera House opened on this site, becoming the National Theatre of England, three years later. Neither theatre was successful and the venture was sold, becoming the Stoll Theatre, in 1916.
  A theatre has stood on the site since the 17th century. Known as Gibbon's Tennis Court, or the Vere Street Theatre. Mrs Hughes became the first (identified) woman to tread the boards of a London theatre, on 8 December 1660, in a performance of Othello. The company left the theatre in 1663 and there is no record of further plays at the theatre. The building was finally destroyed by fire in 1809.
  
  wn.com/Peacock_Theatre
• Pentameters Theatre
  The Pentameters Theatre was founded in 1968 and is still run by artistic director Leonie Scott-Matthews, a well known Hampstead resident. It is a 60-seat venue and is a fringe theatre in the London Borough of Camden, located above the Three Horseshoes public house in Hampstead. The theatre has a reputation for producing revivals, poetry, music events and cutting-edge new plays in particular.
  The theatre began in a disused skittle alley in the basement of the Freemason's Arms, Hampstead, in August 1968. It moved to an open air site and also to the Haverstock Arms before moving to its present location in October 1971. It was founded to present poets reading their work in an informal theatrical pub setting. The many authors to appear at Pentameters include Dannie Abse, Fleur Adcock, Kingsley Amis, George Barker, Ivor Cutler, Margaret Drabble, William Empson, Ruth Fainlight, Elaine Feinstein, John Heath-Stubbs, Adrian Henri, Michael Hamburger, John Horder, Michael Horovitz, Libby Houston, Black Gallagher, Ted Hughes, James Kirkup, Fran Landesman, Laurie Lee, Christopher Logue, Edward Lucie-Smith, George Macbeth, Roger McGough, Adrian Mitchell, Edna O'Brien, Brian Patten, Peter Porter, Vernon Scannell, Stevie Smith, Stephen Spender, Jon Stallworthy, John Wain, Heathcote Williams and the psychologist R. D. Laing.
  
  wn.com/Pentameters_Theatre
• 
  Piccadilly Theatre
  The Piccadilly Theatre is a West End theatre located at 16 Denman Street, behind Piccadilly Circus and adjacent to the Regent Palace Hotel, in the City of Westminster, England.
  Built by Bertie Crewe and Edward A. Stone for Edward Laurillard, its simple facade conceals a grandiose Art Deco interior designed by Marc-Henri Levy and Gaston Laverdet, with a 1,232-seat auditorium decorated in shades of pink. Gold and green are the dominant colours in the bars and foyer, which include the original light fittings. Upon its opening on 27 April 1928, the theatre's souvenir brochure claimed, "If all the bricks used in the building were laid in a straight line, they would stretch from London to Paris." The opening production, Jerome Kern's musical Blue Eyes, starred Evelyn Laye, one of the most acclaimed actresses of the period.
  The Piccadilly was briefly taken over by Warner Brothers, and operated as a cinema using the Vitaphone system, and premièred the first talking picture to be shown in Great Britain, The Singing Fool with Al Jolson. The theatre reopened in November 1929, with a production of The Student Prince, having a success in January 1931 with Folly to be Wise, running for 257 performances.
  
  wn.com/Piccadilly_Theatre
• 
  Playhouse Theatre
  The Playhouse Theatre is a West End theatre in the City of Westminster, located in Northumberland Avenue, near Trafalgar Square. The Theatre was built by F. H. Fowler and Hill with a seating capacity of 1,200. It was rebuilt in 1907 and still retains its original substage machinery. Its current seating capacity is 786.
  Built by Sefton Henry Parry as the Royal Avenue Theatre, it opened on 11 March 1882 with 679 seats. The first production at the theatre was Jacques Offenbach's Madame Favart. In its early seasons, the theatre hosted comic operas, burlesques and farces for several years. For much of this time, the low comedian, Arthur Roberts, a popular star of the music halls, starred at the theatre. By the 1890s, the theatre was presenting drama, and in 1894 Annie Horniman, the tea heiress, anonymously sponsored the actress Florence Farr in a season of plays at the theatre. Farr's first production was unsuccessful, and so she prevailed upon her friend, George Bernard Shaw to hurry and make his West End début at the theatre with Arms and the Man in 1894. It was successful enough to allow him to discontinue music criticism to focus full time on play writing. The legendary actress manager Gladys Cooper ran the theatre for some years.
  
  wn.com/Playhouse_Theatre
• 
  Regent Street
  Regent Street is one of the major shopping streets in London's West End, well known to tourists and Londoners alike, and famous for its Christmas illuminations. It is named after the Prince Regent (later George IV), and is commonly associated with the architect John Nash, whose street layout survives, although all his original buildings except All Souls Church have since been replaced.
  The street was completed in 1825 and was an early example of town planning in England, cutting through the 17th and 18th century street pattern through which it passes. It runs from the Regent's residence at Carlton House in St James's at the southern end, through Piccadilly Circus and Oxford Circus, to All Souls Church. From there Langham Place and Portland Place continue the route to Regent's Park.
  Every building in Regent Street is protected as a Listed Building, at least Grade II status, and together they form the Regent Street Conservation Area.
  The street is one of the locations on the standard UK version of the Monopoly board game, and it is referred to in the 1966 song Dedicated Follower of Fashion by The Kinks.
  
  wn.com/Regent_Street
• 
  Richmond Theatre
  The present Richmond Theatre, in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, is a British Victorian theatre located on Little Green, adjacent to Richmond Green. It opened on 18 September 1899 with a performance of As You Like It, and is one of the finest surviving examples of the work of theatre architect Frank Matcham. John Earl, writing in 1982, described it as: "Of outstanding importance as the most completely preserved Matcham theatre in Greater London and one of his most satisfying interiors.".
  The theatre, originally known as the Richmond Theatre and Opera House, is structured into the familiar stalls, dress and upper circles, with four boxes at dress level. The auditorium is a mixture of gilt detailing and red plush fabrics, covering seats and front of circles.
  In the early 1990s the theatre underwent a major overhaul overseen by the designer Carl Toms. This included a side extension giving more space for the audience and includes a 'Matcham Room’.
  Its interior and exterior has been used as a movie set in many films (e.g. Evita, Topsy-Turvy, Finding Neverland - doubling as the Duke of York's Theatre, National Treasure: Book of Secrets - setting of Ford's Theatre) and TV programmes (e.g. Jonathan Creek). The theatre is now part of the Ambassador Theatre Group and has a weekly schedule of plays and musicals, usually given by professional touring companies. Pre-West End shows can sometimes be seen. There is a Christmas and New Year pantomime tradition and many of Britain's greatest music hall and pantomime performers have appeared there.
  
  wn.com/Richmond_Theatre
• 
  Riverside Studios
  Riverside Studios is a production studio, theatre and independent cinema on the banks of the River Thames in Hammersmith, London, England. It plays host to contemporary and international dramatic and dance performance, film, visual art exhibitions and television production.
  In 1933, the Triumph Film Company moved into what is now Riverside Studios, a former industrial warehouse in Crisp Road, London, picturesquely located on the Thames just south of the late Victorian Hammersmith Bridge. Under the ownership of Jack Buchanan, the company produced many well-known films including The Happiest Days of Your Life and Father Brown, starring Alec Guinness (1953). In 1954, the studios were acquired by the BBC for its television service. Series 2 to 6 of Hancock's Half Hour (1957–60) were made at what was now the BBC Riverside Studios, along with other drama and music programmes, including the SF classic Quatermass and the Pit (1958–59), early episodes of the long-running Doctor Who, and the children's programme Play School. The facility was in continuous use until the early 1970s, the rooftop camera position providing one of the highlights of the annual University Boat Race each Easter Saturday.
  
  wn.com/Riverside_Studios
• 
  Royal Court Theatre
  The Royal Court Theatre is a non-commercial theatre on Sloane Square, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London. It is noted for its contributions to modern theatre. In 1956 it was acquired by and is home to a resident company, the English Stage Company.
  The first theatre on Lower George Street, off Sloane Square, was the converted Nonconformist Ranelagh Chapel, opened as a theatre in 1870 under the name The New Chelsea Theatre. Marie Litton became its manager in 1871, hiring Walter Emden to remodel the interior, and it was renamed the Court Theatre.
  Several of W. S. Gilbert's early plays were staged here, including Randall's Thumb, Creatures of Impulse (with music by Alberto Randegger), Great Expectations (adapted from the Dickens novel), and On Guard (all in 1871); The Happy Land (1873, with Gilbert Abbott à Beckett; Gilbert's most controversial play); The Wedding March, translated from Un Chapeau de Paille d'Italie by Eugène Marin Labiche (1873); The Blue-Legged Lady, translated from La Dame aux Jambes d'Azur by Labiche and Marc-Michel (1874); and Broken Hearts (1875). By 1878, management of the theatre was shared by John Hare and W. H. Kendal.
  
  wn.com/Royal_Court_Theatre
• 
  Royal Opera House
  The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply "Covent Garden", after a previous use of the site of the opera house's original construction in 1732. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The Royal Ballet, and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House. Originally called the Theatre Royal, it served primarily as a playhouse for the first hundred years of its history. In 1734, the first ballet was presented. A year later, Handel's first season of operas began. Many of his operas and oratorios were specifically written for Covent Garden and had their premieres there.
  The current building is the third theatre on the site following disastrous fires in 1808 and 1857. The façade, foyer, and auditorium date from 1858, but almost every other element of the present complex dates from an extensive reconstruction in the 1990s. The Royal Opera House seats 2,256 people and consists of four tiers of boxes and balconies and the amphitheatre gallery. The proscenium is 12.20 m wide and 14.80 m high. The main auditorium is a Grade 1 listed building.
  
  wn.com/Royal_Opera_House
• 
  Savoy Theatre
  The Savoy Theatre is a West End theatre located in the Strand in the City of Westminster, London, England. The theatre opened on 10 October 1881 and was built by Richard D'Oyly Carte on the site of the old Savoy Palace as a showcase for the popular series of comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan, which became known as the Savoy Operas as a result.
  The theatre was the first theatre, and the first public building in the world, to be lit entirely by electricity. In 1889, Richard D'Oyly Carte built the Savoy Hotel next to the theatre. For many years, the Savoy was the home of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, and it was run by the Carte family for over a century. Richard's son Rupert D'Oyly Carte rebuilt and modernised the theatre in 1929, and it was rebuilt again in 1993 following a fire. It is a Grade II* listed building.
  Apart from The Mikado and other famous Gilbert and Sullivan premières, the theatre has hosted such notable premières as Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit in 1941. In recent years it has presented opera, Shakespeare and other non-musical plays, as well as musicals, including revivals of Fiddler on the Roof and Carousel, and new shows like Never Forget. The original London production of Legally Blonde played from December 2009 to April 2012.
  
  wn.com/Savoy_Theatre
• 
  Shaftesbury Avenue
  Shaftesbury Avenue is a major street in central London, England, named after Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, that runs in a north-easterly direction from Piccadilly Circus to New Oxford Street, crossing Charing Cross Road at Cambridge Circus.
  Shaftesbury Avenue was built in the late 19th century (1877–86) by the architect George Vulliamy and the engineer Sir Joseph Bazalgette to provide a north-south traffic artery through the crowded districts of St. Giles and Soho. It was also part of a slum clearance measure, to push impoverished workers out of the city centre^{[citation needed]} although the street's construction was stalled by legislation requiring rehousing some of these displaced residents, overcrowding persisted. Charles Booth's Poverty Map shows the neighbourhood makeup shortly after Shaftesbury Avenue opened. It is generally considered the heart of London's West End theatre district, with the Lyric, Apollo, Gielgud and Queen's theatres clustered together on the north side of the road between Piccadilly Circus and Charing Cross Road. At the intersection of Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road there is also the large Palace Theatre. Finally, the north-eastern end of the road has another large theatre, called the Shaftesbury Theatre.
  
  wn.com/Shaftesbury_Avenue
• 
  Shaftesbury Theatre
  The Shaftesbury Theatre is a West End Theatre, located on Shaftesbury Avenue, in the London Borough of Camden.
  The theatre was designed for the brothers Walter and Frederick Melville by Bertie Crewe and opened on 26 December 1911 with a production of The Three Musketeers, as the New Prince's Theatre, becoming the Prince's Theatre in 1914. It had a capacity of 2,392 and a stage 31' 10" wide by 31' deep.
  The Prince's was the last theatre to be built in Shaftesbury Avenue, and is located near New Oxford Street, perhaps explaining the many gaps between performances in its early years. It had considerable success with an 18 week season of Gilbert and Sullivan operas, presented by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, in 1919. These became a regular attraction at the theatre in the 1920s, interspersed with runs of theatre productions transferred from other venues. Basil Rathbone appeared at the Prince's Theatre in May 1933 when he played Julian Beauclerc in a revival of Diplomacy. The Rose of Persia was revived at the theatre in 1935. The D'Oyly Carte returned in 1942.
  
  wn.com/Shaftesbury_Theatre
• Shaw Theatre
  The Shaw Theatre is a theatre in Somers Town, in the London Borough of Camden. It is located near the Euston Road, beside the British Library and St Pancras Chambers (formerly the Midland Grand Hotel), equidistant from King's Cross station and Euston station.
  Before being refurbished in 1998, the Shaw Theatre originally opened its doors in 1971 as a purpose built theatre within the St Pancras library. The opening production was the show Zigger Zagger with a cast that included Barrie Rutter and Paula Wilcox. In 1972, Simon Ward and Sinéad Cusack appeared in Romeo and Juliet. Later in the same year Vanessa Redgrave, Nyree Dawn Porter and Windsor Davies starred in Twelfth Night. Other stars who appeared in the early days include Sir Ian McKellen, Mia Farrow, Julia McKenzie and Raymond Francis. The theatre hosted a series of Sunday nights at the Shaw, with many notable actors including Dame Judi Dench, Dame Flora Robson, Patricia Routledge and Michael Williams. It also hosted numerous productions by the National Youth Theatre.
  
  wn.com/Shaw_Theatre
• 
  Shoreditch
  Coordinates: 51°31′34″N 0°04′41″W / 51.526°N 0.078°W / 51.526; -0.078
  Shoreditch is an area of London within the London Borough of Hackney in England. It is a built-up part of the inner city immediately to the north of the City of London, located 2.5 miles (4.0 km) east-northeast of Charing Cross.
  The etymology of 'Shoreditch' is debated. One legend holds that the place was originally named "Shore's Ditch", after Jane Shore, the mistress of Edward IV, who is supposed to have died or been buried in a ditch in the area. This legend is commemorated today by a large painting, at Haggerston Branch Library, of Jane Shore being retrieved from the ditch, and by a design on glazed tiles in a shop in Shoreditch High Street showing her meeting Edward IV.
  However, the area was known as "Soersditch" long before Jane Shore's life. A more plausible origin for the name is "Sewer Ditch", in reference to a drain or watercourse in what was once a boggy area. It may have referred to the headwaters of the river Walbrook, which rose in the Curtain Road area.
  
  wn.com/Shoreditch
• 
  Soho Theatre
  Soho Theatre is a theatre in the eponymous Soho district of the City of Westminster. It presents new works of theatre, together with comedy and cabaret.
  The theatre is also home to a Writers' Centre, which provides support to new writers, aimed at developing writers to work in theatre as well as film, TV and radio. The Centre accepts unsolicited scripts sent by budding writers.
  The theatre has stand-up comedy, cabaret, and performance programmes. It often features newer comedians of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, as well as established comedians working on new material.
  The Soho Theatre Company was formed in 1969 by Verity Bargate and Fred Proud, and initially performed at a venue in Old Compton Street. Soon, the company moved to the Soho Poly, where it would remain for eighteen years.
  In 1990, the Soho Theatre Company entered a brief migrational period, where it visited the venues of the Royal Court, Riverside Studios and the ICA. Falling into a slow decline, the company was revitalised when it took up residence at the Cockpit Theatre of Marylebone, from 1993-95. During this "renaissance", they expanded their now famous Writers' Development programme, and premiered the works of over 35 new writers.
  
  wn.com/Soho_Theatre
• 
  South London Theatre
  The South London Theatre is a Community theatre in West Norwood in the London Borough of Lambeth, England. The first play opened in October 1967, and it is now a busy theatrical venue, presenting more than 22 shows annually in two auditoria: the 100-seater proscenium arch "Bell Theatre" and a smaller "black box theatre" called "Prompt Corner", it also has a private basement bar open 364 nights a year which is host to regular social events.
  The plays produced include all genres: Shakespeare, comedy, classics, pantomime, musicals and modern cutting-edge drama. New writing is particularly encouraged, as are aspiring directors. There are plenty of available roles behind scenes and help and encouragement is given to new members.
  There is a very active youth group (known as the "South London Youth Theatre") as well as children's classes. The children have their own showcases and are also encouraged to participate in the main productions.
  The South London Theatre is a member of the Little Theatre Guild of Great Britain ..
  
  wn.com/South_London_Theatre
• 
  Southwark
  Coordinates: 51°29′56″N 0°05′24″W / 51.4988°N 0.0901°W / 51.4988; -0.0901
  Southwark (pronounced /ˈsʌðərk/ SUDH-ərk) is a district of south London, England, and the administrative headquarters of the London Borough of Southwark. Situated 1.5 miles (2.4 km) east of Charing Cross, it forms one of the oldest parts of London and fronts the River Thames to the north. It historically formed an ancient borough in the county of Surrey, made up of a number of parishes, which increasingly came under the influence and jurisdiction of the City of London. As an inner district of London, Southwark experienced rapid depopulation during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is now at an advanced stage of regeneration and is the location of the City Hall offices of the Greater London Authority.
  The name Suthriganaweorc or Suthringa geweorche is recorded for the area in the 10th century Anglo-Saxon document known as the Burghal Hidage and means "fort of the men of Surrey" or "the defensive work of the men of Surrey". Southwark is recorded in the 1086 Domesday Book as Sudweca. The name means "southern defensive work" and is formed from the Old English sūth and weorc. The southern location is in reference to the City of London to the north, Southwark being at the southern end of London Bridge. The name has been used for various areas of civil administration, including the ancient Borough of Southwark, the Metropolitan Borough of Southwark and the current London Borough of Southwark. The ancient borough of Southwark was also known simply as The Borough —or Borough— and this name, in distinction from 'The City', has persisted as an alternative name for the area. Southwark was also simultaneously referred to as the Ward of Bridge Without when administered by the City (from 1550 to 1900 and as an Aldermanry until 1978.
  
  wn.com/Southwark
• Southwark Playhouse
  Southwark Playhouse Theatre Company was founded in 1993 by Juliet Alderdice, Tom Wilson & Mehmet Ergen. They identified the need for a high quality accessible theatre which would also act as a major resource for the community. They leased a disused workshop in a then comparatively neglected part of Southwark and turned it into a flexible theatre space.
  The theatre quickly put down strong roots in Southwark, developing an innovative, free at source, education programme. It has worked closely with teachers, Southwark Borough Council, businesses and government agencies to improve educational achievement and raise aspirations. This programme is in great demand and attracts substantial funding each year.
  Over the past fifteen years the theatre has established itself as one of London's leading studio theatres, presenting high quality work by new and emerging theatre practitioners. Under successive talented artistic directors, Mehmet Ergen (now Artistic Director of the Arcola Theatre), Erica Whyman (now Artistic Director of the Northern Stage Company), Thea Sharrock (recently directed Equus in the West End) and Gareth Machin (now Studio Associate at the National Theatre), it has become an indispensable part of small-scale fringe theatre in London. Its venue hire rates remain among the lowest and therefore the most competitive in London theatre, providing the opportunity to host the best of the emerging companies based in or visiting the capital.
  
  wn.com/Southwark_Playhouse
• 
  Stratford Circus
  Stratford Circus is a contemporary performing arts venue in Stratford in the London Borough of Newham, east London. It was designed by Levitt Bernstein architects and built with funding from the National Lottery.
  Initially opened in 2001, the organisation's board went into voluntary liquidation in August 2003, following a loss of funding. The London Borough of Newham stepped in and assumed interim management responsibility. In 2005, Newham Sixth Form College (NewVIc), who had been a partner from the outset, took over the management and a ten year lease for the venue. Since then the centre has hosted a broad and varied programme of performances, events. Organisations based at the venues include East London Dance, Urban Development, Theatre Venture, and the Newham Youth and Community Education Service. The University of East London's Institute of Performing Arts Development (iPAD) and the London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT) are also working in partnership with the centre.
  The centre hosted the first ever BBC Question Time pre-election debate in 2005 featuring all three leaders of the mainstream political parties: Prime Minister Tony Blair, then Tory Leader Michael Howard and then Liberal Democrat Leader Charles Kennedy.
  
  wn.com/Stratford_Circus
• 
  Tabard Theatre
  The Tabard Theatre is an intimate, 80 seat theatre located in Chiswick in the London Borough of Hounslow. Close to Turnham Green Underground station, it is situated above the Tabard public house which was built in 1880 by the architect Norman Shaw for the Bedford Park Estate. The upper walls of the public house are covered in arts and craft tiles by William De Morgan, and the fireplaces have surrounds of tiles created by Walter Crane – an early example of Art Nouveau.
  
  
  It was licensed for theatre use in 1985 and was founded by a group of playwrights, one of whom is Sheila Dewey.
  It created a strong reputation for new writing but also developed into a breeding ground for experimental theatre and alternative comedy.
  It is now under new leadership of Pulling Focus Ltd, joint artistic directors Fred Perry and Colin Hilton, and general manager Simon Reilly.
  Since 2005 the theatre has undergone extensive refurbishment work which is now complete. At the end of 2007, the Tabard Theatre started to produce in house making it one of the few theatres to do so in a studio theatre with no central funding. In 2009, New Boy, (a co-production at the Tabard Theatre back in April 2008), transferred to the West End; In 2010, Wolfboy followed its steps.
  
  wn.com/Tabard_Theatre
• The Bob Hope Theatre
  The Bob Hope Theatre is a Community theatre in Eltham in the Royal Borough of Greenwich, England. The Theatre is owned and run by the members of Eltham Little Theatre Company.
  The theatre's own repertory members present approximately 11 shows each year, including a Pantomime every January, and an annual musical. A variety of other companies also perform at the theatre throughout the year - about 15 additional productions.
  Eltham Little Theatre (ELT) Company was formed on 12 November 1943 to promote drama, music and allied arts in Eltham and its immediate vicinity. During the early years it was without a permanent home but early in 1946, ELT was able to arrange an annual lease on Eltham Parish Hall (the current Theatre). Eltham Parish Hall (built in 1910) was unavailable earlier as it was being used as a military furniture store for the duration of World War II.
  During the period from 1948 to 1950 there were some 600 individual members and 25 affiliated societies, and a production was staged every other weekend throughout the season.
  
  wn.com/The_Bob_Hope_Theatre
• 
  The Drill Hall
  The Drill Hall is a theatrical venue in Bloomsbury in the London Borough of Camden, just to the east of Tottenham Court Road. It contains rehearsal rooms and meeting rooms, and two small theatres - the 200-seat Drill Hall 1 and a 50-seat studio space, known as Drill Hall 2. Its name derives from its original use, as a drill hall for the Bloomsbury Rifles. It became a theatre in the 1980s after many years of being used as a rehearsal hall and, in the 1960s, as an art gallery for the Tate Gallery’s exhibition of the McAlpine Collection. It has a notable artistic history, in the 1900s, Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes rehearsed here. During World War II it was used for Ralph Reader's Gang Shows.
  Since 1984, The Drill Hall has particularly supported production of theatrical and artistic works with gay and lesbian themes. It has also been one of several venues used by the BBC as a studio for radio shows which are recorded in front of a live studio audience.
  The Drill Hall has an annual turnover of £1.25 million; previously this was supported with £250,000 of Arts Council funding. In late 2007, the Council announced it was withdrawing this funding to concentrate its funding on other ventures. Similar fates befell 194 other arts organisations.
  
  wn.com/The_Drill_Hall
• 
  The Old Vic
  The Old Vic is a theatre located just south-east of Waterloo Station in London on the corner of The Cut and Waterloo Road. Established in 1818 as the Royal Coburg Theatre, it was taken over by Emma Cons in 1880 when it was known formally as the Royal Victoria Hall. In 1898, a niece of Cons, Lilian Baylis assumed management and began a series of Shakespeare productions in 1914. The building was damaged in 1940 during air raids and it became a Grade II* listed building in 1951 after it reopened.
  It was also the name of a repertory company that was based at the theatre. The company formed the core of the National Theatre of Great Britain on its formation in 1963, under Laurence Olivier. The National Theatre remained at the Old Vic until new premises were constructed on the South Bank, opening in 1976. It underwent complete refurbishment in 1985 and in 2003, American actor Kevin Spacey was appointed as new artistic director of the Old Vic Theatre Company which received considerable media attention.
  
  wn.com/The_Old_Vic
• The Place
  Coordinates: 51°31′38″N 0°7′43″W / 51.52722°N 0.12861°W / 51.52722; -0.12861
  The Place is a dance and performance centre in Duke's Road near Euston in the London Borough of Camden. Originally the home base of the London Contemporary Dance Theatre from the 1970s, it is now the location of the London Contemporary Dance School, the Richard Alston Dance Company and the Robin Howard Dance Theatre.
  Converted from a Grade-II listed Victorian drill hall built in 1888/9 for the Artists Rifles, The Place became the permanent home of the Contemporary Dance Trust in 1969. Since then, under the auspices of its founder Robin Howard, its first artistic director Robert Cohan, and subsequent directors Richard Alston, John Ashford, Nigel Hinds and Veronica Lewis, it has led the way in the development of contemporary dance in the UK. Virtually all of the major British contemporary dance artists to have emerged in the past 40 years have been associated with The Place at some stage in their careers, and its contribution to the popularity of contemporary dance in Britain today is hard to overstate.
  
  wn.com/The_Place
• The Questors Theatre
  The Questors Theatre is a theatre venue located in the London Borough of Ealing, west London. It is home of The Questors, a non-professional theatre company and is a member of The Little Theatre Guild of Great Britain.
  The Questors theatre club was founded in 1929 and – pursuing an adventurous artistic policy led by the late Alfred Emmet – has grown into a vibrant non-professional theatre company which in the 2006-07 season staged 15 productions (drawing all actors and backstage teams from its membership), and five student and youth theatre productions. In August 2007, the company had 1,716 members (of whom 333 were actors and around 300 worked backstage and front-of-house, with the remainder supporting the theatre as audience members), as well as a youth theatre with nearly 500 members. The Questors also run a part-time student acting course based on the acting techniques of Constantin Stanislavski.
  The Questors Theatre building was opened by Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother in 1964, replacing the previous theatre building which had been converted from an old church; and the new theatre's adaptable configuration was one of the first in a new wave of thrust stage theatres in Britain. The site also contains a studio theatre (the Constantin Stanislavsky Room, built as a rehearsal room in 1960 and converted into a studio theatre in 1968), three rehearsal rooms (the Bernard Shaw Room built in 1958; the Michael Redgrave Room, opened in 1968, converted from part of the original Mattock Lodge; and the Alfred Emmet Room built in 1998), a scenery workshop, and a members' bar (The Grapevine, opened in 1959, converted from part of Mattock Lodge).
  
  wn.com/The_Questors_Theatre
• 
  The Scoop
  The Scoop is an outdoor amphitheatre situated on the south side of the River Thames near Tower Bridge in London, located underneath City Hall, providing seating for approximately 800 people. Designed by Townshend Landscape Architects, it is a venue used during the summer to show films, musical performances and theatre productions by such companies as The Steam Industry and The Pantaloons. In June 2008, films shown at The Scoop included The Dam Busters, Atonement and Withnail and I. As of 2010, The Scoop has been used as a performance venue for eight years.
  Coordinates: 51°30′18″N 0°4′45″W / 51.505°N 0.07917°W / 51.505; -0.07917
  
  wn.com/The_Scoop
• 
  The Theatre
  The Theatre was an Elizabethan playhouse located in Shoreditch (in Curtain Road, part of the modern London Borough of Hackney), 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.
  The Mayor and Corporation of London banned plays in 1572 as a measure against the plague, and in 1575 they formally expelled all players from the city. This prompted the construction of playhouses outside the jurisdiction of London, in the liberties of Halliwell/Holywell in Shoreditch and later the Clink, and at Newington Butts near the established entertainment district of St. George's Fields in rural Surrey. The Theatre was constructed in 1576 by James Burbage in partnership with his brother-in-law John Brayne (the owner of the Red Lion) on property that had originally been the grounds of the dissolved Halliwell Priory (or Holywell). The location of The Theatre was in Shoreditch, beyond the northern boundary of the City of London and thus outside the jurisdiction of civil authorities who were often opposed to the theatre. This area in the "suburbs of sin" was notorious for licentious behaviour, brothels and gaming houses, and a year later another theatre called The Curtain was built nearby, making the area London's first theatrical and entertainment district.
  
  wn.com/The_Theatre
• Theatre 503
  Theatre503 is located at 503 Battersea Park Road in Battersea in the London Borough of Wandsworth, above the Latchmere pub. It is a performing arts venue which specialises in new work.
  Originally founded in 1982 as a custom-built studio theatre, the opening production was a new adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which proved so successful that the production transferred to the West End.
  The original name of the theatre was linked with the pub downstairs, but in 2002, the theatre relaunched under Artistic Director Paul Higgins under its new name of Theatre503 as a home for new writing. In November 2006 Paul Robinson and Tim Roseman were appointed as artistic directors with the specific brief to develop the profile of the theatre, and the new theatre launched with the European Premiere of The Atheist.
  Since 2002, the venue has seen the premiere of more than fifty new writers, including Dennis Kelly, Phil Porter, Duncan Macmillan and Rachael Wagstaff. It went on to win the Peter Brook Empty Space Award, was nominated for a Time Out Live Award in 2006, and won an Olivier Award in 2010 for its production of Katori Hall's The Mountaintop.
  
  wn.com/Theatre_503
• 
  Trafalgar Studios
  Coordinates: 51°30′24″N 0°07′39″W / 51.5066°N 0.1275°W / 51.5066; -0.1275
  Trafalgar Studios, formerly The Whitehall Theatre until 2004, is a West End theatre in Whitehall, near Trafalgar Square, in the City of Westminster, London.
  Also known as Trafalgar Studios at the Whitehall Theatre in honour of its former incarnation, the building consists of two intimate theatres designed by architects Tim Foster and John Muir. Studio 1, the larger of the two spaces with 380 seats, opened on June 3, 2004 with the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Othello. Studio 2, with 100 seats, opened in October 2005 with the play Cyprus.
  The original Whitehall Theatre, built on the site of the 17th century Ye Old Ship Tavern was designed by Edward A. Stone, with interiors in the Art Deco style by Marc-Henri and Laverdet. The theatre opened on September 29, 1930 with The Way to Treat a Woman by Walter Hackett, who was the theatre's licensee. In November 1933 Henry Daniell appeared there as Portman in Afterwards. Hackett presented several other plays of his own before leaving in 1934, and the theatre built its reputation for modern comedies throughout the rest of the decade. During World War II it housed revues, which had become commonplace entertainment throughout the West End. In 1942, The Whitehall Follies, featuring Phyllis Dixey, the first stripper to perform in the theatre district, opened with great fanfare and became an immediate success. Dixey leased the theatre and remained in it for the next five years.
  
  wn.com/Trafalgar_Studios
• 
  Tricycle Theatre
  The Tricycle Theatre is located on Kilburn High Road in Kilburn in the London Borough of Brent, England. During the last 30 years, the Tricycle has been presenting plays reflecting the cultural diversity of its community; in particular Black, Irish, Jewish, Asian and South African works, as well as political work.
  The Tricycle Theatre opened on the Kilburn High Road, London, in 1980 as the permanent home of the Wakefield Tricycle Company, a touring theatre company that was known for producing British premieres, new writing, children's shows and theatre for the community in London and the South East.
  After securing the support of the London Borough of Brent, the GLA and Arts Council England, the company began work converting an old music and dance Forester's Hall on the Kilburn High Road into what is now known as the Tricycle Theatre, opting for this space due to the lack of local entertainment facilities for the residents of Kilburn at the time.
  The 235 seat auditorium, designed by architect Tim Foster and theatre consultant Iain Mackintosh, resembled a courtyard and was built using free-standing builders scaffolding that supported padded benches rather than individual seats, which resulted in 'an innovative, intimate and unique theatre space'.
  
  wn.com/Tricycle_Theatre
• 
  Unicorn Theatre
  The Unicorn Theatre is the UK's leading theatre for audiences aged 2–21. The theatre has its home in a custom-built, RIBA Award–winning building on Tooley Street, in the London Borough of Southwark, which opened in 2005. The theatre was designed by Keith Williams, built by Arup and comprises two theatre spaces (the Weston and Clore Theatres), an education studio, rehearsal space, café and the John Lyon meeting room.
  The theatre was founded in 1947, by Caryl Jenner, originally as a Mobile Theatre; In 1961, Jenner began presenting children's productions at the Arts Theatre in the West End, and in 1967 the company took over the lease of the theatre which then became Unicorn's permanent performing base until 1999; during this period the normal run of adult performances continued during the evenings.
  The Unicorn is a registered charity no.225751 and is an Arts Council England National Portfolio organisation.
  From 1944 Caryl Jenner wrote Christmas Pantomimes for small time playhouses. During performances she would make note of the behaviour of the children, recording what scenes and sequences held their attention, and which did not. She began to formulate the principles that would guide her theatre and writing. In 1947 the ‘Mobile Theatre’ was born. Caryl's mission was to drive around the austere post-war towns of Britain, as well as isolated villages to bring theatre to new audiences. They supplemented their income by performing to adults in the evenings but their goal was always to captivate the minds and imagination of children.
  
  wn.com/Unicorn_Theatre
• 
  Vaudeville Theatre
  The Vaudeville Theatre is a West End theatre on the Strand in the City of Westminster. As the name suggests, the theatre held mostly vaudeville shows and musical revues in its early days. It opened in 1870 and was rebuilt twice, although each new building retained elements of the previous structure. The current building opened in 1926, and the capacity is now 690 seats. Rare thunder drum and lightning sheets, together with other early stage mechanisms survive in the theatre.
  The theatre was designed by prolific architect C.J. Phipps, decorated in a Romanesque style by George Gordon, and opened on 16 April 1870 with Andrew Halliday's comedy, For Love Or Money and a burlesque, Don Carlos or the Infante in Arms. A notable innovation was the concealed footlights, which would shut off if the glass in front of them was broken. The owner, William Wybrow Robertson, had run a failing billiard hall on the site but saw more opportunity in theatre. He leased the new theatre to three actors, Thomas Thorne, David James, and H.J. Montague. The original theatre stood behind two houses on the Strand, and the entrance was through a labyrinth of small corridors. It had a seating capacity of 1,046, rising in a horseshoe, over a pit and three galleries. The cramped site meant that facilities front and backstage were limited.
  
  wn.com/Vaudeville_Theatre
• 
  Warehouse Theatre
  The Warehouse Theatre is a professional producing theatre with one hundred seats in the centre of the London Borough of Croydon, south London, England based in an oak-beamed former cement Victorian warehouse. It is known for its commitment to new writing, including its annual International Playwriting Festival, in partnership with the Extra Candoni Festival of Udine in Italy and Theatro Ena in Cyprus.^{[citation needed]} Youth theatre is also important, with the resident Croydon Young Peoples' Theatre (CRYPT) and including an annual collaboration with the Croydon-based Brit School. Within the building there is also a popular CaféBar.
  The Warehouse Theatre was founded by Sam Kelly, Richard Ireson and Adrian Shergold when lunchtime theatre was particularly popular, with the aim of presenting a varied season of plays with an emphasis on new work to the highest possible standards.^{[citation needed]} The first production — Hell's Angels on Typewriters by Angela Wye — opened in May 1977, and the then 50 seat auditorium became an instant favourite with local audiences for lunchtime performances whilst sharing the building with a Caribbean night club.
  
  wn.com/Warehouse_Theatre
• 
  West End of London
  The West End of London (more commonly referred to as simply the West End) is an area of central London containing many of the city's major tourist attractions, shops, businesses, government buildings, and entertainment venues (including the commercial West End theatres). Use of the term began in the early 19th century to describe fashionable areas to the west of Charing Cross. For strategic planning the area is identified as one of two international centres in the London Plan.
  The West End is the most expensive location in the world in which to rent office space.
  Located to the west of the historic Roman and Mediaeval City of London, the West End was long favoured by the rich elite as a place of residence because it was usually upwind of the smoke drifting from the crowded City. It was also located close to the royal seat of power at Westminster, and is largely contained within the City of Westminster (one of the 32 London boroughs). Developed in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it was originally built as a series of palaces, expensive town houses, fashionable shops and places of entertainment. The areas closest to the City around Holborn, Seven Dials and Covent Garden historically contained poorer communities that were cleared and redeveloped in the nineteenth century.
  
  wn.com/West_End_of_London
• 
  West End theatre
  West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York'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.
  Total attendances first surpassed 12 million in 2002 and 13 million in 2007, setting a new record for the West End. Since the late 1990s there has been an increase in the number of famous screen actors on the London stage.
  The Theatre in London flourished after the English Reformation. The first permanent public playhouse, known simply 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 during the interregnum.
  
  wn.com/West_End_theatre
• 
  Westminster
  Coordinates: 51°29′58″N 0°08′00″W / 51.4995°N 0.1333°W / 51.4995; -0.1333
  Westminster /ˈwɛsᵗmɪnstə/ is an area of central London, within the City of Westminster, England. It lies on the north bank of the River Thames, southwest of the City of London and 0.5 miles (0.8 km) southwest of Charing Cross. It has a large concentration of London's historic and prestigious landmarks and visitor attractions, including the Palace of Westminster, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, and Westminster Cathedral.
  Historically a part of Middlesex, the name Westminster was the ancient description for the area around Westminster Abbey – the West Minster, or monastery church, that gave the area its name – which has been the seat of the government of England (and later the British government) for almost a thousand years. Westminster is the location of the Palace of Westminster, a UNESCO World Heritage Site which houses the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
  The name Westminster describes the area around Westminster Abbey and Palace of Westminster. Its name derives from the West Minster, or monastery church, west of the City of London's St Paul's. The area has been the seat of the government of England for almost a thousand years. The name is also used for the larger City of Westminster which covers a wider geographical area; and, since 1965, has included the former boroughs of Marylebone and Paddington.
  
  wn.com/Westminster
• 
  Whitechapel
  Coordinates: 51°30′59″N 0°04′30″W / 51.5165°N 0.0750°W / 51.5165; -0.0750
  Whitechapel is a built-up inner city district in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, London, England. It is located 3.4 miles (5.5 km) east of Charing Cross and roughly bounded by the Bishopsgate thoroughfare on the west, Fashion Street on the north, Brady Street and Cavell Street on the east and The Highway on the south. The resident population are of varied ethnic origin, primarily Bengali. It is notably best known for being the location of the infamous Jack the Ripper murders in the late 1880s. The murderer was never identified, although rumours suggest over 100 names.
  Whitechapel's heart is Whitechapel High Street, extending further east as Whitechapel Road, named after a small chapel of ease dedicated to St Mary. The church's earliest known rector was Hugh de Fulbourne in 1329 and around 1338 it became the parish church of Whitechapel, called, for unknown reasons, St Mary Matfelon. The church was destroyed through enemy action in World War II and its location and graveyard is now a public garden on the south side of the road.
  
  wn.com/Whitechapel
• 
  Young Vic
  The Young Vic is a theatre on the Cut, located near the South Bank, in the London Borough of Lambeth. It specialises in giving opportunities to young actors and directors. The theatre is publicly subsidised and has a high artistic reputation. Playwright David Lan has been the theatre's artistic director since 2000. Its philosophy is to "produce great plays for great audiences, now and in the future".
  The Young Vic's name derives from the nearby Old Vic, one of the most celebrated of London's theatres and the first home of the National Theatre.
  In the period after World War II a Young Vic Company was formed in 1946 by director George Devine as an offshoot of the Old Vic Theatre School for the purpose of performing classic plays for audiences aged nine to fifteen.
  This was discontinued in 1948 when Devine and the entire faculty resigned from the Old Vic, but in 1969 Frank Dunlop became founder-director of The Young Vic theatre with his free adaptation of Molière's The Cheats of Scapino, presented at the new venue as a National Theatre production, opening on 11 September 1970 and starring Jim Dale in the title role with designs by Carl Toms (decor) and Maria Bjornson (costumes).
  
  wn.com/Young_Vic

• 
  Agatha Christie
  Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie DBE (née Miller; 15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and more than 15 short story collections (especially those featuring Hercule Poirot or Miss Jane Marple), and her successful West End plays.
  According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Christie is the best-selling novelist of all time. Her novels have sold roughly four billion copies, and her estate claims that her works rank third, after those of William Shakespeare and the Bible, as the most widely published books. According to Index Translationum, Christie is the most translated individual author, with only the collective corporate works of Walt Disney Productions surpassing her. Her books have been translated into at least 103 languages.
  Agatha Christie published two autobiographies: a posthumous one covering childhood to old age; and another chronicling several seasons of archaeological excavation in Syria and Iraq with her second husband, archaeologist Max Mallowan. The latter was published in 1946 with the title, Come, Tell Me How You Live.
  
  wn.com/Agatha_Christie
• 
  Andrew Lloyd Webber
  Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber Kt. (born 22 March 1948) is an English composer and impresario of musical theatre.
  Lloyd Webber has achieved great popular success in musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of variations, two film scores, and a Latin Requiem Mass. He has also gained a number of honours, including a knighthood in 1992, followed by a peerage from the British Government for services to Music, seven Tony Awards, three Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, fourteen Ivor Novello Awards, seven Olivier Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2006.
  Several of his songs have been widely recorded and were hits outside of their parent musicals, notably "The Music of the Night" from The Phantom of the Opera, "I Don't Know How to Love Him" from Jesus Christ Superstar, "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina" and "You Must Love Me" from Evita, "Any Dream Will Do" from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and "Memory" from Cats.
  
  wn.com/Andrew_Lloyd_Webber
• 
  Christopher Wren
  Sir Christopher Wren FRS (20 October 1632 – 25 February 1723) is one of the most highly acclaimed English architects in history. He was accorded responsibility for rebuilding 51 churches in the City of London after the Great Fire in 1666, including his masterpiece, St. Paul's Cathedral, on Ludgate Hill, completed in 1710. The principal creative responsibility for a number of the churches is now more commonly attributed to others in his office, especially Nicholas Hawksmoor. Other notable buildings by Wren include the Royal Naval College in Greenwich and the south front of Hampton Court Palace.
  Educated in Latin and Aristotelian physics at the University of Oxford, Wren was a notable astronomer, geometer, and mathematician-physicist, as well as an architect. He was a founder of the Royal Society (president 1680–82), and his scientific work was highly regarded by Sir Isaac Newton and Blaise Pascal.
  Wren was born at East Knoyle in Wiltshire, the only surviving son of Christopher Wren DD (1589–1658), at that time the rector of East Knoyle and later Dean of Windsor. A previous son of Dr Wren, also named Christopher, was born on 22 November 1631 and died the same day. John Aubrey’s confusion of the two persisted occasionally into late twentieth-century literature.
  
  wn.com/Christopher_Wren
• Ellaline Terriss
  Ellaline Terriss (13 April 1871 – 16 June 1971), born Mary Ellaline Lewin, was a popular English actress and singer, best known for her performances in Edwardian musical comedies. She met and married the actor-producer Seymour Hicks in 1893, and the two collaborated on many projects for the stage and screen.
  The daughter of well-known leading man William Terriss, Ellaline Terriss made her London stage debut at the age of 16 in Cupid's Messenger at London's Haymarket Theatre. Impressed with her performance, producer Charles Wyndham gave her a three-year contract, under which she first played Madge in Why Women Weep. In 1892, Terriss starred in Faithful James (by B. C. Stephenson) and the following year, she starred in the title role of Cinderella, produced by Henry Irving. She was featured in W. S. Gilbert's His Excellency in 1894, followed the next year by a starring role in the George Edwardes production of the musical The Shop Girl, playing alongside her husband. The next year she starred in another musical hit, The Circus Girl.
  
  wn.com/Ellaline_Terriss
• 
  Ellen Terry
  Dame Ellen Terry, GBE (27 February 1847 – 21 July 1928) was an English stage actress who became the leading Shakespearean actress in Britain.
  Born into a family of actors, Terry began acting as a child in Shakespeare plays and continued as a teen, in London and on tour. At sixteen she married the much older artist George Frederick Watts, but they separated within a year. She briefly returned to acting but then began a relationship with the architect Edward William Godwin and retired from the stage for six years. She returned to acting in 1874 and was immediately acclaimed for her portrayal of roles in Shakespeare and other classics.
  In 1878 she joined Henry Irving's company as his leading lady, and for more than the next two decades she was considered the leading Shakespearean and comic actress in Britain. Two of her most famous roles were Portia in The Merchant of Venice and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing. She and Irving also toured with great success in America and Britain.
  In 1903 Terry took over management of London's Imperial Theatre, focusing on the plays of George Bernard Shaw and Henrik Ibsen. The venture was a financial failure, however, and Terry then toured and later also lectured. She continued to find acting success until 1920, while also appearing in films until 1922. Her career lasted nearly seven decades.
  
  wn.com/Ellen_Terry
• 
  Henry Irving
  Sir Henry Irving (6 February 1838 – 13 October 1905), born John Henry Brodribb, was an English stage actor in the Victorian era, known as an actor-manager because he took complete responsibility (supervision of sets, lighting, direction, casting, as well as playing the leading roles) for season after season at the Lyceum Theatre, establishing himself and his company as representative of English classical theatre. Known as "The Governor" to those under his supervision at the Lyceum, he was the first actor to be awarded a knighthood. Irving is thought to have been the inspiration for the title character in Lyceum manager Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula.
  Irving was born to a working-class family in Keinton Mandeville in the county of Somerset.W.H. Davies, the celebrated poet, was a cousin. He attended City Commercial School for two years before going to work in the office of a firm of lawyers at the age of 13. After seeing Samuel Phelps play Hamlet soon after this, Irving sought out lessons, letters of introduction, and, finally, work in a theatre in Sunderland in 1856. He married Florence O'Callaghan on 15 July 1869 at St. Marylebone, London. Irving labored against great odds from 1856 till his 1871 success in The Bells in London set him apart from all the rest.
  
  wn.com/Henry_Irving
• 
  James Burbage
  James Burbage (1530/35–1597) was an English actor, theatre impresario, joiner, and theatre builder in the English Renaissance theatre. He built The Theatre, the facility famous as the first permanent dedicated theatre built in England since Roman times.
  “Though very little is known about his childhood, for example the date he was born or where he lived as a child, it is known he succeeded to no estate, went to no university, was apprenticed to a 'joiner' by trade, and must have persevered through his apprenticeship and taken up his freedom, as he was referred to in the latter years as a 'joiner'”
  Burbage was trained as a joiner, but also took up acting and was a member of Leicester's Men by 1572. Burbage had various talents, e.g. an actor, builder, and theatre owner; he was heavily involved in groups concerning theater. He was said to be a theatre professional "who bridged the gap between late-medieval drama in England and the flowering of the great Elizabethan Theatre." Burbage was described as handsome in appearance, charming in manor, honest, tactful, and witty by Sir Robert Dudley, a professional acquaintance. Another professional acquaintance depicted James as more motivated by commerce than by art because of his dependency on financial success.
  
  wn.com/James_Burbage
• 
  John Lawrence Toole
  John Lawrence (J. L.) Toole (12 March 1830 – 30 July 1906) was an English comic actor and theatrical producer. He was famous for his roles in farce and in serio-comic melodramas in a career that spanned more than four decades. He was so famous in his day that he was the first actor to have a West End theatre named after him.
  Toole was born in London, the younger son of James Toole and his wife, Elizabeth. His father was a messenger for the East India Company and for some years an usher at the Old Bailey, who for many years in the 1840s acted as toastmaster in the City of London.
  He was educated at the City of London School from 1841–45, and started work as a clerk in a wine merchant's office. In 1854, Toole married Susan Hale (née Caslake), a widow five years older than he. They had a son, Frank Lawrence, and a daughter, Florence Mabel, but both children died in their 20s.
  Toole began his acting career by training as an amateur with the City Histrionic Club, beginning in 1850 and by performing in other amateur theatricals and in comic sketches. He earned good notices, particularly as Jacob Earwig in Boots, and soon met Charles Dickens, who had heard of him and came to see him act. His last amateur role was as Simmons in The Spitalfields Weaver at the Haymarket Theatre. Encouraged by Dickens, he made his professional stage debut in 1852 at the Queen's Theatre in Dublin, under the management of Charles Dillon, and by 1853 became the principal "low comedian" at the Theatre Royale in Edinburgh. His older brother, Francis, acted as his manager throughout his early career. During the next two years, he performed widely in Ireland and Scotland, gaining a reputation for sunny extemporaneous comedy, humorous expressions and a uniquely comic voice, freedom with his texts, and an engaging rapport with audiences.
  
  wn.com/John_Lawrence_Toole
• John Liston
  John Liston (c. 1776 - March 22, 1846), English comedian, was born in London.
  He made his public debut on the stage at Weymouth as Lord Duberley in The Heir-at-law. After several dismal failures in tragic parts, some of them in support of Mrs Siddons, he discovered accidentally that his forte was comedy, especially in the personation of old men and country boys, in which he displayed a fund of drollery and broad humour. An introduction to Charles Kemble led to his appearance at the Haymarket on June 10, 1805 as Sheepface in the Village Lawyer, and his association with this theatre continued with few interruptions until 1830.
  Paul Pry, the most famous of all his impersonations, was first presented on September 13, 1825, and soon became, thanks to his creative genius, a real personage. Liston remained on the stage till 1837; during his last years his mind failed, and he died on 22 March 1846. He had married in 1807 Miss Tyrer (d. 1854), a singer and actress.
  In the January 1825 of the London Magazine there appeared a Memoir of John Liston written by his close friend Charles Lamb. This was said by Lamb to be "pure invention" and intended as a humorous essay. Liston himself replied to this Memoir in the following edition of the London Magazine suggesting that the same writer pen a short life of Byron.
  
  wn.com/John_Liston
• 
  Marie Brema
  Marie Brema (28 February 1856 – 22 March 1925) was an English dramatic mezzo-soprano singer in concert, operatic and oratorio work in the last decade of the 19th and the first decade of the 20th centuries. She created several important roles and was the first English singer to appear at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus.
  Marie Brema was born Minnie Fehrmann in Liverpool of a German father (from Bremen) and an American mother. She was brought up among people who enjoyed music and drama, but took no professional interest in music until her marriage in 1874 to Arthur Frederick Braun. She was then encouraged to undergo vocal training, which she did, but it was several years more (after 3 months of study with George Henschel) that she first appeared before the public, singing Schubert's Ganymed in a popular concert. She was so admired that she continued training under other teachers and made further concert appearances. Her stage debut was in 1891 at Oxford as Adriana Lecouvreur.
  
  wn.com/Marie_Brema
• Marie Tempest
  Dame Marie Tempest DBE (15 July 1864 – 15 October 1942) was an English singer and actress known as the "queen of her profession".
  Tempest became the most famous soprano in late Victorian light opera and Edwardian musical comedies. Later, she became a leading comic actress and toured widely in North America and elsewhere. She was, at times, her own theatre manager during a career spanning 55 years. Tempest was also instrumental in the founding of the actors' union Equity in England.
  Tempest was born Mary Susan Etherington in London. Her parents were Edwin Etherington (1838–1880), a stationer, and Sarah Mary Castle Etherington. Tempest was educated at Midhurst School and an Ursuline convent in Thildonck, Belgium. Later, she studied music in Paris, France and at the Royal Academy of Music in London, as a singing pupil of Manuel García, the tutor of Jenny Lind. She adopted as her stage name part of the name of Lady Susan Vane-Tempest, whom she referred to as her godmother. Tempest had a sister named Florence Etherington who married theatre manager Michael Levenston.
  
  wn.com/Marie_Tempest
• 
  Nellie Farren
  Nellie Farren (16 April 1848 – 29 April 1904) was an English actress and singer best known for her roles as the "principal boy" in musical burlesques at the Gaiety Theatre.
  Born into a theatrical family, Farren began acting as a child. She made her professional adult debut in 1864 and joined the company at London's Olympic Theatre, performing in Shakespeare, contemporary comedies, dramas and musical burlesques. From 1868 to 1892, she performed at the Gaiety Theatre, which specialised in musical burlesque, becoming famous in the male and principal boy roles, which permitted an actress in the Victorian era theatre to show her legs in tights. Farren gained a large following among the theatre's mostly male audience.
  Farren created the role of Mercury in Gilbert and Sullivan's first collaboration, Thespis and created or played roles in works by Dion Boucicault, Anthony Trollope, Charles Dickens, William Congreve and Henry James Byron, among many others. In the 1880s, she created roles in the series of famous Gaiety burlesques with musical scores by Meyer Lutz, often written by Fred Leslie. Some of her most famous of these later roles were the title characters in Little Jack Sheppard and Ruy Blas and the Blasé Roué. She also became a co-producer of the Gaiety Theatre.
  
  wn.com/Nellie_Farren
• Richard Sadler
  Richard Sadler (March 18, 1947, Montreal, Quebec, Canada) is a producer, scenarist and Director (film).
  
  
  
  wn.com/Richard_Sadler
• 
  Seymour Hicks
  Sir Arthur Seymour Hicks (30 January 1871 – 6 April 1949), better known as Seymour Hicks, was a British actor, music hall performer, playwright, screenwriter, theatre manager and producer. He became known, early in his career, for writing, starring in and producing Edwardian musical comedy, often together with his famous wife, Ellaline Terriss. His most famous acting role was that of Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol.
  Making his stage début at the age of nine and performing professionally by sixteen, Hicks joined a theatrical company and toured America before starring in Under the Clock in 1893, the first musical revue ever staged in London. Following this, he starred in a revival of Little Jack Sheppard at the Gaiety Theatre, London which brought him to the attention of impresario George Edwardes. Edwardes cast Hicks in his next show, The Shop Girl, in 1894. Its success led to his participation in two more of Edwardes's hit "girl" musicals, The Circus Girl (1896) and A Runaway Girl (1898), both starring Terriss. He first played the role of Ebenezer Scrooge in 1901 and eventually played it thousands of times onstage. Hicks, along with his wife, joined the producer Charles Frohman in his theatre company and wrote and starred in a series of extraordinarily successful musicals, including Bluebell in Fairyland (1901), Quality Street (1902), The Earl and the Girl (1903) and The Catch of the Season (1904).
  
  wn.com/Seymour_Hicks
• 
  Thomas Killigrew
  Thomas Killigrew (7 February 1612 – 19 March 1683) was an English dramatist and theatre manager. He was a witty, dissolute figure at the court of King Charles II of England.
  Killigrew was one of twelve children of Sir Robert Killigrew, of Hanworth, a courtier to James I and his wife Mary née Woodhouse; he became a page to King Charles I at about the age of thirteen. According to Samuel Pepys, the boy Killigrew used to volunteer as an extra, or "devil," at the Red Bull Theatre, so that he could see the plays for free. The young Killigrew had limited formal education; the Court and the playhouse were his schoolroom.
  Before the English Civil War, Killigrew wrote several plays—tragicomedies like Claracilla and The Prisoners, as well as his most popular play, The Parson's Wedding (1637). The latter play has been criticized for its coarse humour; but it also contains prose readings of John Donne's poetry to pique a literate audience.
  Killigrew was present at the exorcism of the possessed nuns of Loudun. In 1635 he left a sceptical account of the proceedings.
  
  wn.com/Thomas_Killigrew
• 
  William Shakespeare
  William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564; died 23 April 1616) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". His surviving works, including some collaborations, consist of about 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.
  Shakespeare was born and brought up in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613 at age 49, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive, and there has been considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
  
  wn.com/William_Shakespeare
• Willy Russell
  William Russell (born 23 August 1947) is a British dramatist, lyricist, and composer. His best-known works are Educating Rita, Shirley Valentine, and Blood Brothers.
  Willy Russell was born in Whiston, on the outskirts of Liverpool, where he grew up. His parents worked in a book publisher's and often encouraged him to read. After leaving school with one O-level in English, he first became a ladies' hairdresser and ran his own salon. Russell then undertook a variety of jobs, also the first play he wrote was Keep Your Eyes Down Low (1971). His first success was a play about The Beatles called John, Paul, George, Ringo … and Bert. Originally commissioned for the Everyman Theatre, Liverpool it transferred to the West End in 1974.Educating Rita (1980) concerned a female hairdresser and her Open University teacher. The semi-autobiographical Educating Rita was turned into a 1983 film with Michael Caine and Julie Walters. The musical Blood Brothers (1983), for which Russell also composed the music, first opened in Liverpool and transferred to London's Phoenix Theatre. It won the best actress award at the Lawrence Olivier awards. Bill Kenwright produced a revival in 1988 which has run for more than twenty years; the show was produced on Broadway in 1993. Shirley Valentine, which first opened in Liverpool in 1986 before a new production opened in London in 1988 starring Pauline Collins. It was also made into a successful film, in 1989, again with Collins in the title role. Russell received BAFTA and Oscar nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay for both Educating Rita and Shirley Valentine.
  
  wn.com/Willy_Russell
• 
  World War I
  World War I (WWI), which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939 (World War II), and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918. It involved all the world's great powers, which were assembled in two opposing alliances: the Allies (based on the Triple Entente of the United Kingdom, France and Russia) and the Central Powers (originally centred around the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy; but, as Austria–Hungary had taken the offensive against the agreement, Italy did not enter into the war). These alliances both reorganised (Italy fought for the Allies), and expanded as more nations entered the war. Ultimately more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history. More than 9 million combatants were killed, largely because of enormous increases in lethality of weapons, thanks to new technology, without corresponding improvements in protection or mobility. It was the sixth-deadliest conflict in world history, subsequently paving the way for various political changes such as revolutions in the nations involved.
  
  wn.com/World_War_I

Great West End Theatres (2012)

Genres

• Documentary
• History

Taglines:

A backstage pass onto the finest stages in the world.

Quotes: