Performance venues

London's stages and concert rooms: the West End houses and the playhouses that make their own shows, the grand halls, the churches with a musical life, the jazz basements, the comedy clubs, the clubs proper, the rooms above pubs where things start, and the booth on Leicester Square that sells off what the West End has not. What is on is listed under each venue, and in What's On.

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Aldwych Theatre

The Royal Shakespeare Company's London home for twenty-two years, and before that the house the Aldwych farces are named after.

West EndPlayhousesWorth it for the building

Sprague built it in Edwardian Baroque and opened it in December 1905. Between 1923 and 1933 it ran twelve farces, most of them by Ben Travers and most of them with Ralph Lynn and Tom Walls in the cast, and the genre took the theatre's name: an Aldwych farce is a type of play because of this building.

From 1960 it was the Royal Shakespeare Company's London base, and stayed so for over twenty years until the company moved into the Barbican in 1982 - which is why a great deal of the RSC's best-known work of that period was first seen on the Strand rather than in Stratford. Twelve hundred seats on three levels, historically protected, and commercial musicals in it now.

Where
49 Aldwych, WC2B 4DF
Nearest station
Covent Garden · 5 min walk

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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.

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