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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, and the rooms above pubs where things start. What is on is listed under each venue, and in What's On.
What is on at them this week is in What's On: Performance
A Victorian theatre thirty feet under Piccadilly Circus, reached by going down.
West EndWorth it for the building
Thomas Verity won the competition for it against fourteen others, and the caterers Spiers and Pond opened it on 21 March 1874 on ground that falls away between Piccadilly and Jermyn Street. The whole auditorium sits below the pavement, about thirty feet down, and the tiled staircases you descend still carry the composers' names from the original scheme.
Being underground and gas-lit was genuinely dangerous. The Metropolitan Board of Works made them pump air into the room mechanically, and after further alarm in 1883 a ventilation shaft was driven through, taking part of the restaurant with it. In the Second World War the BBC used it for the reason it had been a worry - it is deep - and broadcast light entertainment from down there. 588 seats on three levels, historically protected at grade II*.
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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.