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.

What is on at them this week is in What's On: Performance

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Garrick Theatre

They hit a Roman river digging the foundations, and W. S. Gilbert asked whether to carry on building or sell the fishing rights.

West EndPlayhousesWorth it for the building

Walter Emden and C. J. Phipps built it in 1889, financed by W. S. Gilbert, who borrowed £15,000 to build it for the actor-manager John Hare and took a long lease on the ground. The excavation ran into water, which turned out to be a river the Romans had known about running under the site; Gilbert's line about the fishing rights is the best-remembered thing anyone has said about a building site in London.

It holds 733 and is protected at the higher grade. Plays, revivals and comedies, and the auditorium is one of the prettiest of its date still working.

Where
2 Charing Cross Road, WC2H 0HH
Nearest station
Leicester Square · 2 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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