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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Gielgud Theatre

It was called the Globe until 1994, and gave the name up so the reconstruction on Bankside could have it.

West EndPlayhousesWorth it for the building

Sprague built it in 1906 for the actor Seymour Hicks, who named it after himself; three years later it became the Globe, and stayed the Globe for eighty-five years. In 1994 it was renamed for John Gielgud so that Sam Wanamaker's reconstruction going up on Bankside could take the older name without two theatres answering to it. Very few buildings give away their name.

It holds 994 on three levels, is historically protected, and stands next door to the Sondheim, which Sprague built the year after - the two of them designed as a matching pair on Shaftesbury Avenue. Plays and musicals, often transfers from Chichester or the subsidised houses.

Where
35 Shaftesbury Avenue, W1D 6AR
Nearest station
Piccadilly Circus · 3 min walk

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