Your saves are on this device only.
Your browser may clear them at any time. You won't be able to see them on other devices. Create a free account or sign in to keep them safe in the cloud.
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
Frank Matcham's music hall of 1901, by common consent the most beautiful theatre in London, saved from bingo and back on Mare Street.
Music halls & varietyWorth it for the building
Frank Matcham, who built more theatres than anyone in Britain, opened the Hackney Empire in 1901 as a variety palace with terracotta domes on the outside and gilt, plaster and three tiers of boxes inside, and the stars of the halls all played it: Marie Lloyd, who lived up the road, Charlie Chaplin, Stan Laurel, Gracie Fields, Stanley Holloway. Television took it over in the 1950s for Oh Boy! and Take Your Pick, then Mecca ran bingo in it for twenty years and pulled the domes off the roof. A theatre company took it on in 1986, the domes went back, and a £17 million restoration finished in 2004 with a new fly tower and an extension in brick lettered with its name. Its pantomime, written and directed for years by Susie McKenna, is the one London theatre people argue is the best in the country; the rest of the year is comedy, opera, music and touring theatre, in a house of about 1,275 seats.
Submit a correction for this listing.
Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.