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, and the rooms above pubs where things start. What is on is listed under each venue, and in What's On.

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Royal Court Theatre

The theatre that made new writing the point, and helped end stage censorship.

PlayhousesWorth it for the building

Walter Emden and Bertie Crewe's red-brick house on Sloane Square opened in 1888, but its life began again in 1956, when the English Stage Company took it on and staged John Osborne's Look Back in Anger as its third production. Everything the building is known for follows from that: the writer first, the play new.

It also broke the censor. Until 1968 every script needed the Lord Chamberlain's licence, so in 1965 the Court staged A Patriot for Me and Saved by turning itself into a private members' club for the run - a manoeuvre that helped force the Theatres Act three years later. 380 seats downstairs and 85 in the room upstairs, where the newest writers still open.

Where
Sloane Square, SW1W 8AS
Nearest station
Sloane Square · 1 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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