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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 working copy of Shakespeare's playhouse, in oak and thatch, a few hundred yards from where the first one stood.
PlayhousesOpen airWorth it for the buildingCheap day seats
Also in Literary London.
The first Globe was raised in 1599 out of the timbers of an earlier theatre that Shakespeare's company had taken apart and carried across the river. It burned down in 1613 when a cannon fired during a performance set the thatch alight, was rebuilt, and was pulled down in 1644 after the Puritans closed the playhouses. Then there was nothing here for three hundred years.
This one is the work of Sam Wanamaker, an American actor who settled in London in the 1950s, found the site of the Globe marked by a plaque on a brewery wall, and spent the rest of his life raising the money to rebuild it. He founded the trust in 1970 and died in 1993, four years before it opened.
It is built as the original was: English oak cut and pegged together rather than nailed, and the only thatched roof London has allowed since the Great Fire of 1666. Eight hundred and seventy sit on hard benches around three tiers and seven hundred stand in the yard in front of the stage, in daylight, because there is no lighting rig. The actors can see every face and play to them, which is a different bargain from a dark auditorium. Beside it the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, opened in 2014, is a small indoor theatre lit by candles, of the kind Shakespeare's company used in winter.
Tours daily; performances by ticket
The Globe Story and Tour runs every day. Box office 11:00-18:00 Monday to Friday, 10:00-18:00 Saturday, 10:00-17:00 Sunday; the shop 10:00-17:00 daily.
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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.