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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Vaudeville Theatre

Where Henry Irving made his name in 1870, and where a play first ran five hundred nights in a row.

West EndPlayhousesWorth it for the building

C. J. Phipps opened it in April 1870. Henry Irving had his first real success here that same year in Two Roses, which ran three hundred nights; five years later H. J. Byron's Our Boys became the first play anywhere in the world to reach five hundred consecutive performances, which is the moment the long run was invented as a commercial idea.

Robert Atkinson rebuilt the inside in 1926 and turned the horseshoe auditorium into a rectangle. It seats 690 on three levels and is historically protected.

Where
404 Strand, WC2R 0NH
Nearest station
Covent Garden · 4 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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