The Gielgud Theatre in London is a is a west end theatre located on Shaftesbury Avenue in the City of Westminster, at the corner of Rupert Street. The house currently has a capacity of 889 seats on three levels.
The Gielgud Theatre opened on December 27, 1906 as the Hicks Theatre in honour of actor, manager and playwright Seymour Hicks, for whom it was built. Designed by W.G.R Sprague, the theatre originally had 970 seats, but over the years boxes and other seats have been removed. The theatre is a pair with the Queens Theatre which opened in 1907 on the adjacent street corner.
The first production at the theatre was a musical called The beauty Of Bath by Seymour Hicks and Cosmo Hamilton, followed by another Hicks musical, My Darling in 1907, which was then followed by the successful London production of the Straus operetta, A Waltz Dream in 1908. An astonishing event occurred midway through the run of the theatre's next major work, The Dashing Little Duke. Hicks' wife, Ellaline Terriss played the title role (a woman playing a man). When she missed several performances due to illness, Hicks stepped into the role which is possibly the only case in the history of musical theatre where a husband succeeded to his wife's role.
In 1909, the American impresario Charles Frohman became sole manager of the theatre and renamed the house Globe Theatre and reopened with His Borrowed Plumes written by the mother, of Wnson Churchill, Lady Randolph Churchill. . Another "Globe Theatre", located on Newcastle Street, had been demolished in 1902 to make way for the Aldwych, and so the name became available
Terence Frisby's There's A Girl In My Soup, opened in 1966, ran for 1,064 performances at the theatre, a record that was not surpassed until Andrew Lloyd-Webber's production of the comedy Daisy Pulls It Off by Densie Deegan opened in April 1983 to run for 1,180 performances, the theatre's longest run. In
The Globe was the home of a resident theatre cat named Beerbohm. The tabby's portrait still hangs in the corridor near the stalls. Beerbohm appeared on stage at least once in every production, forcing the actors to improvise. He always chose to occupy certain actors' dressing rooms while they were at the theatre, Beerbohm was mentioned several times on Desert Island Discs, and he is the only cat to have ever received a front page obituary in the theatrical publication, The Stage. He died in March 1995 at the ripe old age of 20.
The Gielgud Theatre was refurbished in 1987, with extensive work on the gold leaf in the auditorium, the theatre is particularly notable for its beautiful circular Regency staircase, oval gallery and tower. The theatre has presented several Alan Aykbourn premieres, including 1990's Man Of The Moment More recently, Oscar Wilde's classic comedy play, An Ideal Husband and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest both saw notable revivals.
In 1994, in anticipation of the 1997 opening of a reconstruction of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre on the South Bank, the theatre was renamed in honour of British actor John Gielgud. In 2003, Sir Cameron Mackintosh announced his plans to refurbish the Gielgud, including a joint entrance foyer, with the adjacent Queen's Theatre, facing on to Shaftesbury Avenue. Mackintosh's Delfont Mackintosh Theatres took over operational control of the Gielgud from Andrew Lloyd-Webbers Really Useful Group in 2006. The Delfont Mackintosh group also consists of the Noel Coward Theatre, price Edward Theatre, Novello Theatre Prince Of wales Theatre, Queens theatre and Wyndhams Theatre.
Work on the facade of the Gielgud Theatre started in March 2007 and the interior restoration, including reinstating the boxes at the back of the dress circle, was completed in January 2008.
Theatre tickets to all productions at the Gielgud Theatre in London are available to purchase securely through this website.
comedy including BAFTA winner Peter Capaldi (The Thick of It) as Professor Marcus alongside James Fleet (The Vicar of Dibley), Ben Miller (The Armstrong and Miller Show), Stephen Wight (Evening Standard Outstanding Newcomer) and Olivier Award winner Clive Rowe, with Marcia Warren as the almost too sweetly innocent Mrs Wilberforce.
;){kind=link}