Everything about No L Coward Theatre totally explained
The
Noël Coward Theatre is a
West End theatre on St. Martin's Lane in the
City of Westminster. It opened on
March 12,
1903 as the
New Theatre, and was built by
Sir Charles Wyndham behind
Wyndham's Theatre which was completed in 1899. The building was designed by architect
W.G.R. Sprague with an exterior in the
Classical style and an interior in the
Rococo style.
In
1973 it was renamed the
Albery Theatre in tribute to the late Sir Bronson Albery who had presided as its manager for many years. Since September 2005, the theatre has been owned by Delfont-Mackintosh Ltd. It underwent major refurbishment in 2006, and was renamed the
Noël Coward Theatre when it re-opened for the London premiere of
Avenue Q on
1 June 2006. Coward, one of Britain's greatest playwrights and actors, made his West End debut in his own play,
I'll Leave It To You, at the then New Theatre in 1920.
The theatre seats 872 patrons on 4 levels. The building is now a Grade II
Listed structure.
Notable productions
After opening in 1903 with a production of
Rosemary starring Charles Wyndham and his wife,
Mary Moore, the Noël Coward Theatre has hosted a number of notable productions.
I'll Leave it to You, in 1920, was Coward's first play.
George Bernard Shaw's
St. Joan with an acclaimed performance by actress
Sybil Thorndike ran in 1924.
The 1930s saw the greatest commercial success of
John Gielgud's career,
Richard of Bordeaux (1933).
Gielgud followed up this triumph with a legendary production of
Hamlet in which he both played the title role and directed a company that included
Jessica Tandy,
Jack Hawkins, and a young
Alec Guinness in one of his first professional roles as Osric.
Gielgud also appeared with
Laurence Olivier,
Peggy Ashcroft and
Edith Evans in
Romeo and Juliet. With
the Blitz, came the destruction of the theatres that were home to the
Old Vic and
Sadler's Wells Theatre Companies. Both companies made the New Theatre home until their respective theatres were rebuilt in the 1950s. One of the most successful shows to play the New Theatre opened
30 June 1960, it was
Lionel Bart's musical retelling of
Charles Dickens'
Oliver Twist,
Oliver!. It ran for 2,618 performances.
In 1981,
Children of a Lesser God won
Olivier Awards for Best New Play and for actors
Trevor Eve and Elizabeth Quinn. Among some of the notable productions recently is the 1994 revival of
Turgenev's
A Month in the Country starring
Helen Mirren and
John Hurt.
Recently, the theatre has played host to some notable Shakespeare productions including a production of
Twelfth Night set in India with an entirely Asian cast. The production played to packed houses and only closed as the
Royal Shakespeare Company themselves had exclusive rights to perform their annual London season of Tragedies there. Between December 2004 and April 2005, they presented
Hamlet,
Romeo & Juliet,
Macbeth,
King Lear and a brand new production of Euripedes'
Hecuba starring
Vanessa Redgrave.
On
8 June 2005,
Dion Boucicault's Victorian melodrama
The Shaughraun opened; however, its success at the Dublin
Gate Theatre wasn't repeated in London and it closed on
30 July. A dark period of around three months followed before the theatre was transferred to the ownership of Delfont Mackintosh Limited and reopened in October 2005 with
The Right Size's new production
Ducktastic!. Once again this failed to live up to expectations and closed just three weeks after opening on
19 November 2005. A short Christmas season of
Patrick Stewart's one-man version of Charles Dickens'
A Christmas Carol played from
6 December to
31 December 2005, before the theatre hosted the
Edinburgh Festival hit drama
Blackbird starring
Roger Allam. It is currently hosting the European premiere of the
Broadway hit,
Avenue Q, which started previewing on 2nd June 2006 and had its opening night on 28th June 2006.
Recent and present productions
Further Information
Get more info on 'No L Coward Theatre'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://no__l_coward_theatre.totallyexplained.com">Noël Coward Theatre Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
