Aldwych Theatre - History
Unsurprisingly, you will find the Aldwych Theatre in the Aldwych area of London in the City of Westminster. It was built next door to the Waldorf Hotel with the Strand (now the Novello) on the other side. Its nearest underground and railways stations are Charing Cross.
The theatre, when it was first built, had four levels of seating, which has since been reduced to three, but this gives an idea as to the grand scale of the theatre which was built by Seymour Hicks and designed by W G R Sprague.
One of the main associations with the theatre is with The Alwych Farces. These were a series of farces which played from 1925 to 1933 and written by Ben Travers. The theatre, however, dates back to 1905 when it opened with a production of Blue Bell, adapted from the Seymour Hicks pantomime Bluebell in Fairyland. Hicks himself was one of the people funding the theatre in its early days along with Charles Frohman. Other productions by Hicks included The Beauty Of Bath in 1906. The Ben Travers Company consisted of Ralph Lynn, Tom Walls, Yvonne Arnaud, Norma Varden, Robertson Hare, Winifred Schotter and Mary Bough.
In the mid 1930s, the Abrahams family took over as owners, where they remained until the 1960s. It was after this that the Royal Shakespeare Company made the theatre their home, which remained the case until 1982.
Modern History
The theatre remains a popular venue for various plays and this century a whole host of plays and comedies have appeared there along with musical theatre. Until 2001 Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Whistle Down The Wind played and after that Fame was housed there from 2002 to 2006. More recently Dancing In The Streets has seen its home at the Aldwych before it was transferred to the Playhouse Theatre. Dirty Dancing has also been running at the Aldwych after opening in September 2006. The current management of the theatre is the American James Nederlander and is operated by Michael Codron Plays.
On a spookier note, the Aldwych joins the ranks of a number of West End theatres which is reportedly haunted, which is unsurprising given its trademark Georgian design and its grand appearance.
Notable Productions
Of course, the theatre is well known for the Aldwych Farces in the 1920s and 30s. These included productions such as A Cuckoo In The Nest, Rookery Nook, Thark, Plunder and A Cup Of Kindness. However there are also a number of other notable productions that have been housed at the theatre over the years. The Devils appeared at the Aldwych in 1961 along with various Harold Pinter plays such as The Collection (1962), The Homecoming (1965), Old Times (1971) as well as Tom Stoppard’s Travesties in 1974. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Whistle Down The Wind (2000) was there more recently along with Fame (2002) and Dirty Dancing (2006).
