Apollo Victoria - History
The Apollo Victoria Theatre is located on Wilton Road in London’s City of Westminster. Its nearest underground station is Victoria and the nearest train station is also the Victoria.
Ernest Wainsley Lewis and William Edward Trent were the architects behind the Apollo Victoria Theatre, who in 1929 took on the project for Provincial Cinematograph Theatres. It was to be designed as a ‘super-cinema’ with two facades on Wilton and Vauxhall Bridge roads and an art deco style, hence the large amounts of concrete in its structure, concealed lighting, the scallop shells and the columns that lead to sculptured ceiling fountains.
During its time as a cinema it was known as the New Victoria Cinema and it showed many movies along with variety shows. It was also fitted with a theatre organ that was played by Reginald Foort on the opening night
This cinema closed in 1975 only to be reopened as a theatre six years later. As a theatre it is one of the largest in London’s West End, with a capacity of around 2,300 when including standing spaces. When it reopened it had an opening night concert performed by Shirley Bassey and from 1984 for eighteen years it became the home of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Starlight Express (which involved converting the theatre to accommodate the roller skating arena). When the show closed in 2002, it had run for 7,406 performances. Other musicals during this time included The Sound Of Music, Dash, Fiddler On The Roof and Camelot in the early eighties. The Sound Of Music famously starred Petula Clarke. Dash was made famous with dancer Wayne Sleep making a large impact with his role in the production.
Modern History
After Starlight Express, Andrew Lloyd Webber opened a new production of A H Rahman’s Bombay Dreams. This was directed by Steven Pimlott with lyrics by Don Black. It closed in 2004 after 1,500 performances. This was followed by the Bee Gees musical Saturday Night Fever, which returned to London’s West End after initially playing in the late nineties.
It ran until 2005 to go on tour. After this Movin’ Out featured on the stage, with music from Billy Joel and starring James Fox. The current show at the time of writing is Wicked, which is booking through until September 2009. Praise for this play has been high with the New York Times praising its broadway run, “Broadway’s Biggest Blockbuster”. It deals with the witches that were featured in the Wizard Of Oz looking at the events in Oz that led the two witches to be different – one being good and the other being evil. Whilst at Broadway it achieved a high level of success and as a result it was able to go on a US and Canada tour and created performances in cities all over the world.
