Harold Pinter Theatre - History
The theatre is located on Panton Street in London’s City of Westminster. Its nearest underground station is Piccadilly Circus and its nearest train station is at Charing Cross.
Surprisingly the theatre only took six months to build under the design of Thomas Verity. It used painted stone and brick and has been reconstructed since that time - the exterior being worked on in the 1950s. The interior has remained mostly the same since its opening in 1881. It should be noted that some seats as a result are classed as ‘restricted view’ due to the massive columns which support the circle, affecting around 125 seats.
The first thing to point out is that the theatre was not always called The Comedy. Its original name was The Royal Comedy Theatre, but this was dropped in 1884 and the name has stayed the same since. The other notable part of the theatre’s history is its role in defeating stage censorship in the 1950s. Before 1968 Lord Chamberlain’s office had to approve the scripts of all plays before they would be allowed and as a result Chamberlain had the rights to ban any plays he thought would be unsuitable for the public.
To get around this, The Comedy became the home of The New Watergate Club in 1956 where banned plays could be showcased in ‘club’ conditions, which were exempt from the ruling. This meant that many unseen plays appeared at the Comedy including Arthur Miller’s A View From The Bridge (banned due to its implied references to incest), Robert Anderson’s Tea And Sympathy and Tennessee William’s Cat On A Hot Tin Roof. Eventually Lord Chamberlain backed down, the rules were relaxed and the club closed, but this resulted in Five Finger Exercise by Peter Schaffer enjoying a successful two year run in the theatre.
However, before this when the Comedy Theatre first opened, it was home to the London premiere of Falka (the operetta) and Erminie. World War One was a good time for the theatre despite the harsh times. Its popularity increased with the likes of C B Cochran and Andre Charlot showcasing their revue shows and in the years since many famous actors have appeared onstage in productions such as Secrets, which was staged in 1929.
Modern History
In recent years there have been various productions leading up to the modern day, with Fat Pig starring Kevin Bishop and Kelly Brook amongst others being the most recent production at the time of writing. Other productions in modern times include Steaming and Little Shop Of Horrors in the early 1980s, A Passionate Woman in 1994 and others which include The Old Masters, Whose Life is it Anyway?, Journey's End, The Home Place, The Caesar Twins, Epitaph for George Dillon, Steptoe and Son, Donkeys' Years, The Rocky Horror Show, Boeing Boeing and Dickens Unplugged.
