The Gielgud Theatre is a West End theatre, located on Shaftesbury Avenue in the City of Westminster, London, at the corner of Rupert Street. The house currently has 889 seats on three levels.

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History

leftThe 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 in Louis XVI style, the theatre originally had 970 seats, but over the years boxes and other seats have been removed. The theatre is a pair with the Queen's Theatre, which opened in 1907 on the adjacent street corner.

The first play at the theatre was a musical called The Beauty of Bath by Hicks and Cosmo Hamilton. My Darling , another Hicks musical, followed in 1907, 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 (1909), which was produced by Hicks. 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 — possibly the only case in the history of musical theatre where a husband succeeded to his wife's role. ^[1]

In 1909, the house was renamed the Globe Theatre . Another "Globe Theatre", located on Newcastle Street, had been demolished in 1902 to make way for the Aldwych, and so the name became available. A number of notable productions ran at this Shaftesbury Avenue theatre and are listed below. Call It A Day by Dodie Smith opened in 1935 and ran for 509 performances, which was considered very successful for the slow inter-war years.

Terence Frisby's There's a Girl in My Soup , opening in 1966, ran for 1,064 performances at the theatre, a record that was not surpassed until Andrew Lloyd Webber's production of the Olivier Award-winning comedy Daisy Pulls It Off by Densie Deegan opened in April 1983 to run for 1,180 performances, the theatre's longest run. In 1987 Peter Shaffer's play Lettice and Lovage was a hit with Maggie Smith and Margaret Tyzack, running for 2 years. The theatre has presented several Alan Ayckbourn premieres, including 1990's Man of the Moment . More recently, Oscar Wilde's classic comedy, An Ideal Husband (1992) and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (2004) saw notable revivals.

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.

In 1994, in anticipation of the 1997 opening of a reconstruction of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre on the South Bank by Sam Wanamaker, the theatre was renamed in honour of British actor John Gielgud. In 2003, Sir Cameron Mackintosh announced 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 Webber's Really Useful Theatres in 2006. The Delfont Mackintosh group also consists of the Noel Coward Theatre, Novello Theatre, Prince Edward Theatre, Prince of Wales Theatre, Queen's Theatre, and Wyndham's Theatre. Work on the facade of the theatre started in March 2007.

Notable productions

• 1907: Brewster's Millions by Winchell Smith & Byron Ongley
• 1908: A Waltz Dream an operetta by Oscar Straus
• 1914: Kismet , a revival of Edward Knoblock's play, with Henry Daniell in his London debut.
• 1916: Peg O' My Heart by John Hartley Manners
• 1920: Fédora , a revival of the 1882 play by Victorien Sardou, with Basil Rathbone as Loris Ipanoff
• 1925: Fallen Angels by Noël Coward, starring Tallulah Bankhead
• 1931: The Improper Duchess by James B. Fagan, starring Yvonne Arnaud
• 1935: Call it a Day by Dodie Smith
• 1939: The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, with John Gielgud starring as well as directing
• 1942: The Petrified Forest by Robert Sherwood
• 1949: The Lady's Not for Burning by Christopher Fry, with Richard Burton in a supporting role
• 1959: The Complaisant Lover by Graham Greene, starring Ralph Richardson
• 1960: A Man For All Seasons by Robert Bolt, starring Paul Scofield
• 1966: There's a Girl in My Soup by Terence Frisby
• 1966: The Matchgirls by Bill Owen
• 1976: A season of Barry Humphries as Dame Edna Everage
• 1982: Design for Living by Noël Coward, starring Vanessa Redgrave
• 1983: Daisy Pulls It Off by Densie Deegan
• 1987: Lettice and Lovage by Peter Shaffer, starring Maggie Smith and Margaret Tyzack
• 1990: Man of the Moment by Alan Ayckbourn
• 1992: An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde
• 1995: Design for Living , starring Rachel Weisz

Recent and present productions

• 2003: Tell Me on a Sunday by Andrew Lloyd Webber, with Denise Van Outen
• 2004: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , starring Christian Slater, Frances Barber and Mackenzie Crook
• 2005: Don Carlos by Friedrich Schiller, starring Derek Jacobi
• 2005: Some Girls by Neil LaBute, starring David Schwimmer and Catherine Tate
• 2005: And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie, starring Tara Fitzgerald
• 2006: The RSC's The Crucible , starring Iain Glen
• 2006: The RSC's The Canterbury Tales
• 2006: Frost/Nixon by Peter Morgan, starring Michael Sheen and Frank Langella
• 2007: Equus by Peter Shaffer, starring Daniel Radcliffe and Richard Griffiths
• 2007: Macbeth by William Shakespeare, starring Patrick Stewart
• 2007: The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickelby: Part One by Charles Dickens
• 2007: The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickelby: Part Two by Charles Dickens
• 2008: Carl Rosa Opera presents The Gilbert & Sullivan Season
• 2008: God of Carnage by Yasmina Reza, with Ralph Fiennes and Tamsin Greig

Trivia

• The Gielgud/Globe used to be home to a resident theatre cat named Beerbohm, who is the only cat to have received a front page obituary in the theatrical publication, The Stage. He died in March 1995 at the age of 20.

Notes

1. Seymour Hicks

References

1. Seymour Hicks