Phoenix Theatre (London)

Phoenix Theatre

Phoenix Theatre, July 2007
Address	Charing Cross Road Camden, London
Coordinates
Owner	Ambassador Theatre Group
Type	West End theatre
Capacity	1,012 on 3 levels
Production	Bend It Like Beckham the Musical
Construction
Opened	24 September 1930
Architect	Giles Gilbert Scott, Bertie Crewe and Cecil Massey
Website
Phoenix Theatre website at Ambassador Theatre Group

The Phoenix Theatre is a West End theatre in the London Borough of Camden, located on Charing Cross Road (at the corner with Flitcroft Street). The entrances are in Phoenix Street and Charing Cross Road. Phoenix Theatre was built on the place where was a factory and then Music hall Alcazar before.

The theatre was designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, Bertie Crewe and Cecil Massey. It has a restrained neoclassical exterior, but an interior designed in an Italianate style by director and designer Theodore Komisarjevsky. Vladimir Polunin copied works by Tintoretto, Titian, Pinturicchio and Giorgione. And also safety curtain that holds Jacopo del Sellaio's The Triumph of Love.

There are golden engravings in the auditorium, red seats, carpets and curtains. This look is based on traditional Italian theatres. There are ecorated ceilings and sculpted wooden doors throughout the building. Every seat has its own hat rack and sufficient leg and body room.

It opened on 24 September 1930 with the première of Private Lives by Noël Coward, who also appeared in the play, with Adrienne Allen, Gertrude Lawrence and Laurence Olivier. Coward returned to the theatre with Tonight at 8:30 in 1936 and Quadrille in 1952.

On 16 December 1969, the long association with Coward was celebrated with a midnight matinee in honour of his 70th birthday, and the foyer bar was renamed the Noel Coward Bar.

The Phoenix has had a number of successful plays including John Gielgud's Love for Love during the Second World War. Harlequinade and The Browning Version, two plays by Terence Rattigan, opened on 8 September 1948 at the theatre.

In the mid-1950s, Paul Scofield and Peter Brook appeared at the theatre. In 1968, a musical version of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales opened and ran for around two thousand performances. Night and Day, a 1978 play by Tom Stoppard, ran for two years.

The theatre hosted many musicals in the 1980s and 1990s, including The Biograph Girl with Sheila White, The Baker's Wife by Stephen Schwartz directed by Trevor Nunn, and Into the Woods by Stephen Sondheim, starring Julia McKenzie. There were also a number of plays by William Shakespeare. Its first pantomime was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs starring Dana in 1983.

The production of Blood Brothers, the Willy Russell musical that transferred from The Albery Theatre in November 1991, ended a 21-year run on 10 November 2012 after becoming the longest-running production at the theatre. Following limited engagements of Goodnight Mr Tom and Midnight Tango. The theatre then played host to the original West End production of Broadway musical Once, which opened in April 2013 and closed on 21 March 2015.

Bend it Like Beckham - the musical is the next show to play the Phoenix Theatre.

The theatre is owned by the Ambassador Theatre Group. Since 1973 it has been a Grade II Listed Building.

See also

• Phoenix Garden

References

• Guide to British Theatres 1750-1950, John Earl and Michael Sell pp. 131 (Theatres Trust, 2000) ISBN 0-7136-5688-3