Garrick Theatre
Garrick Theatre in 2007
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| Address |
Charing Cross Road London, WC2 United Kingdom |
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| Coordinates | 51°30′35″N 0°07′41″W / 51.509722°N 0.128056°W |
| Public transit |
 Charing Cross; Leicester Square Charing Cross
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| Owner | Nimax Theatres |
| Designation | Grade II* |
| Type | West End theatre |
| Capacity | 656 on 3 levels (currently) 800 on 4 levels (originally) |
| Production | This House |
| Construction | |
| Opened | 24 April 1889 |
| Architect | Walter Emden, with C. J. Phipps |
| Website | |
| http://www.nimaxtheatres.com/garrick-theatre/ | |
The Garrick Theatre is a West End theatre, located on Charing Cross Road, in the City of Westminster, named for the stage actor David Garrick. It opened in 1889 with The Profligate, a play by Arthur Wing Pinero, and another Pinero play, The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith, was an early success at the theatre. In its early years, the Garrick appears to have specialised in the performance of melodrama. The theatre later became associated with comedies, including No Sex Please, We're British, which played for four years from 1982 to 1986.
There was previously another theatre that was sometimes called the Garrick in London, on Leman Street, opened in 1831 and demolished in 1881. The new Garrick Theatre was financed in 1889 by the playwright W. S. Gilbert, the author of over 75 plays, including the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas. It was designed by Walter Emden, with C. J. Phipps brought in as a consultant to help with the planning on the difficult site after an underground river was discovered in the excavation. Originally the theatre had 800 seats on four levels, but the gallery (top) level has since been closed and the seating capacity reduced to 656.
The theatre's first manager was Gilbert's friend John Hare. The first play at the theatre, The Profligate, by Arthur Wing Pinero and starring Hare, opened on 24 April 1889. Sydney Grundy's long-running French-style comedy A Pair of Spectacles opened here in February 1890. Mrs Patrick Campbell starred five years later in Pinero's The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith. Afterwards, the theatre suffered a short period of decline until it was leased by Arthur Bourchier for six years, whose wife, Violet Vanbrugh, starred in a series of successful productions ranging from farce to Shakespeare. In 1900, the theatre hosted J. M. Barrie's The Wedding Guest. Rutland Barrington presented several stage works at the Garrick, including his popular "fairy play" called Water Babies in 1902, based on Charles Kingsley's book, with music by Alfred Cellier, among others. The only piece actually premiered by W. S. Gilbert here was Harlequin and the Fairy's Dilemma (retitled The Fairy's Dilemma after a few days), a "Domestic Pantomime" (1904). In 1921, Basil Rathbone played Dr. Lawson in The Edge o' Beyond at the Garrick, and the following year Sir Seymour Hicks appeared in his own play, The Man in Dress Clothes. In 1925 Henry Daniell played there as Jack Race in Cobra and appeared there again as Paul Cortot in Marriage by Purchase in March 1932.
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