Vaudeville Theatre
Vaudeville Theatre in 2008
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| Address |
Strand London, WC2 United Kingdom |
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| Coordinates | 51°30′38″N 0°07′21″W / 51.510556°N 0.1225°W |
| Public transit |
 Charing Cross Charing Cross
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| Owner | Nimax Theatres |
| Designation | Grade II |
| Type | West End theatre |
| Capacity | 690 on 3 levels |
| Production | The Boys in the Band |
| Construction | |
| Opened | 16 April 1870 |
| Rebuilt | 1882 (C. J. Phipps) 1926 (Robert Atkins) |
| Architect | C. J. Phipps |
| Website | |
| www.nimaxtheatres.com/nimax/vaudeville | |
The Vaudeville Theatre is a West End theatre on the Strand in the City of Westminster. As the name suggests, the theatre held mostly vaudeville shows and musical revues in its early days. It opened in 1870 and was rebuilt twice, although each new building retained elements of the previous structure. The current building opened in 1926, and the capacity is now 690 seats. Rare thunder drum and lightning sheets, together with other early stage mechanisms survive in the theatre.
The theatre was designed by prolific architect C. J. Phipps, decorated in a Romanesque style by George Gordon, and opened on 16 April 1870 with Andrew Halliday's comedy, For Love Or Money and a burlesque, Don Carlos or the Infante in Arms. A notable innovation was the concealed footlights, which would shut off if the glass in front of them was broken. The owner, William Wybrow Robertson, had run a failing billiard hall on the site but saw more opportunity in theatre. He leased the new theatre to three actors, Thomas Thorne, David James, and H.J. Montague. The original theatre stood behind two houses on the Strand, and the entrance was through a labyrinth of small corridors. It had a seating capacity of 1,046, rising in a horseshoe, over a pit and three galleries. The cramped site meant that facilities front and backstage were limited.
The great Shakespearean actor, Henry Irving, had his first conspicuous success as Digby Grant in James Albery's Two Roses at the Vaudeville in 1870, which held the theatre for what was at the time an extroardinarily successful run of 300 nights. The first theatre piece in the world to achieve 500 consecutive performances was the comedy Our Boys by H. J. Byron, which started its run at the Vaudeville in 1875. The production went on to surpass the 1,000 performance mark. This was such a rare event that London bus conductors approaching the Vaudeville Theatre stop shouted "Our Boys!" instead of the name of the theatre.
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