lyric-theatre-london

The Lyric Theatre is a West End theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue in the City of Westminster. It was built for the producer Henry Leslie, who financed it from the profits of the light opera hit, Dorothy, which he transferred from its original venue to open the new theatre on 17 December 1888.

In a 2017 survey of London's theatres, Michael Coveney observes that the 1880s marked the beginning of "a building boom … that signals the true making of the West End". The Lyric was one of twelve new or wholly rebuilt theatres of that decade. It was the second theatre to be constructed in Shaftesbury Avenue and is the oldest still surviving. It was commissioned by the producer Henry Leslie with profits from the Alfred Cellier and B. C. Stephenson hit, Dorothy; Leslie was said to have made £100,000 from the show. The architect was C. J. Phipps, who also designed the Savoy, Lyceum and Her Majesty's theatres. The theatre is on four levels, and originally had a capacity of 1,306, later reduced to about 900. A contemporary description of the new theatre said, "The façade is of the Renaissance style in red brick and Portland stone, divided in the centre and two wings, each surmounted with a high pitched gable with recessed arcades" and "The frame of the proscenium is of brown and white alabaster: the sides of the stalls and pit are lined with walnut and sycamore panelling, with handsome carved mouldings". The theatre retains many of its original features, including an original 1767 house front, incorporated into the rear of the building, the former house and museum of Sir William Hunter. The theatre opened on 17 December 1888 with the 817th performance of Dorothy, transferred from the Prince of Wales Theatre. The piece starred Marie Tempest in the title role, with Amy Augarde, Florence Perry and Hayden Coffin. In a short speech after the performance Leslie told the audience he hoped "to follow the plan of the Paris Opéra-Comique in producing works by native composers". Dorothy was followed in April 1889 by Doris, by the same author and composer, which failed to emulate its predecessor's record-breaking success and closed after a modest run of 202 performances. Leslie's third offering, The Red Hussar by Henry Pottinger Stephens and Edward Solomon, ran for 175 performances from November 1889, after which Leslie gave up the Lyric. Horace Sedger became the licensee, manager and sole lessee, at the then enormous rent of £6,500 a year.

Sedger had an early success with his production of Edmond Audran's La cigale, in an English adaptation by F. C. Burnand with additional music by Ivan Caryll; it ran for 423 performances from October 1890. Apart from a short season by the celebrated Italian actress Eleonora Duse in her first appearance in Britain, Sedger continued with musical works: The Mountebanks by W. S. Gilbert and Alfred Cellier (1892), Incognita (1892), an adaptation of Charles Lecocq's Le coeur et la main; The Magic Opal (1893) by Arthur Law and Isaac Albéniz; The Golden Web (1893) by Stephenson, Frederick Corder and Arthur Thomas; and Little Christopher Columbus (1893) by G. R. Sims, Cecil Raleigh and Caryll. Some of these were critical and artistic successes, but overall they lost money, and Sedger went bankrupt. In 1894 George Edwardes produced His Excellency, a comic opera with a libretto by Gilbert and music by F. Osmond Carr. It closed after 162 performances, victim of an influenza epidemic that kept audiences away from theatres. William Greet then took the theatre, presenting The Sign of the Cross, written by and starring Wilson Barrett. This play, about a Roman patrician converted to Christianity by his love for a Christian girl, brought people to the Lyric who had never before entered a theatre, and it ran for 435 performances from January 1896. Greet and Barrett followed this with the latter's Daughters of Babylon, co-starring Maud Jeffries; among the junior members of the enormous cast was the young Constance Collier. In 1897 and 1898 two French actresses played seasons at the Lyric, first Gabrielle Réjane and then Sarah Bernhardt. For the rest of the 1890s musical pieces returned: Little Miss Nobody by Harry Graham with music by Arthur E. Godfrey and Landon Ronald (1898), L'amour mouille by Louis Varney (1899), and most successful, Florodora (1899), starring Evie Greene, which ran for 455 performances and was also a hit in New York.

In 1902 Johnston Forbes-Robertson starred in a season; his repertory included Othello and Hamlet, with Gertrude Elliott as his co-star. His Hamlet was described in the press as "the most refined and beautiful embodiment of Hamlet vouchsafed to our generation", and "a revelation". Max Beerbohm said, "He shows us, for the first time, Hamlet as a quite definite and intelligible being". Musical comedy returned to the Lyric at the end of Forbes-Robertson's season, with The Medal and the Maid (1903), by Owen Hall and Sidney Jones, with Ada Reeve and Ruth Vincent, and The Duchess of Dantzig (1903), by Henry Hamilton and Caryll, with Evie Greene and Courtice Pounds. The Talk of the Town (1904) by Seymour Hicks and several composers, starred Agnes Fraser, her husband Walter Passmore, and Henry Lytton. It was followed by The Blue Moon, with music by Howard Talbot and Paul Rubens, in which Florence Smithson made her London debut. From 1906 to 1910 Lewis Waller was based at the Lyric, in plays ranging from Shakespeare to romantic costume drama and classic comedy in The Rivals with Kate Cutler as Lydia and Lottie Venne as Mrs Malaprop. In 1910 the Lyric presented The Chocolate Soldier, a musical version of Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man, with music by Oscar Straus; Shaw detested the piece and called it "that degradation of a decent comedy into a dirty farce", but the public liked it, and it ran for 500 performances. Philip Michael Faraday, co-producer of this success, became sole director of the Lyric in 1911 and presented Nightbirds (an adaptation of Die Fledermaus, 1912), The Five Frankforters (described as a "Viennese banking comedy", 1912), The Girl in the Taxi (1912), The Girl Who Didn't (1913), and Mamzelle Tralala (1914).

William Greet was succeeded as lessee by Edward Engelbach in 1914. For a while, musical productions were not seen at the Lyric, and non-musical drama prevailed, including On Trial, an unusual melodrama that opened with the end of the story and worked backwards to the beginning. It had a satisfactory run of 174 performances. Romance, starring Doris Keane and Owen Nares, transferred from the Duke of York's Theatre to the Lyric, where it finished its run of 1,049 performances. Keane then starred in the comedy Roxana (1918); the reviews were excellent. In 1919 she played Juliet opposite the Romeo of her husband, Basil Sydney; this time the reviews were dreadful. The Nurse, played by Ellen Terry, was seen as the saving grace of the production. Musical comedy resumed its place at the Lyric in the early 1920s. Whirled into Happiness (1922), a musical farce with music by Robert Stolz and words by Harry Graham, had a run of 244 performances; Lilac Time, with Courtice Pounds in the lead as Franz Schubert, opened in December 1922 and had 626 performances. The Street Singer, by Frederick Lonsdale, with music by Harold Fraser-Simson, starring Phyllis Dare and Harry Welchman, ran for 360 performances from June 1924. Non-musical plays dominated the Lyric's programmes in the rest of the 1920s. The theatre historians Mander and Mitchenson write that in 1926 and 1927 two names became closely associated with the theatre: "Three plays by Avery Hopwood had outstanding runs: The Best People, written in collaboration with David Grey (1926), 309 performances; The Gold Diggers (1926), 180 performances; and The Garden of Eden (1927), 232 performances". The last two featured the actress Tallulah Bankhead, then a considerable box-office draw among the "bright young things" of the 1920s. She appeared again at the Lyric in Her Cardboard Lover (1928) and Let Us Be Gay (1929).

Available at this venue:

• Wheelchair-accessible entrance
• Wheelchair-accessible seating
• Wheelchair-accessible toilet

Not available at this venue:

• Wheelchair-accessible parking

Accessibility information supplied by Google Maps. Please contact the venue directly to confirm details for your visit.