Trafalgar Studios
Trafalgar Studios is a West End - Theater in Whitehall in the City of Westminster in London . The theater is also called the Whitehall Theater , in honor of its earlier name. The theater consists of two chamber plays designed by architects Tim Foster and John Muir.
Studio 1, the larger of the two rooms, has 380 seats. It was opened on June 3, 2004 by the Royal Shakespeare Company with Shakespeare's Othello . Studio 2, with 100 seats, opened on February 3, 2005 with Losing Louis by Simon Mendes da Costa .
history
The original Whitehall Theater was designed in the Art Deco style by Edward A. Stone and opened on September 29, 1930 with the play The Way to Treat a Woman by the theater tenant Walter Hackett. In November 1933, Henry Daniell appeared as Portman in Afterwards . Hackett performed several of his own plays before leaving the theater in 1934. The theater built a reputation as a venue for modern comedies by the late 1930s.
Revues were played during World War II , and over time they became part of everyday entertainment in the West End. 1942 played with Phyllis Dixey in the play The Whitehall Follies , the first stripper in the theater district. He was received enthusiastically and was an immediate success. Dixey leased the theater and ran it for the next five years. After that, a whole series of farces , which were presented under the common title The Whitehall Farces , was played. All were produced by Lord Brian Rix and resided at the Whitehall Theater for over 22 years. Many farces were also shown on television.
In 1969 an act revue called Pajama Tops was recorded and performed for five years. Thereafter, the building was shuttered and underwent a significant modernization that retained most of the Art Deco elements. The theater reopened on March 5, 1986 with a successful revival of JB Priestley's When We Are Married .
Post-productions included pieces like When I Was a Girl I Used to Scream and Shout , The Importance of Being Earnest , The Foreigner , Run For Your Wife , Absurd Person Singular , Travels with My Aunt , Tribute for Patsy Cline , Roy Orbison , the Blues Brothers and solo appearances by Ennio Marchetto and Maria Friedman .
Between 1997 and 1999 the theater became a television and radio studio converted to mainly from there the popular talk show from Jack Docherty and the radio broadcast live from London the BBC Radio 4 to send. It then switched back to theater use with productions like The Three Sisters , Puppetry of the Penis , Art , Rat Pack Confidential , and Sing-a-Long-a- ABBA . The Ambassador Theater Group then announced that it would change and rename the theater. The new name became Trafalgar Studios .
Trafalgar Studios productions included Sweeney Todd , Alan Bennett's The Old Country , an adaptation of Jane Eyre and Bent .
The theater was in December 1996 of English Heritage as a Grade II -Bauwerk classified.
literature
- John Parker (Ed.): Who's Who in the Theater . 10th edition. London 1947, p. 477-478 .
Web links
Coordinates: 51 ° 30 ′ 28 " N , 0 ° 7 ′ 39" W.