Peacock Theatre

Opened on 23rd June 1960 with Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne starring in “The Visit”. It was the first West End theatre to be built since the Saville Theatre in 1931. Designed by the architectural firm Lewis Solomon Kaye and Partners, it occupies the basement of an office block and the site was originally where Oscar Hammerstein’s London Opera House had stood. This was a magnificent theatre built in 1911 that seated 2,420 and operated during the 1920’s and 1930’s as the Stoll Picture Theatre.

However, the Royalty Theatre was not a great success, where the previous Stoll Picture Theatre had a prominent position on Kingsway, taking up an entire block, the entrance to the Royalty Theatre had been moved to around the corner to the narrow Portugal Street and had no ‘street presence’ on the main Kingsway thorough-fare. Also it was considered just a litle off the beaten track from the rest of the major West End theatres. Seating was provided in the Royalty Theatre for 689 in the stalls and 288 in the circle, both these seating levels are beneath ground level.

In 1961, MGM took out a lease on the theatre and transfered the run of their blockbuster film ‘Ben Hur’ into the Royalty Theatre. This was due to the refurbishment they were carrying out at their main cinema, the Empire Theatre, Leicester Square. Following a run of “Mutiny on the Bounty” the Royalty was equipped for screening Cinerama movies and became London’s third Cinerama theatre (the others being the Casino Cinerama and the Coliseum Cinerama). The Royalty Cinerama Theatre only premiered one Cinerama film “The Golden Head” and was used the rest of the time as a move-over house. Cinerama films ended at the Royalty in August 1966 and it reverted back to live theatre use.

Again hit shows were difficult to programme into this off-West End location and spectacular ‘follies’ style shows and ‘drag’ shows didn’t find an audience. There was a successful run of the hit “Oh Calcutta” and the theatre has had only one other real smash hit “Bubbling Brown Sugar” in the late 1970’s, but for most of the next 20 years the theatre was ‘dark’ more than it was open.

In about 1999 the Royalty was taken over by Sadlers Wells Theatre as a temporary home to their dance theatre (while their own theatre in Islington, North London was being re-built) and the location of the Royalty closer to the West End has proved successful, in so much that they now have a long lease on the building and have re-named it the Peacock Theatre, staging seasons of productions of dance companies from around the world.

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