Donmar Warehouse

Donmar Warehouse, originally a rehearsal studio built by Donald Albery (see ALBERY, BRONSON) for Margot Fonteyn, whom he managed; hence its present name. As the Warehouse, seating 200, it became the RSC's studio theatre in London, opening in 1977 to show plays which had proved successful at the Other Place as well as the works of young British playwrights, among them Howard Barker, Howard Brenton, and Willy Russell (see EVERYMAN THEATRE, Liverpool), whose Educating Rita (1980) was its most popular presentation. The RSC left the Warehouse on the transfer of its London base to the Barbican in 1982, and the theatre became the Donmar Warehouse, one of the new management's early successes being Jonathan Miller's studio version of Hamlet. In 1984 it began to stage seasons by the best British Fringe touring companies such as Cheek By Jowl. It also staged the musical Show People Seasons which featured such entertainments as Kern Goes to Hollywood (1985) and Blues in the Night (1987). The theatre presented a ‘Pick of the Fringe’ Festival in Sept.–Oct., with nine of the best shows from the Fringe of the Edinburgh Festival. It closed in 1990, but reopened in 1992 with short runs of its own productions.