Haymarket Theatre

Haymarket Theatre, Leicester. This theatre, opened in 1973, was intended to take the place of the Phoenix, opened 10 years earlier on a site expected to be available for only five years. The theatres worked together, however, until 1979, when the Phoenix became a mixed programme arts centre, known from 1988 as Phoenix Arts. The Haymarket is larger, seating 710, and in its first season presented two highly successful musicals, Cabaret and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, together with a revival of Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer, John Hopkins's Economic Necessity, Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle, and a pantomime, Aladdin. Later seasons showed a similarly wide range, including productions of the musicals Oliver!, My Fair Lady, Oklahoma!, Me and My Girl, and High Society, all of which later had long London runs, as well as two vastly different trilogies—Sophocles' Theban Plays and Ayckbourn's The Norman Conquests. The studio theatre has presented mainly modern plays. The Haymarket company tours for five or six weeks annually, during which the theatre houses visiting companies. The theatre enjoys international acclaim for its bold and innovative policy of presenting world drama on a broad base. In 1989 it launched John Dexter's production of David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly, later to have a big success in London, and Yuri Lyubimov's Hamlet, destined for a major world tour.