Her Majesty's Theatre, London, in the Haymarket. The first theatre on this site was called the Queen's, after Queen Anne. Designed by Sir John
Vanbrugh, it opened in 1705 under the management of William
Congreve, one of the first plays to be given there being Vanbrugh's
The Confederacy. The house proved unsuitable for drama and became London's first opera-house. On the death of Queen Anne in 1714 the theatre changed its name to the King's, in honour of George I. After a fire in 1789 a new theatre devoted entirely to opera and ballet opened in 1791. On the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837 it was renamed Her Majesty's, a name it retained until the accession of Edward VII in 1901, when it became His Majesty's, reverting to Her Majesty's on the accession of Elizabeth II in 1952. It had a consistently successful career until it was again burnt down in 1867. Although it was rebuilt between 1868 and 1869, it did not reopen until 1877, and never regained its former popularity. It finally closed in 1891 and was demolished, only the Royal Opera Arcade being left standing.
Some years later Beerbohm
Tree acquired part of the site, and with the profits from his production of Du Maurier's
Trilby (1895) at the Haymarket built a new theatre there, retaining the old name. Designed by C. J. Phipps, it held 1,283 in four tiers. It opened in 1897 with Gilbert Parker's
The Seats of the Mighty, which was followed by a series of excellent productions including a number of Shakespeare's plays and new works. In his rooms in the dome of this theatre Tree instituted in 1904 a drama school which eventually moved to other premises to become the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. After Tree's departure in 1915 the theatre achieved a new kind of success with the opening in 1916 of
Chu-Chin-Chow, a musical fantasy by Oscar
Asche which ran for 2,238 performances. Later productions were
Cairo (1921), also by Asche, Flecker's
Hassan (1923) with music by Delius,
Coward's Bitter Sweet (1929),
The Good Companions (1931), a dramatization of J. B.
Priestley's bestselling novel of that name, and a musical,
The Dubarry (1932). In 1935 George
Robey played Falstaff in
Henry IV,
Part One, and in 1939 the Greek actress Katina
Paxinou made her first appearance in London in
Sophocles' Electra with the Greek National Theatre company, subsequently playing Gertrude to the Hamlet of her husband Alexis
Minotis. During the Second World War the theatre housed a series of revivals, but in 1947 Robert
Morley had a considerable success with
Edward,
My Son, which he co-authored. The musical
Brigadoon (1949) inaugurated a successful series of American productions which included John Patrick's
The Teahouse of the August Moon (1954) and the musicals
Paint Your Wagon (1953) and
West Side Story (1958). The musical
Fiddler on the Roof (1967), in which
Topol scored a great success, ran for five years, and later musicals included
Company by
Sondheim,
Applause (both 1972), the British musical version of
The Good Companions (1974), and the African musical
Ipi Tombi (1975). Peter
Shaffer's Amadeus (1981) with Frank
Finlay, transferred from the
National Theatre, had a long run, and Andrew Lloyd Webber's enormously successful musical
The Phantom of the Opera (1986) looked set to run for the foreseeable future.
