Her Majesty's Theatre

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.