Players' Theatre

Players' Theatre, London, membership club which began life as Playroom Six, on the first floor of 6 New Compton Street. It opened in 1927, and five months later Peggy Ashcroft made her London début there. In 1929 the company moved to the ground floor of the building, and the name was changed to the Players' Theatre. A further move in 1936 took the Players' to premises in King Street, Covent Garden, once occupied by Evans's (late Joy's) ‘song-and-supper-rooms’. The new venture was not a success, but in 1937 Peter Ridgeway reopened the premises as the New Players', with an entertainment in the style of the old ‘song-and-supper’ evenings; the programmes became famous as Ridgeway's Late Joys. The same mixture of songs and sketches continued to fill the bill after Ridgeway's death in 1938, and in 1940 the company moved to 13 Albemarle Street. In 1945 they were able to acquire part of the premises formerly occupied by Gatti's-Under-the-Arches, opening there in 1946. Their popularity was enhanced by the production in 1953 of Sandy Wilson's musical pastiche The Boy Friend, and the theatre continued to present ‘Victorian entertainment’, including an annual pantomime, to a small but devoted membership. The company occupied the Duchess Theatre, 1987–90, while a new theatre, similar to the old, was built ‘under the Arches’.