Regent Theatre

Regent Theatre, London, in the Euston Road. This theatre, seating 1,310 in three tiers, opened in 1900 as the Euston Music-Hall, and became a playhouse in 1922, opening with Body and Soul by Arnold Bennett. It had a short but interesting life, being occupied soon after its opening by Rutland Boughton's ‘music-drama’ The Immortal Hour, with Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies. This was directed by Barry Jackson, whose own play for children The Christmas Party opened on 20 Dec. In 1923 The Insect Play by the Čapeks had a short run, with Gielgud playing Felix, and a year later Gielgud and Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies starred in Romeo and Juliet, Gielgud being then 19 years old. The theatre was used extensively by play-producing societies such as the Fellowship of Players, who staged a number of Shakespeare's plays for short runs; the Phoenix Society, which revived Elizabethan and Restoration comedies; the Pioneer Players, whose production of Susan Glaspell's The Verge (1925) was directed by Edith Craig (see CRAIG, GORDON); the Repertory Players, who in 1926 produced O'Neill's Beyond the Horizon; the Stage Society, with James Joyce's Exiles (also 1926); and the Three Hundred Club, with D. H. Lawrence's David (1927). During a short repertory season in 1925 the Macdona Players were responsible for the first London production of Shaw's Mrs Warren's Profession, and for Man and Superman in its entirety for the first time. The last play to be presented at this theatre was a Jewish comedy by Izak Goller, Cohen and Son, in 1932. When it closed, the building became a cinema.