Sadler's Wells Theatre, London, in Rosebery Avenue, Finsbury. In 1683 Thomas Sadler discovered a medicinal spring in his garden and established there a popular pleasure-garden which became known as Sadler's Wells. Two years later he built a wooden music-room to house concerts, which in 1699 was run by a Mr Miles who renamed it Miles's Musick House. Miles died in 1724, and although the Wells continued to function it rather lost its reputation until in 1746 a local builder took it over. In 1753 he engaged a regular resident company of actors, and the old ‘musick house’ became a theatre. A version of
The Tempest—probably
Dryden's—was performed there in 1764, and in the following year the old wooden building was replaced with a stone one. Under Tom
King of
Drury Lane from 1772 the theatre prospered, attracting fashionable audiences. In 1781
Grimaldi made his first appearance there at the age of 3, and in 1801 Edmund
Kean, as ‘Master Carey’, aged about 13, was also in the company. In 1804 Charles
Dibdin, who took over when King died, yielded to the fashionable craze for
aquatic drama and installed a large tank on stage, filled with water from the New River, for the production of mimic sea battles. As the Aquatic Theatre, the renovated Wells opened with
The Siege of Gibraltar, complete with naval bombardment, but soon returned to its former name. A false alarm of fire in 1807 caused a panic which resulted in the death of 20 people. In 1828 Grimaldi, who had been closely associated with the theatre for many years, returned to make his farewell appearance. Following the breaking of the monopoly of the
Patent Theatres in 1843, the theatre was let to Samuel
Phelps, who in 1844 inaugurated with
Macbeth a series of productions of plays by Shakespeare. After his retirement in 1862 the Wells reverted to mixed popular entertainment, being used as a skating rink and for prize-fighting before being closed in 1878 as a dangerous structure. A year later
Bateman's widow, who had taken over the Lyceum on her husband's death, moved to Sadler's Wells, had the interior reconstructed, and reopened it with her daughter Isabel as the leading lady of a good company. Attempts to revive the theatre's reputation were only partially successful, however, and Mrs Bateman died in 1881 heavily in debt. The theatre then became a local home for
melodrama, and in 1893 a music-hall, before finally closing down in 1906. Twenty-one years later Lilian
Baylis took over the derelict building and erected a new theatre intended as a North London counterpart to the
Old Vic in South London. This opened in 1931 with
Twelfth Night, in which
Gielgud played Malvolio. It had a seating capacity of 1,650 (later reduced to 1,499) in three tiers, and a proscenium width and stage depth of 30 ft. each. The original policy of alternating productions between Sadler's Wells and the Old Vic proving uneconomic, it was decided in 1934 to make the latter the permanent home of drama while the Wells became the home of the opera and ballet companies. It closed in 1940 and a year later suffered damage by enemy action, not reopening until 1945. After the departure of the ballet company to
Covent Garden the opera company carried on alone, though the theatre was sometimes used by visiting companies, including in 1958 the
Moscow Art Theatre. In 1968 the Sadler's Wells opera company moved to the
Coliseum, becoming the English National Opera, and the theatre has since been used by a number of distinguished visiting dance companies, both from Britain and overseas; it also houses opera and children's theatre.
The
Lilian Baylis Theatre, seating 200, associated with Sadler's Wells and adjacent to it, opened in 1988 with John
Guare's House of Blue Leaves.
