Whitehall Theatre

Whitehall Theatre, London, in Whitehall, near Trafalgar Square. An intimate modern playhouse holding 628 on two tiers, it opened in 1930, its first production being Walter Hackett's The Way to Treat a Woman, transferred from the Duke of York's. Hackett and his wife Marian Lorne controlled the theatre until 1934, he writing the plays and she appearing in them. Subsequent successes included Norman Ginsbury's Viceroy Sarah, St John Ervine's Anthony and Anna (both 1935), Alec Coppel's I Killed the Count (1937), and Philip King's Without the Prince (1940). During the Second World War the theatre mainly housed non-stop revue with Phyllis Dixey, and in 1945 Worm's Eye View by R. F. Delderfield began a long run, returning after a short tour in 1947 for a further 1,745 performances. In 1950 Reluctant Heroes by Colin Morris was the first of a series of farces produced by Brian Rix that ran until the mid-1960s. Bryan Blackburn's musical Come Spy with Me (1966) was also co-presented by Rix. In 1969 Pyjama Tops, a comedy by Paul Raymond based on a French farce Moumou, began a run of 5½ years and prompted a sequel in the same style, Come into My Bed (1976) by André Launay. The Black African musical Ipi Tombi ran there from 1978 to 1980. In the 1980s the theatre was used for a time as a Museum of War, and in 1990 it staged a revival of Ayckbourn's Absurd Person Singular.