Phoenix Theatre

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Phoenix Theatre, London, on the corner of Charing Cross Road and Phoenix Street, from which it takes its name. A three-tier house with a capacity of 1,012, it opened in 1930 with Coward's Private Lives. Later successes by Coward were To-Night at 8.30 (1936) and Quadrille (1952). In its early years the Phoenix had a chequered history, but it later housed a number of important plays, including Saint-Denis's productions of Bulgakov's The White Guard and of Twelfth Night (1938); Gielgud's revivals of Congreve's Love for Love (1943) and of The Winter's Tale (1951) and Much Ado about Nothing (1952); revivals of Vanbrugh's The Relapse (1948), from the Lyric, Hammersmith, and Farquhar's The Beaux’ Stratagem (1949); and Hamlet (1955) with Paul Scofield. Notable modern plays included Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth (1945) with Vivien Leigh, Rattigan's Playbill (1948), and Osborne's Luther with Albert Finney (1961) transferred from the Royal Court. In 1965 Gielgud appeared in his own version of Chekhov's Ivanov, and in 1968 a musical dramatization of four of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales started a long run. Later productions were Tom Stoppard's Night and Day (1978), Fo's Trumpets and Raspberries (1984), Derek Jacobi's Richard II (in 1988) and Richard III (in 1989), and Peter Hall's production of The Merchant of Venice, also in 1989, with Dustin Hoffman.