By Alex Kingston · Monday 5th August 2019
London’s West End is a striking place, full of astounding history. Join me as I count down 30 of the most interesting facts about London theatre.
Record-breakers and long-runners
1. The Mousetrap is the longest-running play in the world. Agatha Christie’s whodunnit first opened on 25 November 1952 and has clocked up almost 30,000 performances.
2. When Les Misérables first opened in October 1985, critics panned it. Despite this, it became the West End’s longest-running musical, with the original production only recently closing on 13 July 2019.
3. The show with the most Olivier Awards is Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which racked up a grand total of nine awards in 2017.
4. Mamma Mia!, featuring the music of ABBA, is the most successful West End jukebox musical, to the extent that roughly 1 in 10 people across the whole of the UK have seen it.
5. The largest West End theatre is the Apollo Victoria, currently home to Wicked, which seats a grand total of 2,384 theatregoers.
Inside the world’s most famous shows
6. For The Phantom of the Opera, it takes a full 2 hours to apply the Phantom’s make-up before each show, and another 30 minutes to remove it afterwards.
7. Five different languages are spoken in The Lion King, among them Swahili and Zulu.
8. Over 232 puppets are used in The Lion King, including rod puppets, shadow puppets and full-sized puppets.
9. It took a total of 37,000 hours to build the jaw-dropping puppets and intricate masks in The Lion King.
10. The Woman in Black has only two cast members, and there is a reason: when it was first written in 1987, the theatre the playwright was writing for could only afford a maximum of four actors.
11. The hit comedy The Play That Goes Wrong was written in just 4 weeks, after which the actors rehearsed for a further 4 weeks.
12. When The Phantom of the Opera opened in 1986, Andrew Lloyd Webber was so nervous that he had to leave the theatre halfway through opening night.
13. The Witch in Wicked is named Elphaba as a play on the initials of L. Frank Baum (LFB), author of the original Wonderful Wizard of Oz, in which the character was never named.
A theatreland steeped in history
14. The Garrick Theatre opened in 1889 after a nightmarish build, when an underground river was discovered during excavation for the foundations.
15. Several venues, including the Palace Theatre and Her Majesty’s Theatre, were built (in whole or in part) around 150-200 years ago.
16. The Savoy Theatre opened in 1881 as the first public building in the world to be lit by electricity.
17. In 1800, at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, an assassination attempt was made on the life of King George III. There were no casualties, however, as both shots missed the King.
18. The Dominion Theatre stands on the former site of the Horse Shoe Brewery, where the London Beer Flood of 1814 killed eight people.
Ghosts, curses and superstitions
19. It is thought to be bad luck to say “Macbeth” in a theatre, thanks to many tales of actors uttering the name and then being knocked over by falling scenery or stabbed with real daggers.
20. The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, is said to be haunted by the ghost of Charles Macklin, a former West End actor - a tall, thin spectre with a nasty temper.
21. The Palace Theatre is said to be haunted by the ghost of an unknown ballerina, while the ghost of composer Ivor Novello is said to watch shows from the dress circle.
Curious corners of the West End
22. You could fit the entire Fortune Theatre, long-time home of The Woman in Black, onto the stage of the Dominion Theatre.
23. The Savoy Theatre sits next to The Savoy Hotel, so closely that the theatre’s stage is located directly beneath a swimming pool.
24. The Mischief Theatre trio behind The Play That Goes Wrong met at drama school, forming an undying friendship over their shared interests.
25. The “West End” is loosely defined as the area between Oxford Street, The Strand, Regent Street and Kingsway, though a number of West End venues actually sit outside those limits.
26. The Ambassador Theatre Group are the biggest players in the West End, with ten London theatres to their name, more than any other organisation.
27. Beloved actor Brian Blessed has boxed with the Dalai Lama, survived a plane crash, delivered a baby in Richmond Park, and remains the oldest man to have trekked to the North Pole.
The West End by numbers
28. London theatre took £765,800,051 in gross revenue in 2018, up 8.6% on 2017.
29. A total of 15,548,154 people attended West End theatre in 2018, up 3% on the year before.
30. West End actors are paid, on average, between £518 and £633 a week, often depending on the number of seats in the venue.
