With more than 14 million theatre-goers last year, the West End is the stage capital of the world

As daylight fades into dusk, the West End of London ignores the night and just becomes brighter as it turns into Theatreland, amid thousands of twinkling coloured lights and sensational, vivid billboards.

London is quite simply the theatre capital of the world. It entertains far more people than even New York’s Broadway – more than 14 million tickets were sold last year worth more than £500m – a staggering statistic, especially during a savage recession.

In its purest sense, Theatreland’s importance to Britain is to entertain, uplift and inspire us. Economically, it is of huge importance to London and the nation. Its value in attracting tourists and their cash into Britain, plus the trade it brings to hotels, restaurants and transport in central London, is worth billions.

Even the VAT revenue in 2009 was worth £75m to the country. The Society of London Theatres, the theatre owners’ trade body, said takings for 2009 were up 7.6 per cent on a like-for-like basis on the previous year.

The new record total attendance of 14,257,922 is up 5.5 per cent on the same period in 2008. Last year was the seventh consecutive year in a row that new attendance and revenue records were set. Plays in particular had a spectacular year with total attendances of 3,637,714 – 26 per cent up on 2008 – while opera, dance and entertainments were up seven per cent. Musicals were two per cent down for the year, though this was primarily due to the early months of 2009 – by the final quarter, attendances were four per cent up and many shows announced record figures.

One of the boards outside Tkts – the famous discount ticket booth in Leicester Square The Criterion Theatre

London’s first playhouse was built at Shoreditch in 1576, just named The Theatre. When the lease on The Theatre ran out in 1597, its owner Richard Burbage transported its timber across the Thames and used it to build the first Globe theatre on the South Bank.

The Globe opened in 1599 with a company led by Burbage, who established himself as the first of London’s great actor/impresarios. Burbage was the first man to play Hamlet, King Lear and Othello.

The first West End venue opened in 1663 when the first of several theatres was opened on Drury Lane. This venue played host to the earliest West End stars such as Nell Gwyn and Charles Hart until it was destroyed by fire in 1672.

A new theatre, the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, was designed by Christopher Wren and opened on the same site in 1674. This second theatre survived for the next 120 years, during which time several others, such as the Theatre Royal Haymarket and the Theatre Royal Covent Garden (now the Royal Opera House) were built and the notion of West End theatre evolved.

Today’s West End began taking shape in the 19th century when many of the imposing and beautiful theatre buildings still standing today were erected and theatregoing became highly fashionable among the middle and upper classes. The backbone of the West End was finally put in place towards the end of the century when Shaftesbury Avenue was created and theatres were soon built along it.

Plenty of modern stars have appeared in London theatres in recent years – Hollywood actors seem to see it as a rite of passage. Nicole Kidman stripped naked on the stage of the Donmar Warehouse in 1998 in The Blue Room. Others have included Gwyneth Paltrow (Proof at the Donmar in 2002), David Schwimmer (Some Girls, Gielgud, 2005), Madonna (Up For Grabs, Wyndham’s, 2002), Holly Hunter (By The Bog Of Cats, Wyndham’s, 2004), Christian Slater (One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Gielgud 2004 and Garrick 2006, Swimming With Sharks, Vaudeville, 2007), Rob Lowe (A Few Good Men, Haymarket 2005), Matthew Perry (Sexual Perversity In Chicago, Comedy, 2003), Aaron Eckhart and Julia Stiles (Oleanna, Garrick, 2004), Luke Perry (When Harry Met Sally, Haymarket, 2004) and, in February 2008, Jeff Goldblum (Speed-the-Plow, Old Vic).

It’s impossible to predict what productions will last in the ever-changing West End, so if you fancy seeing a particular play, get to see it as soon as you can!

Walking the West

Theatreland is in the very heart of London, surrounded by the colourful history of our capital, often going back centuries. It’s an ideal area for a gentle walk, with the advantage that it is pretty flat and there’s plenty going on so it will never be dull.

There are many guided walks around Theatreland. The Society of London Theatre is running several on various Sundays starting on April 25. The other dates are May 16, 30, June 13, 27, July 11, 25, August 15 and October 24. The tours start at 2.30pm and cost £9; you can book at the Society of London Theatre Office, tel: 020 7557 6700 (10am to 6pm) or e-mail: walkingtours@solttma.co.uk.

‘Haunted Theatreland’ is one of the popular guided walks in London devised and led by Blue Badge Guide Colin Crosby, of Colin Crosby Heritage Tours. This walk starts outside the National Gallery, in Trafalgar Square. ‘Haunted Theatreland’ costs £6 per person or £4 if paying in advance. A tour is running on Saturday April 10 at 5pm. If you would like to book a place, contact Colin, tel: 0116 2611576, e-mail: colin@crosby heritage.co.uk.

If you would like to take a stroll independently, Choice has put on its walking shoes, packed its umbrella and tried out a route that takes in quite a few theatres and passes some pretty interesting places besides…

Our walk starts at Oxford Circus. Head east on the south side of Oxford Street then take the first right into Argyll Street. The London Palladium, currently featuring Sheila Hancock and Ian Lavender in Sister Act, is on your left. The Palladium is one of the biggest in London with seating for 2,298. The current building dates from 1910: before that it had been an aviary, a venue for Hengler’s Circus with an aquatic display ring, and even an ice rink.

As a theatre it is most famous for variety, and the Royal Variety Performance has been staged there since 1928. In the Thirties it was home to the Crazy Gang but most of us will probably remember it best for Sunday Night at the London Palladium, one of ITV’s most successful shows. It opened in 1955, hosted by Tommy Trinder and starring Gracie Fields and Guy Mitchell, and produced by the theatre managing director Val Parnell. It lit up our Sunday evenings until 1967 and featured all the biggest names in world entertainment over those 12 years. It made all of its comperes famous – Bruce Forsyth, Norman ‘swinging… dodgy’ Vaughan and Larry Grayson, not to mention those long-kicking legs of the Bluebell Girls – ah, those adolescent fantasies of the Sixties!

Continue down Argyll Street and turn left at its junction into Great Marlborough Street. If you remember all those cowboys rounding up cattle on the ads for Marlboro cigarettes, you could be forgiven for thinking it was an American brand. Actually it was named after Marlborough Street where the factory making them was once situated.

The Tudor wing of Liberty and Co is on your right. This famous shop was founded in 1875 but the Tudor wing was added in 1927. In its time Liberty revolutionised tastes in fashion and interior design. Past Liberty, turn right into Carnaby Street and get another flashback to the Sixties. You won’t find Twiggy and The Shrimp doing photo-shoots here now, but there are plenty of dedicated followers of fashion, although not quite the style the Kinks sang about in 1966.

Walk right through Carnaby Street until you reach a left turn into Broadwick Street. Walk along until you reach Lexington Street to your right. On the corner is the John Snow pub named after Dr John Snow who made a breakthrough in London’s battle with cholera in 1854. Previously it was thought the disease was air-bound. Snow found it was spread through water and that a pump on that junction was the source of an outbreak. He simply disabled the pump and the outbreak ceased, proving his theory. A replica of the pump has been erected a further down the street at the junction with Poland Street. It still has no handle.

Take the right turn into Lexington Street and cross Brewer Street into Great Windmill Street past the  Windmill Theatre down to Shaftesbury Avenue. This is a fairly seedy part of Soho but the theatre was once one of the most famous in the world. Its non-stop revue with risqué nude tableaux entertained hundreds of thousands of servicemen during the Second World War. Those naughty shows of the war years seem very innocent now as the theatre has gone through many incarnations, as a strip club, erotic revue theatre and now a lap and table-dancing club.

Turn left at the bottom of the street into Shaftesbury Avenue, the main artery of Theatreland that connects Soho and Covent Garden. You will pass four major theatres on your left – the Lyric, Apollo, Geilgud and Queen’s.

The Lyric dates from 1886 and features the façade of the house of Dr William Hunter the noted 18th-century anatomist. Dr Hunter lived in the building, which also housed his dissection theatre and library.

The Apollo next door is a mainly art nouveau design with fabulous interior decoration.

The Gielgud was called the Globe from 1909 until 1994 when Shakespeare’s Globe opened on Bankside and it was renamed in honour of Sir John Gielgud, one of the 20th century’s great actors. The theatre has an impressive Portland Stone tower and stone dome. A German bomber did for the original Queen’s Theatre in 1940. It mirrored the Gielgud but was rebuilt in 1957 in a style typical of that era of austerity.

Further along Shaftesbury Avenue on Cambridge Circus, at the junction with Charing Cross Road, is the Palace Theatre.  This was once a variety theatre and an opera house; its ambition is embodied in the inscription carved into the stone above the stage door: “The world’s greatest artistes have passed and will pass through these doors.”

Cross the circus and continue along Shaftesbury Avenue. Turn right into Earlham Street then walk down to Seven Dials and the Cambridge Theatre, which dates from 1930. Seven Dials was once one of the most notorious, crime and alcohol-infested slums in London. Now it is full of little shops and restaurants .

Go Across the Seven Dials and walk down Shorts Gardens until you get to Drury Lane, then turn right into the lane and the New London Theatre is on your left. Cats was staged here for 21 years, then a record, now eclipsed by the 24 years of Les Misérables. The theatre is built on the site of  the Great Mogul 17th-century inn and the old Winter Garden Theatre; it was rebuilt in 1971.

Walk down Drury Lane and turn right into Russell Street. Here you will find the Theatre Museum, which houses the world’s largest collection of material relating to performance. There are interactive exhibitions on the British stage and its stars from Shakespeare’s time

to the present, stage models, costumes, paintings, prints and audio-visual displays, with reconstructions of early theatres including the 1614 Globe.

Turn left into Catherine Street – the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, is on the left. There has been a theatre on this site since 1663. The King’s Company performed here and the second theatre was designed for them by Sir Christopher Wren in 1674. Robert Adam designed a new building in 1775, then there was another designed by Henry Holland. That burned down and was rebuilt in 1809. The auditorium was rebuilt in 1922. Currently it is staging Oliver! with Griff Rhys Jones as Fagin until June.

Walk down to the Aldwych then turn right and continue into the Strand. Across the road on your left is the Savoy Theatre, with a beautiful art deco interior. The nearby Savoy Hotel is currently closed for a £100m refit; it’s due to reopen this year. Another neighbour is Simpson’s-in-the-Strand, one of London’s landmark restaurants that has been offering classic British dishes to its patrons for more than 170 years.

Originally opened in 1828 as a chess club and coffee house – The Grand Cigar Divan – Simpson’s soon became known as the ‘home of chess’, attracting such luminaries as Howard Staunton, the first English world chess champion. It was to avoid disturbing the chess games in progress that the idea of placing large joints of meat on silver-domed trolleys and wheeling them to guests’ tables first came into being, a practice Simpson’s continues today. Famous guests have included Vincent Van Gogh, Charles Dickens, George Bernard Shaw, Benjamin Disraeli, William Gladstone… and Sherlock Holmes.

Turn right into Exeter Street and follow it round to the right, then turn left into Wellington Street. The Novello Theatre is opposite and the Lyceum on the left featuring The Lion King. Once a Mecca dance hall, it was reopened as a theatre in 1991.

Turn left into Tavistock Street. On the left is the famous Charles H Fox professional makeup shop with its wonderful window displays – a far cry from mere greasepaint.

Turn right into Tavistock Court and walk through to Covent Garden; turn right and walk along Culverhay then left into Bow Street. Opposite is the Fortune Theatre and further up on the left is the Royal Opera House. The Fortune has a notable art deco interior; the Royal Opera House is magnificent in every respect following its 1999 restoration.

Turn left into Floral Street then left down James Street back to Covent Garden Market. Walk through the market, where you will almost certainly see lots of street entertainment. On our walk we enjoyed a few minutes of an aria sung by an excellent busking soprano.

At the other end of the market across the piazza is St Pauls’s, the Actors’ Church. It was designed by Inigo Jones and was consecrated in 1633. If you need a rest, the churchyard is peaceful, especially compared with the jugglers, mime artists and fire-eaters you will encounter in the piazza.

Take the street to the right of the church, New Row, until you get to St Martin’s Lane. Go over the road and take St Martin’s Court, a pedestrian cut-through. If you take the alley on the right, you will walk past the stage doors of the Noel Coward on the right and Wyndham’s on the left. These must be two of the most attractive stage doors in Theatreland.

Follow the alley round and you will emerge on to Charing Cross Road next to the Wyndham’s.

Turn left along Charing Cross Road past the theatre and then left again into Cecil Street. Turn right into St Martin’s Lane. The Duke of York’s is on the right and the Coliseum on the left further down.

Next to the Duke of York’s is the Salisbury pub, one of the finest examples of mahogany and cut glass in London. The Coliseum is London’s largest theatre with 2358 seats.

Above top: The Tudor wing of Liberty at the end of Argyll Street. Above: Magnificent sculpture of the Horses of Helios

Cross William IV street into St Martin’s Place – St Martin in the Fields Church is on the left. Continue until you reach Trafalgar Square, bear right, cross the road and walk in front of the National Gallery across the north of the square. The road in front of you is Pall Mall East; walk along here and then bear right into Haymarket. The Theatre Royal Haymarket is on the right. This is a jewel in a well-bejewelled crown. Parts of John Nash’s 1821 exterior still exist, with the Louis XVI interior from 1904 completely stunning.

Walk past Orange Street then take the next right, which is Panton Street, across Oxendon Street and Whittington Street and into Leicester Square. Here you will find the Tkt hut on left. This is the famous discounted late ticket outlet for the London Society of Theatre.

Walk left round the square past the Odeon – site of hundreds of cinema premieres. The day we were there, it was the world premiere of Alice In Wonderland.

Turn left back across the top of the square and into Swiss Court, then Coventry Street.

On the left is a magnificent fountain statue of the Horses of Helios sculpted by Rudy Weller in 1992, then the Criterion Theatre dating from 1873. London icon Eros moved from the centre of the circus is now situated in front of the Criterion.

Across the circus is the Regent Palace Hotel, built in 1914 for T Lyons and Co Ltd on Crown land and opened on Wednesday May 16 1915. At this time, it was the largest hotel in Europe with 1028 bedrooms. It was launched with a full-page ad on the front page of the Daily Mail.

And at Piccadilly Circus, the traditional centre-point of London, our walk ends.

Where to get your tickets

Half of the 14.2 million people who saw a London show in 2009 got a discount on their ticket, often paying half price.

The only time you should pay full price is if you want to see a specific show on a specific date and can’t be flexible. If there are a few shows you would like to see but you don’t mind which one and you can go to the West End on spec you shouldn’t need to pay more than half price.

There are many discount ticket booths around the West End but the most famous one is the only truly official one run by the theatre owners’ trade organisation in Leicester Square. It used to be a wooden hut when it started in 1980, now it is the purpose built clocktower booth complete with electronic boards showing the latest ticket deals and now called Tkts.

At the moment you have to turn up to the booth in person to snap up the bargains as the tickets are released right up to 7pm on the day of performance. Discounted tickets are now also offered for performances over the next seven days. Later this year the Tkts website www.tkts.co.uk, which at present just gives details of current bargains, will allow you to buy them on-line and avoid the queue in Leicester Square or at their other outlet in the Brent Cross Shopping Centre.

Show and Stay Theatre Breaks offer an on-line service at www.show-and-stay.co.uk or by phone, tel: 0800 0832 841.

Local travel agents and coach operators are worth checking and the Coach Tourism Council has a new website to help you find coach holidays of all kinds, including theatre breaks: www.findacoachholiday.com.

The Tkts booth in Leicester Square is open Monday to Saturday 10am to 7pm and Sunday 12noon to 3pm, and from Monday to Saturday 10am to 7pm and Sunday from 12noon to 6pm at the Brent Cross Shopping Centre  You can pay for your tickets by cash (£ Sterling or Euros), credit card or debit card (Mastercard, Visa, Switch, Maestro or Solo) or by Theatre Tokens (which can also be purchased at Tkts). The Tkts ticket booth at Brent Cross accepts credit and debit cards and Theatre Tokens only.

Theatre Tokens are available in £5, £10 and £20 denominations and can be bought online at: www.theatretokens.com, by telephone: Tokenline on 0870 164 8800, or in person at participating theatres and a range of retail outlets including selected branches of WHSmith, Waterstone’s, Borders and Books etc. A full list of participating theatres can be found at: www.theatretokens.com.