Qualla: Playhouse Theatre

Playhouse Theatre: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Philip Halling, CC BY-SA 2.0. On 5 December 1905, the roof of Charing Cross railway station collapsed onto the building next door. The neighbour was a Victorian theatre called the Royal Avenue, then being rebuilt to new designs. Roof, girders, and a section of the station's western wall crashed through both buildings, killing three people inside the station and three workmen on the theatre site. The theatre that rose from that rubble - rebuilt, renamed, and reopened as The Playhouse on 28 January 1907 - is still standing on Northumberland Avenue today, just steps from Trafalgar Square. It has been a stage, a BBC recording studio, and is now a cabaret den.

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Image: Philip Halling | CC BY-SA 2.0

Playhouse Theatre: Shaw's Breakthrough

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. Before the disaster, the theatre had another life. Built by Sefton Henry Parry as the Royal Avenue, it opened in March 1882 with 1,200 seats and Jacques Offenbach's Madame Favart on its bill. For a decade it traded in comic opera and farce. Then in 1894 the tea heiress Annie Horn...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Playhouse Theatre: The Station Falls

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Martin Addison, CC BY-SA 2.0. Architects Blow and Billerey were halfway through rebuilding the theatre in late 1905 when Charing Cross's western wall failed. The collapse turned construction into catastrophe, but the work resumed and the new Playhouse - smaller now, with 679 seats - opened in January 1907 wit...

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Image: Martin Addison | CC BY-SA 2.0

Playhouse Theatre: When the Goon Show Lived Here

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Anthony O'Neil, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1951 the BBC took over the Playhouse and turned it into a recording studio. For twenty-five years, audiences sat where playgoers had sat and watched live recordings of The Goon Show, Hancock's Half Hour, and Steptoe and Son. The stage that had launched Shaw became a microphone...

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Image: Anthony O'Neil | CC BY-SA 2.0

Playhouse Theatre: Rescued, Sold, Rescued Again

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bill Peloquin, CC BY-SA 4.0. The impresario Robin Gonshaw saved it in 1987, restoring the 1907 interior with help from theatre consultant Iain Mackintosh. The next two decades read like a real-estate novel: in 1988 the novelist and politician Jeffrey Archer bought the Playhouse for just over GBP 1 million, t...

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Image: Bill Peloquin | CC BY-SA 4.0

Playhouse Theatre: Welcome to the Kit Kat Club

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Smitty1999, CC BY-SA 4.0. The COVID-19 pandemic shut down the Lloyd company's planned run of The Seagull with Emilia Clarke and A Doll's House with Jessica Chastain. While the West End sat dark, the Playhouse underwent the most radical reinvention in its history. When it reopened on 15 November 2021, the ...

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Image: Smitty1999 | CC BY-SA 4.0