Qualla: Royal Court Theatre

Royal Court Theatre: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Yekaterhina, CC BY-SA 3.0. In May 1956 an unknown twenty-six-year-old playwright named John Osborne saw his third full-length play go up at a small theatre on Sloane Square. The reviews were mixed. Some critics dismissed it. Then Kenneth Tynan wrote that he could not love anyone who did not want to see Look Back in Anger, and the cultural weather changed overnight. The Royal Court Theatre - red brick and Italianate stone, capacity 380 in its current configuration - had been a converted Nonconformist chapel, a Victorian vehicle for W. S. Gilbert's comedies, a cinema during wartime, and then, in 1956, suddenly the most important new-writing theatre in Britain. It has held the title, with some interruptions, for nearly seventy years.

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Image: Yekaterhina | CC BY-SA 3.0

Royal Court Theatre: Chapel to Theatre

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Burnley at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. The first theatre on Lower George Street, off Sloane Square, was the Ranelagh Chapel - a Nonconformist meeting house repurposed in 1870 as The New Chelsea Theatre. The actress Marie Litton took over as manager in 1871 and brought in the architect Walter Emden to remodel the inter...

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Image: Burnley at en.wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

Royal Court Theatre: The Angry Young Men

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kwh1050, CC BY-SA 4.0. Harley Granville-Barker managed it briefly in the early twentieth century, with George Bernard Shaw's plays in the repertory. It went dark as a theatre in 1932. From 1935 to 1940 it was a cinema. Then World War II bomb damage closed it altogether. In 1954, three theatre people - ...

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Image: Kwh1050 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Royal Court Theatre: What the Court Did Next

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Basher Eyre, CC BY-SA 2.0. Edward Bond's Saved opened in 1965, directed by William Gaskill - a play featuring the stoning of a baby in a pram that helped end stage censorship in Britain. Eugene Ionesco's Exit the King brought Alec Guinness to Sloane Square in 1963. Samuel Beckett's Not I premiered in 1973 ...

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Image: Basher Eyre | CC BY-SA 2.0

Royal Court Theatre: Floods and Lottery Money

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The Diamond Troupe, Public domain. Through all that, the building was falling apart. The stalls and understage flooded repeatedly through the twentieth century. Facilities for both audience and performers were poor. By 1995 closure looked likely. Then the National Lottery and Arts Council England came together wit...

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Image: The Diamond Troupe | Public domain

Royal Court Theatre: Difficult Conversations

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Martin Addison, CC BY-SA 2.0. Not every chapter has been clean. In 1987 Ken Loach's production of Perdition was withdrawn after protests and commissioned historical reviews. In 2009 Caryl Churchill's Seven Jewish Children drew sharp accusations of antisemitism from Jewish leaders and journalists, accusations ...

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Image: Martin Addison | CC BY-SA 2.0