Haymarket: Theatre Royal & His Majesty's
Why is it significant?
Halfway down Haymarket, stop between two theatres that stare at each other across the traffic. On one side, six tall columns of John Nash's portico stride right over the pavement. On the other, a grand Victorian front with a dome on the corner. The first is the Theatre Royal Haymarket.
Key Facts
| Place | Haymarket: Theatre Royal & His Majesty's |
|---|---|
| Address | Haymarket, London SW1Y 4HT, United Kingdom |
| Geo Coordinates | 51.50850, -0.13190 |
| Part of Walk | Curtain Up: London's West End Theatreland, from the Savoy to Covent Garden and Leicester Square |
| Generated | Generated |
Halfway down Haymarket, stop between two theatres that stare at each other across the traffic. On one side, six tall columns of John Nash's portico stride right over the pavement. On the other, a grand Victorian front with a dome on the corner.
The first is the Theatre Royal Haymarket. A little playhouse opened on this street in 1720, and its royal patent came about in the strangest way. In 1766 the actor and comic writer Samuel Foote was goaded into riding a notoriously wild horse during a visit to the Duke of York, was thrown, and lost a leg. The story goes that the embarrassed duke made amends by securing Foote a royal patent for his theatre. The present building opened in 1821, and its staff will tell you that a nineteenth-century manager, John Buckstone, has never quite left: his ghost is said to be seen in the wings and in his old dressing room.
Opposite stands His Majesty's Theatre. A theatre has stood here since 1705, when the architect and playwright John Vanbrugh opened the Queen's Theatre, and it became London's opera house. In 1711 George Frideric Handel's Rinaldo had its premiere on this site, the first Italian opera written specially for the London stage. The name changes with whoever is on the throne, Queen's, King's, Her Majesty's... and since the accession of Charles III it is His Majesty's once again.
The present building was put up in 1897 by the actor-manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree, who in 1904 started an acting school in its dome. It grew into RADA, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. And since 9 October 1986 the stage has belonged to Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera, with its falling chandelier and its masked man in the cellars.
A ghost on one side of the street and a phantom on the other, which seems fair for theatreland. Now walk back up to Panton Street, turn right, and follow it east to a leafy square full of cinemas, statues and ticket booths.