London Coliseum: The Globe on St Martin's Lane
Why is it significant?
Look up at the tower of the London Coliseum on St Martin's Lane, where a great globe sits on top like a planet balanced on a wedding cake. At night it glows above the rooftops, a beacon for anyone hurrying to a show.
Key Facts
| Place | London Coliseum: The Globe on St Martin's Lane |
|---|---|
| Address | St Martin's Lane, London WC2N 4ES, United Kingdom |
| Geo Coordinates | 51.51000, -0.12620 |
| Part of Walk | Curtain Up: London's West End Theatreland, from the Savoy to Covent Garden and Leicester Square |
| Generated | Generated |
Look up at the tower of the London Coliseum on St Martin's Lane, where a great globe sits on top like a planet balanced on a wedding cake. At night it glows above the rooftops, a beacon for anyone hurrying to a show.
The Coliseum opened in 1904, designed by Frank Matcham, the most prolific theatre architect of the age, for the impresario Oswald Stoll. Stoll wanted a people's palace of variety, with several shows a day, and Matcham gave him the largest theatre in London, with well over two thousand seats, and one of the first revolving stages in Britain, built so that horses and chariots could race on it.
On this stage you might have seen almost anything: the great French tragedian Sarah Bernhardt in her later years, acrobats, comedians, performing animals... and, from 1918, Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, bringing the dancers of the Russian avant-garde to London audiences who had come in for a variety bill. Variety and high art sat side by side, sometimes on the same night.
In 1968 the Sadler's Wells Opera moved in, and a few years later it became English National Opera, with a simple and still radical principle: opera sung in English, at prices that ordinary Londoners could afford. The building's vast auditorium, gilded and plushy, was made for exactly that kind of crowd.
And that is the thread of this whole walk. You started at the Savoy, where electric light first filled a theatre, and you have passed Restoration actresses, Victorian ghosts, a puppet called Punch and a murderer whose name millions of people have kept secret. In London the theatre has always been for everyone, from royal boxes to the cheap seats. Trafalgar Square and Charing Cross station are only a minute away down St Martin's Lane... and somewhere nearby, the curtain is about to go up.