The Lyric Theatre is a West End theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue in the City of Westminster. It was built for the producer Henry Leslie, who financed it from the profits of the light opera hit, Dorothy, which he transferred from its original venue to open the new theatre on 17 December 1888.
Under Leslie and his early successors the house specialised in musical theatre, and that tradition has continued intermittently throughout the theatre's existence. Musical productions in the theatre's first four decades included The Mountebanks (1892), His Excellency (1894), The Duchess of Dantzig (1903), The Chocolate Soldier (1910) and Lilac Time (1922). Later musical shows included Irma La Douce (1958), Robert and Elizabeth (1964), John, Paul, George, Ringo ... and Bert (1974), Blood Brothers (1983), Five Guys Named Moe (1990) and Thriller – Live (2009).
Many non-musical productions have been staged at the Lyric, from Shakespeare to O'Neill and Strindberg, as well as new pieces by Noël Coward, Terence Rattigan, Alan Ayckbourn, Alan Bennett and others. Stars appearing at the theatre included, in the early years, Marie Tempest, Johnston Forbes-Robertson, Eleonora Duse, Ellen Terry and Tallulah Bankhead, and in the mid-20th-century Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson and Vivien Leigh. More recently Alec Guinness, Joan Plowright, Glenda Jackson, John Malkovich, Woody Harrelson and Ian McKellen have starred.
History In a 2017 survey of London's theatres, Michael Coveney observes that the 1880s marked the beginning of "a building boom … that signals the true making of the West End".Coveney, p. 11 The Lyric was one of twelve new or wholly rebuilt theatres of that decade. It was the second theatre to be constructed in Shaftesbury Avenue and is the oldest still surviving. It was commissioned by the producer Henry Leslie with profits from the Alfred Cellier and B. C. Stephenson hit, Dorothy; Leslie was said to have made £100,000 from the show.Mander and Mitchenson, p. 111 The architect was C. J. Phipps, who also designed the Savoy, Lyceum and Her Majesty's theatres.Maguire, Hugh. "Phipps, Charles John (1835–1897), architect" , Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004. Retrieved 15 July 2020
The theatre is on four levels, and originally had a capacity of 1,306, later reduced to about 900. A contemporary description of the new theatre said, "The façade is of the Renaissance style in red brick and Portland stone, divided in the centre and two wings, each surmounted with a high pitched gable with recessed arcades" and "The frame of the proscenium is of brown and white alabaster: the sides of the stalls and pit are lined with walnut and sycamore panelling, with handsome carved mouldings".Quoted in Mander and Mitchenson (1963), p. 111 The theatre retains many of its original features, including an original 1767 house front, incorporated into the rear of the building, the former house and museum of Sir William Hunter.
The theatre opened on 17 December 1888 with the 817th performance of Dorothy, transferred from the Prince of Wales Theatre."The Lyric Theatre", The Era, 15 December 1888, p. 10 The piece starred Marie Tempest in the title role, with Amy Augarde, Florence Perry and Hayden Coffin."London Theatres", The Era, 22 December 1888, p. 14 In a short speech after the performance Leslie told the audience he hoped "to follow the plan of the Paris Opéra-Comique in producing works by native composers". Dorothy was followed in April 1889 by Doris, by the same author and composer, which failed to emulate its predecessor's record-breaking success and closed after a modest run of 202 performances.Mander and Mitchenson (1963), p. 112 Leslie's third offering, The Red Hussar by Henry Pottinger Stephens and Edward Solomon, ran for 175 performances from November 1889, after which Leslie gave up the Lyric. Horace Sedger became the licensee, manager and sole lessee, at the then enormous rent of £6,500 a year.Sheppard, F. H. W. (ed). "Shaftesbury Avenue" , Survey of London: Volumes 31 and 32, St James Westminster, Part 2, (1963), pp. 68–84. British History Online. Retrieved 12 July 2020
1890s
Sedger had an early success with his production of Edmond Audran's La cigale, in an English adaptation by F. C. Burnand with additional music by Ivan Caryll; it ran for 423 performances from October 1890.Gaye, p. 1530. Apart from a short season by the celebrated Italian actress Eleonora Duse in her first appearance in Britain,"Signora Duse at the Lyric Theatre" , The West Australian, 14 August 1893, p. 6. Sedger continued with musical works: The Mountebanks by W. S. Gilbert and Alfred Cellier (1892),Stedman, p. 285. Incognita (1892), an adaptation of Charles Lecocq's Le coeur et la main;Gänzl and Lamb, p. 394. The Magic Opal (1893) by Arthur Law and Isaac Albéniz;Clark, p. 85. The Golden Web (1893) by Stephenson, Frederick Corder and Arthur Thomas;"The Golden Web", The Era, 11 February 1893, p. 7. and Little Christopher Columbus (1893) by G. R. Sims, Cecil Raleigh and Caryll."Little Christopher Columbus", The Daily News, 11 October 1893, p. 6. Some of these were critical and artistic successes, but overall they lost money, and Sedger went bankrupt."Horace Sedger's Affairs", The Era, 14 June 1896, p. 6.
In 1894 George Edwardes produced His Excellency, a comic opera with a libretto by Gilbert and music by F. Osmond Carr. It closed after 162 performances, victim of an influenza epidemic that kept audiences away from theatres.Stedman, pp. 302–303. William Greet then took the theatre, presenting The Sign of the Cross, written by and starring Wilson Barrett. This play, about a Roman patrician converted to Christianity by his love for a Christian girl, brought people to the Lyric who had never before entered a theatre,Bergan, pp. 91–94. and it ran for 435 performances from January 1896.Gaye, p. 1538. Greet and Barrett followed this with the latter's Daughters of Babylon, co-starring Maud Jeffries; among the junior members of the enormous cast was the young Constance Collier."The London Theatres", The Era, 13 February 1897, p. 11. In 1897 and 1898 two French actresses played seasons at the Lyric, first Gabrielle Réjane and then Sarah Bernhardt. For the rest of the 1890s musical pieces returned: Little Miss Nobody by Harry Graham with music by Arthur E. Godfrey and Landon Ronald (1898), L'amour mouille by Louis Varney (1899), and most successful, Florodora (1899), starring Evie Greene, which ran for 455 performances and was also a hit in New York.Gänzl and Lamb, p. 86.
1900–1914
In 1902 Johnston Forbes-Robertson starred in a season; his repertory included Othello and Hamlet, with Gertrude Elliott as his co-star. His Hamlet was described in the press as "the most refined and beautiful embodiment of Hamlet vouchsafed to our generation","Stageland", The Clarion, 11 July 1902, p. 3 and "a revelation"."The Playhouses", The Illustrated London News, 12 July 1902, p. 48 Max Beerbohm said, "He shows us, for the first time, Hamlet as a quite definite and intelligible being".Beerbohm, Max. "Hamlet and the Hedonists", The Saturday Review, 12 July 1902, p. 43
Musical comedy returned to the Lyric at the end of Forbes-Robertson's season, with The Medal and the Maid (1903), by Owen Hall and Sidney Jones, with Ada Reeve and Ruth Vincent, and The Duchess of Dantzig (1903), by Henry Hamilton and Caryll, with Evie Greene and Courtice Pounds."The Pictorial Programme", The Play Pictorial, September 1903, p. xii The Talk of the Town (1904) by Seymour Hicks and several composers, starred Agnes Fraser, her husband Walter Passmore, and Henry Lytton."The Talk of the Town", The Play Pictorial, November 1904, pp. 105, 108 and 113 It was followed by The Blue Moon, with music by Howard Talbot and Paul Rubens, in which Florence Smithson made her London debut.Mander and Mitchenson (1963), p. 113 From 1906 to 1910 Lewis Waller was based at the Lyric, in plays ranging from Shakespeare to romantic costume drama and classic comedy in The Rivals with Kate Cutler as Lydia and Lottie Venne as Mrs Malaprop."Drama of the Month", The Playgoer and Society Illustrated, April 1910, p. 3
In 1910 the Lyric presented The Chocolate Soldier, a musical version of Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man, with music by Oscar Straus; Shaw detested the piece and called it "that degradation of a decent comedy into a dirty farce",Holroyd, p. 306 but the public liked it, and it ran for 500 performances. Philip Michael Faraday, co-producer of this success, became sole director of the Lyric in 1911 and presented Nightbirds (an adaptation of Die Fledermaus, 1912), The Five Frankforters (described as a "Viennese banking comedy", 1912), The Girl in the Taxi (1912), The Girl Who Didn't (1913), and Mamzelle Tralala (1914)."Theatres", The Times, 29 April 1912, p. 12; and 12 February 1915, p. 3
1914–1929
William Greet was succeeded as lessee by Edward Engelbach in 1914. For a while, musical productions were not seen at the Lyric, and non-musical drama prevailed, including On Trial, an unusual melodrama that opened with the end of the story and worked backwards to the beginning.Croom-Johnson, A. "The Drama During War-Time", The Review of Reviews, August 1915, p. 165 It had a satisfactory run of 174 performances.Mander and Mitchenson (1963), p. 114 Romance, starring Doris Keane and Owen Nares, transferred from the Duke of York's Theatre to the Lyric, where it finished its run of 1,049 performances.Gaye, p. 1537 Keane then starred in the comedy Roxana (1918); the reviews were excellent. In 1919 she played Juliet opposite the Romeo of her husband, Basil Sydney; this time the reviews were dreadful. The Nurse, played by Ellen Terry, was seen as the saving grace of the production."Romeo and Juliet at the Lyric", The Athenaeum, 25 April 1919, pp. 234–234; "Doris Keane's Juliet", The New York Times, 18 May 1919, p. 2; "Romeo and Juliet Revived", The Graphic, 19 April 1919, p. 28; and "Romeo and Juliet", The Pall Mall Gazette, 14 April 1919, p. 9
Musical comedy resumed its place at the Lyric in the early 1920s. Whirled into Happiness (1922), a musical farce with music by Robert Stolz and words by Harry Graham, had a run of 244 performances; Lilac Time, with Courtice Pounds in the lead as Franz Schubert, opened in December 1922 and had 626 performances.Gaye, p. 1534 The Street Singer, by Frederick Lonsdale, with music by Harold Fraser-Simson, starring Phyllis Dare and Harry Welchman, ran for 360 performances from June 1924.
Non-musical plays dominated the Lyric's programmes in the rest of the 1920s. The theatre historians Mander and Mitchenson write that in 1926 and 1927 two names became closely associated with the theatre: "Three plays by Avery Hopwood had outstanding runs: The Best People, written in collaboration with David Grey (1926), 309 performances; The Gold Diggers (1926), 180 performances; and The Garden of Eden (1927), 232 performances". The last two featured the actress Tallulah Bankhead, then a considerable box-office draw among the "bright young things" of the 1920s. She appeared again at the Lyric in Her Cardboard Lover (1928) and Let Us Be Gay (1929).
1930–1945 From 1930 to the Second World War the Lyric staged a succession of non-musical plays. Those of the early 1930s included Eugene O'Neill's six-hour-long Strange Interlude (1931);"Lyric Theatre", The Times, 4 February 1931, p. 10 Dodie Smith's Autumn Crocus (1931), with Fay Compton, Martita Hunt and Jessica Tandy, which ran for 317 performances;"Lyric Theatre", The Times, 7 April 1931, p. 8; and Gaye, p. 1528 J. B. Priestley's Dangerous Corner (1932) with Flora Robson;"Dangerous Corner", The Times, 13 August 1932, p. 6 Rose Franken's Another Language (1932) with Edna Best and Herbert Marshall; and Rachel Crothers's When Ladies Meet (1933).