Cambridge Theatre

Cambridge Theatre, West End theatre, situated at Seven Dials, London. The Cambridge, which opened in 1930, is one of the younger theatres in the West End and was built in a modern style, using concrete and steel. Its opening production was Charlot’s Masquerade starring Beatrice Lillie and it played host to a season by the Comédie-Française in 1934. Since the war, the Cambridge has housed a wide variety of productions such as William Douglas Home’s comedy The Reluctant Débutante (1955), Billy Liar (1960), Half a Sixpence (1963) starring Tommy Steel, a National Theatre production of Hedda Gabler (1970) directed by Ingmar Bergman, Chekhov’s Three Sisters (1976) directed by Jonathan Miller, and the musical Chicago (1979). The theatre was dark for much of the 1980s apart from a failed attempt to turn it into a venue for magic shows. It reopened in 1987 after extensive refurbishment and since then has housed mostly musicals, including Return to the Forbidden Planet (1989), Grease (1996), and The Beautiful Game (2000) by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Ben Elton. The Cambridge seats approximately 1300 and is managed by Really Useful Theatres.