Haymarket Theatre Royal

Haymarket Theatre Royal, West End theatre, situated in the Haymarket, London. There has been a theatre on the site since 1720, when John Potter built his “Little Theatre in the Hay” there. The unlicensed theatre had its first major success in 1729 with the Manchester playwright Samuel Johnson’s burlesque Hurlothrumbo, which ran for 30 nights. Later, satires by Henry Fielding performed at the theatre offended the authorities, contributing to the establishment of theatrical censorship in the Licensing Act of 1737. The Little Theatre in the Hay was itself forced to close under the Act.

English actor and dramatist Samuel Foote took control of the theatre in 1747. The building remained unlicensed until 1766 when the Duke of York used his influence to procure a summer licence for Foote. The theatre was therefore permitted to perform summer seasons of legitimate drama when the two Patent Theatres, Covent Garden and Drury Lane, were closed. It was also renamed, becoming the Theatre Royal.

In 1820 the theatre was completely rebuilt to a design by John Nash; its elegant Neo-Classical exterior has led to the theatre becoming one of the few to receive Grade I listed-building status. Under the management of the actor and dramatist John Buckstone (1853-1878) the Haymarket became London’s leading theatre. Buckstone, whose ghost is said still to haunt the site, staged some 200 successful productions, including 400 nights of Our American Cousin starring Edward Southern. Herbert Beerbohm Tree spent almost ten years as actor-manager of the Haymarket staging premieres of Oscar Wilde’s A Woman of No Importance (1893) and An Ideal Husband (1895) before moving to the newly built Her Majesty’s Theatre in 1897. The Haymarket auditorium and stage underwent further alterations, particularly in 1879 under the management of the Bancrofts who converted the stage to a picture-frame design, and again in 1905, when the ornate Louis XVI style decor was installed.

In 1944-1945 John Gielgud produced a bold repertory season at the Haymarket including The Circle, Love for Love, and Hamlet, and returned in 1962 to direct Ralph Richardson, Margaret Rutherford, and Anna Massey and Daniel Massey in School for Scandal; in 1960 Ross by Terence Rattigan, starring Alec Guinness, was a long-running success before transferring to Broadway, and Guinness later appeared in John Mortimer’s A Voyage Round My Father (1971). More recently, actors and directors who have worked at the Haymarket include Vanessa Redgrave (The Aspern Papers, 1984; Lady Windermere’s Fan, 2002), Derek Jacobi (Breaking the Code, 1986), Maggie Smith (A Delicate Balance, 1997), Trevor Nunn (Arcadia, 1994), Richard Eyre (The Invention of Love, 1998), and Peter Hall, who has directed a number of productions: Ibsen’s The Master Builder (1995); Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire (1997); The Royal Family (2001) starring Judi Dench, by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber, based on the American Barrymore acting dynasty; and Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan (2002). The theatre underwent a £1.3 million refurbishment in 1994 and seats approximately 900.