Novello Theatre

Novello Theatre, formerly the Strand Theatre, West End theatre in Aldwych, London. It was built as the Waldorf Theatre by the American entrepreneurs Sam and Lee Shubert and was designed by W. G. R. Sprague, in a combination of Georgian and French classical Baroque styles. It opened on May 22, 1905; the opening season featured plays performed by Italian actress Eleonora Duse, and opera. The Waldorf became the Strand Theatre in 1909, four years after it had opened. (A previous theatre called the Strand had stood on the Strand itself, but closed in 1905 and was replaced by an underground station.) Performances at the theatre were twice threatened during wartime: in 1915 actor Fred Terry stepped out of role to reassure the audience during a zeppelin raid, before continuing with the play; and in 1940, during a performance of Shakespeare, Donald Wolfit's company searched for their costumes amid the rubble of their dressing rooms, hit in the Blitz, in order to go on with the show. Today, the auditorium seats 1,084.

Productions at the Strand included the London premiere of Anna Christie by Eugene O'Neill (1923); the musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum by Stephen Sondheim (1963); Not Now, Darling (1968), a farce by Ray Cooney; the long-running comedy No Sex Please-We're British (1971-1982), which later transferred to the Garrick; the world premiere of The Real Thing (1982) by Tom Stoppard; a revival of Cabaret (1986) starring Wayne Sleep; and Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing and Ivanov by Anton Chekhov (both 1989). In 1994 Imogen Stubbs appeared in St Joan by George Bernard Shaw and Patricia Hodge in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, before Buddy, the long-running musical based on the life of Buddy Holly, transferred from the Victoria Palace Theatre in 1995—in 2001 Buddy celebrated its 5,000th performance in the West End. In the 1980s and 1990s the Strand also hosted comedy performances by Barry Humphries and Victoria Wood. The Rat Pack: Live From Las Vegas, about Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., and Dean Martin, ran there from 2003 to 2005. The theatre was acquired by Delfont Mackintosh in 1991 and renamed the Novello Theatre in 2005.