Wyndham's Theatre

Wyndham's Theatre, West End theatre, situated on Charing Cross Road, London. It is named after the theatrical actor-manager Charles Wyndham for whom it was built. It was designed by theatrical architect W. G. R. Sprague with a Louis XVI-style interior and a classical façade in the French manner. The opening production in 1899 commemorated the famous actor-manager of the previous century, David Garrick. Between the wars, the theatre housed thrillers by Edgar Wallace, and among its post-war successes were The Love of Four Colonels (1951) by and starring Peter Ustinov, The Living Room (1953) by Graham Greene with Dorothy Tutin, and The Boy Friend (1954), a skit on the musical comedies of the 1920s starring Julie Andrews that ran for five years before transferring to Broadway. Later, a number of Theatre Workshop productions (see Joan Littlewood) transferred to the Wyndham's, including A Taste of Honey (1959) and Oh, What a Lovely War! (1963).

The 1960s also saw plays by Joe Orton (Entertaining Mr Sloane, 1964) and John Osborne (Inadmissable Evidence, 1965) at the Wyndham’s, and in 1965 Vanessa Redgrave appeared in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. In the following decade, the musicals Godspell (1972) and Side by Side by Sondheim (1976) proved popular, and John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson forged an outstanding partnership in No Man’s Land (1975) by Harold Pinter. In the 1980s the theatre was home to productions of Accidental Death of an Anarchist (1980) by Dario Fo, Passion Play (1984) by Peter Nichols, Serious Money (1987) by Caryl Churchill, and Decadence (1987) and Greek (1988) by Steven Berkoff.

In 1991 The Ride Down Mount Morgan by Arthur Miller had its world premiere at the Wyndham’s; in 1993 Diana Rigg, who had previously appeared in Ronald Millar’s Abelard and Heloïse (1970), returned in an Almeida production of Euripides’ Medea; and in 1995 Julie Christie starred in a revival of Pinter’s Old Times. The same year also saw a production of Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi by the acclaimed touring company Cheek by Jowl, and in 1996 Skylight by David Hare. In 2001 the comedy Art by Yasmina Reza, which opened at the Wyndham’s in 1996, celebrated five years in the West End, and also in 2001 Kenneth Branagh directed The Play What I Wrote.