Peacock Theatre
Sections:
The Houdini Experience at the Peacock Theatre, London
The Peacock Theatre is located on Portugal Street, London, within short walking distance of Holborn tube station. It has a seating capacity of 1,037. Please visit the event page to book The Houdini Experience Tickets.
Theatre build date:
1960
History:
Theatres have stood on the site of the Peacock Theatre since the seventeenth century when, in 1660, a Mrs Hughes became the first credited woman to perform on the London stage. In 1809 the old theatre, like so many London playhouses, was destroyed by fire. A new venue wasn’t built on the site until almost a hundred years later, eventually opening in 1911 as the London Opera House. Unsuccessful in trying to poach custom from the well established and popular Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, the immense 2,660 seat venue was renamed the National Theatre of England shortly afterwards.
In 1916, the theatre was bought by theatre manager Sir Oswald Stoll in 1916 and became the successful Stoll Theatre, which played host to Kismet (1947), Joan of Arc at the Stake starring Ingrid Bergman (1954) and a triumphant return to the original operatic form of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess (1952). The Stoll Theatre closed in 1957 and was demolished.
The current building, primarily an office block, was built in 1960 with a Cinerama theatre space in the basement. The theatre screened such films as Ben Hur and Mutiny on the Bounty, but only had two major theatre successes, the controversial Oh! Calcutta! (1970) and early jukebox musical Bubbling Brown Sugar (1977). The theatre found a use as the studio for the long running television programme This Is Your Life, but was bought by the London School of Economics in the 1980’s for use as a lecture hall and was renamed the Peacock Theatre. In 1998, the Sadler Wells company began using the theatre as a dance venue in the evenings and has found great success in doing so. To this day, the Peacock Theatre is used for lectures by day, and innovative dance performances by night.
Hauntings:
A young woman, believed to have been an actress from one of the previous theatre buildings, has been seen regularly in the stalls.
Previously called:
The Royalty Theatre
Contact Details
Peacock Theatre
Portugal Street
London
WC2A 2HT
For all ticket enquiries, call 020 7492 9968
Map
Facilities
Theatre capacity:
1037
Theatre layout:
The seating in the Peacock Theatre is arranged on two levels, the large stalls section with a small, nine-row circle above it.
Because the theatre is so narrow, the curvature of the seats is quite extreme, and the first and last two seats in each row may suffer from slight sideline restrictions in both sections. The circle is split between rows D and E by an end-to-end aisle, so the view from row E and row A may be obscured by a handrail for shorter theatregoers.
The circle overhangs the stalls up to row N, but it is sufficiently high that it obscures no views from the stalls at all.
Air conditioned:
Yes
