Garrick Theatre

The Garrick Theatre is a West End theatre, located in Charing Cross Road, in the City of Westminster. It is named after the stage actor David Garrick. The theatre was built for and owned by the dramatist W. S. Gilbert and originally leased to the actor-manager John Hare. It opened in 1889 with Hare's production of The Profligate, a new play by Arthur Wing Pinero; another Pinero play, The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith, was an early success, scandalising some audience members.

After Hare retired from management in 1895 another actor-manager, Arthur Bourchier, ran and starred at the Garrick for fifteen years. Bourchier and his wife, Violet Vanbrugh, presented plays by a range of contemporary authors including J. M. Barrie, Anthony Hope, Rutland Barrington, Henry Arthur Jones and Alfred Sutro; they staged and starred in Gilbert's last full-length play The Fairy's Dilemma (1904) and also in The Merchant of Venice (1905) and a stage version of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment (1911). After the First World War the theatre's fortunes ebbed. Some well-known performers appeared there including Edith Evans and Tallulah Bankhead, but by the 1930s there was an abortive plan to convert the building into a cinema. A long running success, Love on the Dole (1935–36), restored the profitability of the theatre.

During and after the Second World War the house became associated with another actor-manager, Jack Buchanan, who took over the management in 1944 and appeared in several productions. Farce played an important part in the theatre's life during these years, with pieces by Vernon Sylvaine starring Robertson Hare and Alfred Drayton. Revues in the period featured Beatrice Lillie and Dora Bryan and a particularly long-running show called La Plume de ma Tante ran for 750 performances in 1955–56.

In the 1960s, the farceur Brian Rix made the Garrick his London base and presented several long-running productions there. The theatre survived the threat of demolition to make way for a proposed development in Covent Garden, and in the 1970s stars appearing there included Alastair Sim and Patricia Routledge in a 1973 revival of Pinero's comedy Dandy Dick. The comedy No Sex Please, We're British transferred from the Strand Theatre and played at the Garrick from 1982 until 1986. As well as new plays the theatre staged revivals of plays by Bernard Shaw, Noël Coward and J. B. Priestley. Its presentations have varied from comedies and musicals to gay dramas including Bent to stand-up comedy from Frankie Howerd, to drag queens impersonating nuns. The theatre continues to present plays and musicals in the 21st century.