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The Lyric Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, London, W.1

Above - The Lyric Theatre during the run of 'Cabaret' in October 2006.

The Lyric Theatre opened on the 17th of December 1888 with a Comic Opera called 'Dorothy' by B.C. Stephenson which originally opened at the first Gaiety Theatre, then transferred to the Prince Of Wales Theatre, where it achieved 817 performances before transferring to the Lyric for this new Theatre's opening. The Lyric was only the second Theatre to be built fronted onto the newly constructed Shaftesbury Avenue, the first was the original Shaftesbury Theatre which opened two months earlier in October 1888. But the London Pavilion which opened in 1885 can lay claim to being the true first Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue because a large bulk of the building runs along it, however although it had entrances on that street, its main entrance was on Piccadilly Circus.

Left - Pre 1907 seating plan for the Lyric Theatre - Click to Enlarge.

Right - Programme for 'Othello' at the Lyric Theatre in 1897 - Click to see Entire Programme.

The Lyric Theatre forms part of a block which includes the Apollo Theatre and the Windmill Theatre, but the Lyric takes up most of the frontage of the block. The Lyric's stage door and dressing rooms are on Great Windmill Street, next to the Windmill's main entrance, and it used to have a Gallery entrance on Archer Street at the back of the Theatre. The Lyric is now one of four Theatres in a row on Shaftesbury Avenue; the others being the Apollo, Gielgud, and Queens.

Left - The auditorium and stage of the Lyric Theatre in 1889 - From 'London Theatres and Music Halls' by Dianna Howard - The original is at the British Museum.

The Lyric was designed by C. J. Phipps and built for Henry J. Leslie by Messrs Stephens and Bastow. Leslie financed the building of his new Theatre from the profits of 'Dorothy' from which he apparently made the huge sum at the time of £100,000. The Theatre's Freehold is now owned by the Theatres Trust.

The Lyric's Windmill Street Facade is interesting in that it is actually the remains of a house which once stood there. The house was built in 1766 by Dr William Hunter, who was an anatomist, partly as a home and partly as an anatomical theatre and museum. Internally the house was gutted to make way for the Lyric's dressing rooms but externally it is still much in its original form. The rear of the house was demolished so that the Lyric's stage could be built on the site. On the Windmill Street Facade there is a Blue Plaque to commemorate the original building.

Right - The Lyric Theatre's Windmill Street Facade showing the remains of the house that once stood there, now the Lyric's dressing room block and stage door entrance. M.L. 06.

The Lyric Theatre's partly cantilevered auditorium was built on four levels, Stalls and Pit, Dress Circle, Upper Circle, and Gallery, and had a capacity on opening of 1,306. Today the Gallery is called the Balcony and the Theatre seats a more modest 967. The stage at the Lyric was large for a playhouse with a width of 29' 6" and depth of 36'.

Right - Programme for 'The Gold Diggers' at the Lyric Theatre in 1926, which ran for 180 performances.

Left - Early postcard showing the Lyric and Apollo Theatres side by side in Shaftesbury Avenue.

The Theatre is unusual in that it still uses water to operate the iron curtain. Originally this was pumped from the Thames to most Theatres and Hotels around London's West End and used to hydraulically operate lifts and all manor of heavy machinery. Today the Lyric's Iron Curtain is operated via an electric pump but can also be operated manually by two people at a time, though it's a very labour intensive job, and slow too. The Lyric was also fitted with a large revolve which is still operable today, either by a huge and ancient electric rectifier or by hand.

When I worked at the Lyric in 1976 the lighting board was one of the early Rank Strand Console Desks (CD) (Shown Right). The cabinet was fashioned from an organ and it even had pedals and tabs to operate lighting groups. This CD board was the two preset version which made life much easier as the original version, used at Her Majesty's Theatre at the same time, had organ keys instead of presets. Although I worked there too in 1975, I was never able to fathom out how to operate the thing.

Right - The Lighting Console Desk at the Lyric Theatre in 1976. Photo M.L.

Our board at the Lyric also had a speed control which was like a large accelerator on a car. You had to push the pedal harder with your foot to create faster lighting changes. On matinees the electricity supply was always at a lower voltage than in the evenings so that you had to increase the speed to attain the same lighting fade times. The Console, situated at the back of the Dress Circle, in the bar conveniently, was connected to dimmer racks in the basement under the stage, and these consisted of huge racks of massive dimmers operated by a large motor and clutches. When doing a fast lighting cue you could sometimes hear the motor screaming under the stage from the Stalls. The tabs you can see in the picture above right were used to select which channels you wanted to move in the next lighting change, and groups of these could be selected at once by using stops which were to the right of the Console. When you pulled the stops out the tabs would jump down and the whole desk would thump and 'ding' like a pinball machine. It could take up to two minutes to set all the faders on the presets for the next cue so that rapid lighting changes were something of a challenge. Nowadays lighting is all done with computers and mostly at the touch of one button, and whilst this is far more efficient and versatile it certainly isn't anything like the adrenaline inducing operation of a Rank Strand Console Desk.

The Lyric's basement areas used to include an area which stretched right up to the underneath of the pavement of Shaftesbury Avenue and housed Crew Rooms, offices and other areas, and above were shops, but the whole section was sold off by the London Residue Body when the GLC was abolished and before the Freehold was given to the Theatre's Trust. This has made furthur expansion of the Theatre impossible, indeed it now has less space than it used to. Luckily the stage area was not owned by the GLC or that might have gone too when it was abolished.

Left - Programme for 'The Flashing Stream' at the Lyric Theatre in 1938 with Godfrey Tearle and Margaret Rawlings, which ran for 201 performances.

The Lyric Theatre has been home to a great many successful productions in its time and far too many to list here, but recent successes include 'Blood Brothers' in 1983, which then transferred to the Phoenix and is still there in 2006, 'Five Guys Named Mo' in 1990 which ran for five years, and 'Cabaret' which is doing very well in 2006.

Right - The Lyric Theatre stage door and Windmill Theatre entrance in June 1977. The CZ Motorcycle parked by The Lyric Theatre hoardings belonged to the late Sir Ralph Richardson who was also an avid BMW Motorcycle owner, he was appearing at the Lyric at the time, in 'The Kingfisher'. The other bike was mine. - Photo M.L. 1977.

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