Palace Theatre

Stand still for a moment at Cambridge Circus. Traffic runs on every side. Buses grind up from Charing Cross Road, taxis swing in from Shaftesbury Avenue, and the pavement shakes faintly under your feet. Then look up. Above the noise rises a great wall of warm red brick and pale terracotta, with towers, arched windows and carved detail. It looks less like a theatre and more like a palace. That is fitting, because its history started with one man's large ambition.

The man was Richard D'Oyly Carte. In the late nineteenth century he was the most successful theatre producer in London. He brought Gilbert and Sullivan together, and their comic operas filled his Savoy Theatre night after night. But Carte wanted something more serious. He believed England deserved its own grand opera tradition, written in English by English composers. So he commissioned a new building here, on a corner site that was then being opened up by new streets.

He called it the Royal English Opera House. The architect was Thomas Edward Collcutt, and he gave Carte a building to match the dream. When you look at the front, notice the materials. Red brick sits against bands of buff terracotta, a moulded and fired clay that could be cast into decoration. Terracotta was popular in Victorian London. It resisted the soot of coal fires better than carved stone, and it kept its colour.

The opera house opened in 1891 with a single work. It was Ivanhoe, a romantic grand opera by Arthur Sullivan, based on the novel by Sir Walter Scott. Here is the first surprise. Sullivan was famous for light comedy, but he longed to be taken seriously. Ivanhoe was his chance. It ran for a long series of performances, which was impressive for a new opera. But Carte had no second English opera ready to follow it.

And so the dream ended quickly. Without new work to fill the stage, the house could not pay its way. Within a short time Carte sold the building. The grand opera house became the Palace Theatre of Varieties. This was a music hall, a very different world. Instead of serious opera, audiences now came for singers, comedians, acrobats, dancers and novelty acts, all on one evening's bill.

This change says a lot about London at the time. The city had a huge appetite for entertainment, but it preferred variety over solemn art. The Palace became one of the leading variety houses in the West End. Its stage welcomed international stars. Among them was the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova, who danced here early in the twentieth century and helped introduce London audiences to ballet as a popular art.

As the twentieth century went on, tastes changed again. Variety slowly gave way to musical theatre and plays. The Palace adapted. In the 1960s it was home to the original London production of The Sound of Music. Later, in the 1970s, Jesus Christ Superstar ran here for many years. The building that was planned for English opera had become a house for the modern musical.

In the 1980s the theatre passed into the hands of the composer Andrew Lloyd Webber. Soon afterwards it received the show that many Londoners still connect with this corner. In 1985, Les Misérables moved here from the Barbican. Early reviews were mixed. But audiences loved it. The show stayed at the Palace for nearly two decades before it moved to a smaller theatre down the road.

Here is the second surprise. Today the theatre is home to Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which opened here in 2016. To prepare, the building was carefully restored. Look closely at the front and around the entrances. You may notice small touches that connect to the wizarding world, mixed in with the Victorian decoration. They are easy to miss if you are rushing through the crowd.

Like many old London theatres, the Palace also has its ghost stories. Locals and theatre staff tell tales of figures seen in the empty auditorium, and of strange presences on the stairs. Some stories name famous performers from the past. These are legends, not history. But they say something real. People feel the weight of more than a century of performances in this building.

The building itself is protected. It is listed at Grade Two Star, a status given to buildings of special architectural interest in England. That protection matters at a corner like this. Around you, much of the West End has been rebuilt again and again. Yet this facade has kept its towers, its arches and its decorative clay much as Collcutt designed them.

Now take a moment to look at the setting. Cambridge Circus is a meeting point. To one side lies Soho, with its narrow streets, bars and restaurants. To another lie the bookshops and music shops of Charing Cross Road. Covent Garden is a short walk away. The theatre stands at the centre of all this, like a large red anchor for the neighbourhood.

Before you move on, look up one more time. Follow the line of the brick to the top of the towers, and notice how the evening light changes the colour of the terracotta. Listen to the city around you. Somewhere inside, a stage is being prepared for tonight's performance. A building planned for one kind of art has carried many others. And as you walk away into Soho or toward Covent Garden, the Palace will still be there behind you, holding the corner.