Sondheim Theatre

Stand on the pavement of Shaftesbury Avenue for a moment and listen. Black cabs hum past, buses sigh at the kerb, and somewhere behind you a street performer tunes a guitar. Then look up at the theatre in front of you. The front is cleaner and plainer than its neighbours, with broad glass and straight lines. That simple face tells a story of loss and recovery that most people walking past never notice.

This is the Sondheim Theatre, in the heart of London's West End, inside the City of Westminster. For most of its life it carried a different name. It opened in 1907 as the Queen's Theatre. It took its present name in 2019, in honour of Stephen Sondheim, the American composer and lyricist. His musicals changed what audiences expected from a song on a stage.

The original building came from W. G. R. Sprague, one of the busiest theatre architects of the Edwardian age, the years of King Edward the Seventh in the early twentieth century. Sprague designed many playhouses across London. Here he worked in an unusual way. He built the Queen's as a near-twin of another theatre on the same block, which opened a year earlier. Today that sister house is called the Gielgud. Walk a few steps along the avenue and you can compare the two.

And this is where the first surprise comes in. If the two theatres were twins, why do they look so different now? The answer is the Second World War. In 1940, during the Blitz — the German bombing campaign against London — a bomb struck the Queen's. The blast destroyed the front of the building and much of what stood behind it. The Gielgud survived with its ornate Edwardian face intact. The Queen's did not.

For many years the damaged theatre stood dark. London had more urgent things to rebuild, and the West End recovered slowly. The Queen's finally reopened in 1959. The architects kept what they could of Sprague's auditorium, but they gave the building a new, modern front. That is the clean glass and stone face you see today. So you are looking at two eras at once: a post-war exterior wrapped around an Edwardian heart.

Think about what that meant for audiences at the time. In the late 1950s, many Londoners still lived among bomb sites. A new theatre front on Shaftesbury Avenue was a public sign that ordinary life — nights out, music, laughter — had come back. Some people loved the modern look. Others missed the old decoration. Either way, the building became a marker of a city choosing to carry on.

Shaftesbury Avenue itself is worth a thought. The street was cut through crowded old neighbourhoods in the late nineteenth century, and theatres soon lined it. It became one of the main spines of London theatreland. Behind you and around the corner lie the narrow lanes of Soho, with restaurants, bars and late-night cafés. Just to the south sits Chinatown. The theatre stands right where these worlds meet.

Now to the show most people link with this address. In 2004, the musical Les Misérables moved here from the Palace Theatre nearby. The production, based on Victor Hugo's novel about poverty, revolution and mercy in nineteenth-century France, was already one of the longest-running musicals in the world. Here it continued for years, eight shows a week. For many visitors, this building and that barricade on stage are almost the same thing.

The second surprise is about the name change. In 2019 the theatre closed for a major refurbishment. Its owners, the Delfont Mackintosh group led by the producer Cameron Mackintosh, restored much of the interior. They also renamed it after Stephen Sondheim. Mackintosh had worked with Sondheim for decades and had produced his shows in London. Sondheim was still alive to see a West End theatre carry his name. He died two years later, in 2021.

It is worth knowing a little about the man on the sign. Sondheim wrote the lyrics for West Side Story when he was still young. Later he wrote both words and music for shows such as Sweeney Todd, Company and Into the Woods. His songs are famous for clever, complex lyrics and for characters who sound like real, conflicted people. There is a quiet irony here: his name hangs over a theatre long famous for a show he did not write.

If you go inside, notice the change of scale. The modern front gives way to a more traditional auditorium, with curved balconies rising above the stalls, the ground-floor seats. The refurbishment brought back warm colours and decorative detail. The space feels close rather than vast. Even from the upper levels, the stage seems near. This intimacy is part of Edwardian theatre design, when architects packed audiences tightly around the action.

Before and after a performance, the pavement here changes character. Crowds gather under the canopy, checking tickets and phones. Some people hum songs as they come out. Taxis queue, and the nearby pubs fill quickly. On a winter evening, the lights of the theatres along the avenue shine on wet tarmac. It is one of the most theatrical street scenes in the city, and the performance starts before anyone reaches a seat.

So take one more look before you move on. On one side stands a front built after the bombs fell. Behind it sits a room from 1907. Above it all hangs the name of a songwriter who reshaped musical theatre. As you walk away along Shaftesbury Avenue, glance at the Gielgud and picture its twin as it once was... and notice how much of London is built on repairs like this.