Theatre Royal, Drury Lane

Stand on Catherine Street for a moment and listen. Taxis idle at the kerb. Somewhere behind you, Covent Garden hums with voices and street music. In front of you rise pale columns under a deep portico, and beyond them glass doors throw warm light onto the pavement. This is the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. People have come to this patch of ground to watch plays for more than three and a half centuries.

That is the first thing to hold in your mind. No other site in London has been used as a theatre for so long. The building in front of you is not the original. It is the fourth theatre to stand here. Each one replaced the last after fire, decay, or ambition. Still, the thread of performance on this spot runs back to the 1660s, to the years just after the English monarchy returned.

To understand why, picture London in the early 1660s. During the Puritan years, public theatres had been closed. When King Charles the Second took the throne, he wanted plays again. He granted royal patents, a kind of official licence, to two managers. One of them, Thomas Killigrew, opened a playhouse here in 1663. For a long time, only patent theatres could legally stage serious spoken drama in London. That privilege gave this address its power.

The first audiences saw something new. Women were now allowed on the English stage, and some of the earliest actresses performed here. The most famous name connected to the early theatre is Nell Gwyn. She began, according to popular tradition, by selling oranges to the audience, and she later became an actress and a companion of the King. That first building did not last long. It burned in 1672, and a second theatre followed, often linked to the architect Christopher Wren.

In the eighteenth century, the theatre found its great star manager. David Garrick, the most celebrated actor of his age, ran the house for many years. He changed how Shakespeare was performed, with a more natural style that surprised audiences used to grand declamation. After Garrick, the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan took control. Sheridan wrote sharp comedies of London society, and he rebuilt the theatre on a much larger scale in the 1790s.

That third building was enormous, and it was meant to be fireproof. It was not. In 1809, it burned to the ground. Here is a story that most visitors never hear. As the theatre blazed, Sheridan is said to have sat in a nearby coffee house with a glass of wine. When friends asked how he could stay so calm, he reportedly joked that a man may surely drink a glass of wine by his own fireside. Whether he said it exactly that way, nobody can be sure.

The building you see now opened in 1812, designed by Benjamin Dean Wyatt. The portico over Catherine Street came a few years later, in the 1820s. The long colonnade along Russell Street, on the side, followed after that. So the front of the theatre is a little like a sentence written over several years. Look at the columns and the plain, calm stonework. This is the restrained classical style of late Georgian London, built to look dignified rather than flashy.

Inside, the theatre holds one of the most talked-about details in London. There are two grand staircases, often called the King's side and the Prince's side. Locals and guides like to say they exist because King George the Third and his son, the Prince of Wales, disliked each other so much they refused to meet. It is a good tale, and it is told everywhere. Treat it as a much-loved story rather than a proven fact.

A real royal drama did happen here. In 1800, in the earlier building, a man fired a pistol at King George the Third as he entered his box. The shot missed. The King, by most accounts, stayed for the performance. The attacker was later judged insane, and his case helped change English law on how the courts treat people who are not responsible for their actions. A night at the theatre became a turning point in legal history.

Now for the second surprise. Every year on Twelfth Night, the sixth of January, the company here shares a special cake. The custom comes from the will of an eighteenth century actor named Robert Baddeley. He had started life as a pastry cook. He left money so that actors at Drury Lane could enjoy cake and wine each year in his memory. The tradition is still kept, more than two centuries later, which makes it one of the oldest living rituals in British theatre.

Of course, a theatre this old has its ghosts. The best known is the Man in Grey, a figure in a long grey cloak and a powdered wig. Legend has it that he walks through the upper circle during the day. Some actors say a sighting brings luck to a new show. According to one popular tale, workers once found a skeleton bricked up in a wall. No one can confirm who he was, but the story never fades.

In the twentieth century, Drury Lane became a home for big musicals. American shows crossed the Atlantic to open here, and the London production of My Fair Lady played in this house in the late 1950s. Later came long runs of Miss Saigon and many others. Musical theatre suits the building. The stage is wide and deep, and the auditorium was made for spectacle. The theatre was restored in recent years and reopened in 2021, with its Georgian interiors carefully brought back.

So take one more look before you move on. Notice how the portico frames the doors, and how people still gather beneath it, as audiences have for centuries. Walk around the corner to Russell Street and follow the colonnade with your eyes. As you head back into Covent Garden, remember that this small rectangle of London has held laughter, fire, scandal, and applause since the 1660s. Tonight, someone will be on that stage again.