About the Apollo Victoria Theatre

The building was designed for films and variety. Ernest Wamsley Lewis and William Edward Trent designed it as the New Victoria Cinema, it opened on 15 October 1930, and a Compton organ played between the pictures.

Look at the walls and ceiling when you go in. Hidden lighting, scallop shells and columns give the interior its nautical Art Deco look, and when it opened, a newsreel described it as "a fairy cavern under the sea or a mermaid's dream of Heaven". It's Grade II* listed, which is why the decoration survived the building's later changes.

The cinema years also explain the rest of it: the width, the gentle rise at the front of the Stalls, the seats lining up behind one another, and the absence of Boxes.

From cinema to theatre

It closed in 1976 and came back as a theatre in 1981, opening with a Shirley Bassey concert.

Notable past productions

• The Sound of Music (1981 to 1982), from the year it reopened as a theatre
• Starlight Express (1984 to 2002), 7,406 performances, skated on a track built out through the auditorium
• Bombay Dreams (2002 to 2004)
• Saturday Night Fever (2004 to 2006)

Wicked opened here on 27 September 2006 and has played here ever since.

Other venues of similar size

• Dominion Theatre, 2,067 seats, and like the Apollo Victoria it has only two levels, on Tottenham Court Road
• London Palladium, 2,292 seats over three levels, on Argyll Street