More About the Dominion Theatre

The Dominion opened on 3 October 1929 with a musical comedy called Follow Through, which ran 148 performances and flopped. It was built to do two jobs: musicals first, films second. Films arrived nine months after that. The very first was a silent picture from 1925, The Phantom of the Opera, given a British premiere here in July 1930 with a soundtrack laid over it.

The films then took over for fifty years. It became a Gaumont-British cinema and later a Rank one, and it stayed one of London's big premiere cinemas until the 1970s. Live performance came back for good in 1981.

That half-century as a cinema is why the sightlines are so good. A cinema has to give every seat a clear view of a whole screen. The sightlines carried straight over to the musicals.

It did not always have two levels. There was a Balcony above the Circle when it opened, seating 683, and it closed in the 1950s. That is where the missing height went, and it is part of why a two-level theatre feels as big as this one does. Art Deco, Grade II listed, with the interior kept in its original reds and golds.

Who runs it

Nederlander Theatres UK, who also run the Aldwych Theatre.

Twelve years of We Will Rock You

We Will Rock You, the Queen musical, ran here for twelve years and is still the show most people associate with this building. It was panned by the critics and became a huge hit anyway.

There is still a Freddie Mercury Suite in the building. Since then the Dominion has taken mostly large-scale musicals, which suits a stage this size and an auditorium that behaves more like a concert venue than a playhouse.

Notable past productions

• Sister Act (2024)
• Dirty Dancing (2022 and 2023)
• Elf (2015, 2022 and 2023), whose first run broke the theatre's box office records
• The Prince of Egypt (2020 to 2022)
• Bat Out of Hell (2018 to 2019)
• An American in Paris (2017 to 2018), its UK premiere
• White Christmas (2014 and 2019)
• We Will Rock You (2002 to 2014)
• Beauty and the Beast (1997 to 1999), which won the Olivier Award for Best New Musical
• Grease (1993 to 1996), back for short seasons in 2001, 2022 and 2023
• Time (1986 to 1988), Dave Clark's musical starring Cliff Richard
• The Judy Garland Show (1957), a month-long residency during the cinema years

Other venues of similar size

• Apollo Victoria Theatre, another vast between-the-wars theatre that spent decades as a cinema, and the closest thing to a sibling this building has
• Lyceum Theatre, about the same capacity but spread over three levels rather than two