About the Gielgud Theatre

The Gielgud opened on 27 December 1906 as the Hicks Theatre, named after the actor-manager Seymour Hicks. W. G. R. Sprague designed it in an ornate Edwardian style, with a Louis XVI interior and a circular staircase. Sprague also designed the Sondheim, at the other end of the same block, as its pair.

It was the Globe Theatre from 1909, when the American impresario Charles Frohman took it over, until 1994, when it was renamed for Sir John Gielgud. Gielgud had first appeared here in 1928 and came back fourteen more times, and the new name also told it apart from Shakespeare's Globe on the South Bank. Peter Hall's Hamlet opened the theatre under its new name.

Delfont Mackintosh Theatres took over the running of the theatre from Really Useful Theatres in 2006.

Notable past productions

The building has a long record in plays. While the Sun Shines ran 1,154 performances through the war. There's a Girl in My Soup opened in 1966 and stayed more than three years, still the longest run here. Alan Ayckbourn premiered The Norman Conquests in 1974, and Lettice and Lovage was written for Maggie Smith and staged here in 1987. Edith Evans played Lady Bracknell here in 1939, directed by John Gielgud, and Judi Dench played the Countess in All's Well That Ends Well in 2004.

Under its old name it had its share of odd nights and big ones. In 1913 The Clock Goes Round opened on Friday the 13th, with 13 characters, and closed after 13 performances. Richard Burton and Claire Bloom played The Lady's Not for Burning here in 1949, and A Man for All Seasons opened here in 1960, with Paul Scofield as Thomas More.

Since the rename it has had The Graduate with Kathleen Turner in 2000, Equus with Daniel Radcliffe, Frost/Nixon, Macbeth with Patrick Stewart, The Audience with Helen Mirren and Blithe Spirit with Angela Lansbury. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time followed in 2014 and stayed nearly three years, then The Ferryman in 2017, Company in 2018 with its lead rewritten as a woman, Les Misérables in concert in 2019 while the Sondheim was being refurbished, To Kill a Mockingbird in 2022, and a winter of Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends in 2023.

Other venues of similar size

• Sondheim Theatre, 1,109 seats, along Shaftesbury Avenue, with the same three levels
• Phoenix Theatre, 1,028 seats over three levels, on Charing Cross Road
• Lyric Theatre, 938 seats over four levels, a few doors along Shaftesbury Avenue