More About the Trafalgar Theatre
It was two theatres until 2021
The building has had three names and at least six uses.
It opened on 29 September 1930 as the Whitehall Theatre, designed by Edward A. Stone with Art Deco interiors by Marc-Henri and Laverdet, and its first production was Walter Hackett's The Way To Treat a Woman. It spent the middle of the century on comedy, revue and farce, and the Whitehall Farces ran here for years. In the 1970s Paul Raymond turned part of it into a museum-style attraction, the Whitehall Theatre of War. It was refurbished in 1986 and reopened with J. B. Priestley's When We Are Married.
It was listed Grade II in December 1996, and the listing singles out the auditorium's decorative scheme as unusually complete for a theatre of its date.
Then it stopped being a theatre twice over. From 1997 to 1999 it was a television and radio studio, used for Jack Docherty's talk show and BBC Radio 4's Live from London. In 2003 it closed again and was cut into two separate auditoria, reopening in 2004 as Trafalgar Studios, the first two-studio venue of its kind in central London, with the RSC's Othello.
In 2021 the two studios were put back together into one theatre and it reopened as the Trafalgar Theatre, restored by Foster Wilson Architects, with the period detail reinstated and new seating, access and front of house. Jersey Boys reopened it.
The rebuild replaced the seating outright, so anything labelled Studio 1 or Studio 2 predates it. The seating plan has the current auditorium, row by row.
Who runs it
The theatre is operated by Trafalgar Theatres, part of Trafalgar Entertainment.
At 630 seats it is small for the West End. It has a Stalls, a Dress Circle and four Boxes, and it programmes like the playhouse it is.
Past productions
Since the 2021 reunification, in this configuration:
- Jersey Boys (2021 to January 2024). The production that reopened the theatre as one building
- A Mirror (2024). Almeida transfer, with Jonny Lee Miller
- The 39 Steps (2024). The long-running comedy back in the West End
- The Duchess (of Malfi) (2024), with Jodie Whittaker
- The Merchant of Venice 1936 (2024 to 2025). Tracy-Ann Oberman, made with the RSC
- People, Places & Things (2024 to 2025)
- Clueless the Musical (2025 to 2026)
- Clarkston (2025), with Joe Locke
- Oh, Mary! (from December 2025)
From the Trafalgar Studios years, in the two-studio configuration that no longer exists: The Grinning Man, Killer Joe, Nine Night, Admissions, Equus and A Taste of Honey.
Other theatres of a similar size
- Criterion Theatre, 585 seats, five minutes away at Piccadilly Circus. Entirely below street level, and a very different set of stairs
- sohoplace, 602 seats. The newest theatre in the West End, and one that reconfigures its auditorium rather than keeping one plan
- Vaudeville Theatre, around 660 seats on the Strand. Three levels rather than two, which is what most theatres this size do