ABOUT THE LYRIC THEATRE - DEATH OF A SALESMAN by ARTHUR MILLER at the Lyric Theatre

ABOUT THE LYRIC THEATRE

Shaftesbury Avenue - London, England W1V 7HA

The Lyric Theatre is the oldest and second largest playhouse on Shaftesbury Avenue having opened on December 17, 1888. Designed by architect C J Phipps, it was originally built for impresario Henry J Leslie as a home for operetta. Since then the building has successfully hosted drama, comedy and musicals.

Here below is a timeline featuring the top 50 highlights of the theatre's history:

1888	Opened with a transfer of the comic opera Dorothy from the Prince of Wales Theatre, featuring Marie Tempest.
1892	The Mountebanks, a comic opera by WS Gilbert with music by Alfred Cellier, was first performed on 4 January 1892.
1893	Eleanora Duse made her London debut in La Dame aux Camellias (La traviata).
1896	The Sign of the Cross, written and produced by Wilson Barrett.
1898	Sarah Bernhardt appeared in Frou-Frou, Phèdre, Julie and La Tosca. Tom B Davis took over the management.
1899	Floradora with music by Leslie Stuart (including ‘Tell Me Pretty Maiden’) brought the theatre into the 20th century.
1902	Johnstone Forbes-Robertson produced and appeared with his wife Gertrude Elliott in Mice and Men.
1906	Lewis Waller appeared in a season of revivals and a romantic version of Robin Hood.
1910	The Chocolate Soldier was the first of Bernard Shaw’s plays to be set to music when Oscar Strauss composed songs for an adaptation of Arms and the Man.
1911	Michael Faraday became sole controller of the theatre and Yvonne Arnaud finds fame in the musical The Girl in the Taxi.
1916	F W Tibbets became lessee (until 1930).
1922	A play about the composer Franz Schubert employing his music, Lilac Time, starring Courtice Pounds, Clara Butterworth, Percy Heming and A.W.Bascomb was a great success.
1924	The Frederick Lonsdale musical The Street Singer.
1926	Avery Hopwood's The Gold Diggers opened December 14 and ran for 180 performances starring Tallulah Bankhead.
1929	Leslie Howard appeared in Berkeley Square.
1931	Eugene O’Neill’s Strange Interlude opened February 2 starring Mary Ellis, Basil Sydney and Claudia Morgan as well as Dodie Smith’s first play, Autumn Crocus.
1932	Dangerous Corner by J B Priestley.
1933	Thomas Bostock took over and the building was completely re-decorated.
1934	Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontanne in A Reunion in Vienna and George S Kaufman’s Royal Family, directed by Noël Coward with Madge Titheradge, Marie Tempest and Laurence Olivier.
1935	Tovarich by Robert Sherwood and Laurence Houseman’s Victoria Regina about Queen Victoria.
1941	Yvonne Arnaud in The Nutmeg Tree.
1943	Prince Littler took control of the building.
1944	Terence Rattigan’s Love in Idleness saw the return of Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontanne.
1946	The Winslow Boy again by Terence Rattigan.
1950	Robert Morley starred in The Little Hut which ran for 1,261 performances.
1954	The musical Grab Me a Gondola.
1955	Noël Coward’s South Sea Bubble starred Vivien Leigh.
1958	Keith Michell and Elizabeth Seal led the cast in the musical Irma La Douce.
1964	Keith Michell again as Robert Browning in Robert and Elizabeth also starring June Bronhill
1968	Peter Shaffer's White Liars and Black Comedy opens with Ian McKellen, James Bolam, Dorothy Reynolds, Liz Fraser and Robert Flemyng
1969	Paul Rogers and Rosemary Harris in Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite.
1972	Alan Ayckbourn’s How the Other Half Loves and Alec Guinness in Alan Bennett’s Habeas Corpus.
1973	Alan Bennett's Habeas Corpus starring Alec Guinness, Patricia Hayes, Andrew Sachs, John Bird and Margaret Courtenay
1974	The Lyric became part of the Stoll Moss Theatres group.
1975	Bed Before Yesterday by Ben Travers opens with Joan Plowright, Jonathan Cecil, Susie Blake, Gabrielle Daye and John Moffat
1977	Eduardo de Filipo’s Filumena starred Joan Plowright.
1981	Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man opens with Richard Briers, Peter Egan, Richard Pearson, Pat Heywood
1982	Robert Holmes à Court took control of Stoll Moss Theatres.
1983	Barbara Dickson starred in the original production of Willy Russell’s musical Blood Brothers and Judi Dench and Michael Williams were in Hugh Whitmore’s Pack of Lies.
1984	Leonard Rossiter sadly died during the run of Joe Orton’s Loot which enjoyed a run from September 1984 to January 1985
1985	Siân Phillips and Beryl Reid in the musical Gigi.
1987	A celebration of the Life and Poetry of T.S.Eliot - aptly named Eliot, starring Eileen Atkins, Edward Fox, Michael Gough, Joan Bakewell, Christopher Cazenove and Jean Marsh
1989	Rosemary Harris led the cast of Robert Harling’s Steel Magnolias directed by Julia McKenzie, Kenneth Branagh in Look Back In Anger and Sheila Hancock plays a lesbian head-teacher of a public school in Andrew Davies’ Prin - a transfer from the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith.
1990	Burn This starred John Malkovich and Cameron Mackintosh’s production of Clarke Peters’ Five Guys Named Moe began a five-year run. Janet Holmes à Court took control of Stoll Moss following the death of her husband.
1995	The musical revival Ain’t Misbehavin’, Leo McKern in Hobson’s Choice from Chichester and Australian dance sensation Tap Dogs.
1996	Transfer of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Alan Ayckbourn’s musical By Jeeves.
1997	Siân Phillips starred as Dietrich in Pam Gems’s play with music Marlene directed by Sean Mathias, and Antony Sher in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Cyrano de Bergerac. The theatre FOH areas were completely refurbished.
1998	Patrick Marber’s Closer from the Royal National Theatre began previews on 19 March, Opened 31 March 1998, and closed 31 October 1998.
1999	Animal Crackers from the Manchester Royal Exchange and a multi award-winning performance from Janie Dee in Alan Ayckbourn’s Comic Potential.
2000	The Lyric became a Really Useful Theatre when Lord Lloyd-Webber’s Really Useful Group and Bridgepoint Capital purchased Stoll Moss Theatres Ltd. Fanny Burney’s A Busy Day with Stephanie Beacham and Sara Crowe prior to Brief Encounter with Jenny Seagrove and Long Day’s Journey Into Night starring Jessica Lange.
2001	Thelma Holt presented the first full-scale production of Noël Coward’s 1926 play Semi-Monde prior to a short season of Barbara Cook Sings Mostly Sondheim and Brendan Fraser in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (both produced by Bill Kenwright).
2002	David Warner returned to the stage in The Feast of Snails and Daisy Pulls It Off returned to Shaftesbury Avenue. The Constant Wife transferred from the Apollo Theatre opening 2 July and closed on 12 October, followed by another Maugham play, Home and Beauty.
2003	A short season with Al Murray The Pub Landlord, Who Dares Wines?, Strindberg’s Dance of Death starring Sir Ian McKellen, the transfer of the Royal Court’s Hitchcock Blonde by Terry Johnson, Camut Band and The Secret Rapture.
2004	The musical Beautiful and Damned based on the lives of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald prior to the transfer of Festen from the Almeida Theatre.
2005	The 1999 Tony^® Award winning Broadway production of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman transfers across the Atlantic with an all new production starring Brian Dennehy and Clare Higgins, directed by Robert Falls. Buy your tickets now to witness a part of the Lyric Theatre's history.