The West End is London’s commercial theatre district, clustered around Shaftesbury Avenue, the Strand and Covent Garden. It has around 39 major theatres, sells over 17 million tickets a year, and is Broadway’s only real equivalent anywhere in the world.
The buildings
Most West End theatres are late Victorian or Edwardian, and they are gorgeous and deeply impractical. Gilt, plaster, red velvet and steep tiered balconies — and legroom designed for a shorter and less numerous population, restricted views from cheaper seats, and famously inadequate air conditioning and lavatories.
The oldest is the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, with a theatre on the site since 1663.
What is on
The mix is roughly a third long-running musicals, a third new plays and revivals, and a third limited runs built around a star. British and American theatre are continuously entangled: shows transfer in both directions, and Hollywood actors regularly take West End runs.
The subsidised sector feeds it. The National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Old Vic, the Almeida, the Donmar and the Young Vic develop work that frequently transfers commercially, which is why public subsidy for theatre is defended partly on commercial grounds.
The Mousetrap
Agatha Christie’s murder mystery opened in the West End in 1952 and has not closed since, apart from the pandemic. It has run over 29,000 performances and is the longest continuously running play in the world by an enormous margin.
At the end of each performance the cast asks the audience to keep the identity of the murderer to themselves, and the convention has held remarkably well for seventy years. Christie signed the rights over to her grandson as a birthday present, assuming the play would run a few months.
Getting cheap tickets
West End seats can be expensive and need not be. The methods that actually work:
- TKTS in Leicester Square — the official same-day discount booth, run by the theatre society. Avoid the many unofficial ticket shops nearby.
- Day seats — most theatres release a small number of very cheap front-row seats when the box office opens. Queue early.
- Digital lotteries — many shows run one, entered on an app a day or two ahead.
- Standing tickets at Shakespeare’s Globe cost a few pounds. You stand in the open yard for three hours, in whatever weather arrives, which is exactly how the groundlings did it in 1599.
- Monday nights and matinees are consistently cheaper.
The etiquette
British theatre audiences are quieter than American ones. There is very little whooping, standing ovations are given sparingly and mean something when they happen, and talking during a performance will produce the full British repertoire of sighs and glares. Interval drinks can be ordered before the show and will be waiting on a shelf with your name on them, which is one of the more civilised arrangements in London.