New London Theatre

The New London Theatre (now called the Gillian Lynne Theatre) is sited on the corner of Drury Lane and Parker St.  Its design is unique, with much of the stalls seating and part of the stage being on a huge revolve, enabling the staging configuration to be altered from show to show – or even during a performance.

The first performance in the theatre was a televised concert by Marlene Dietrich, recorded in November 1972 for the BBC.  John Pocock has been kind enough to send me the following anecdote, which of course may or may not be entirely true:

‘The Marlene Dietrich show had 2 LDs – Joe Davis for Ms Dietrich and Tommy Thomas for the Beeb.  As it was the first show in the theatre, the Chief Electrician, Colin Wooton was working the desk – one of the last IDMs to be built and it had been installed a year before we opened!  I got to sit in the lighting box with Tommy and listened to the talkback – a lot of which was between Tommy and Joe about how Ms D liked/insisted on being lit.  One of the reasons the Beeb had for using the theatre was its semi-circular walkway behind the first 8 rows of stalls seating, excellent for a slow camera move from one side to the other but Ms D did not like this and insisted that if she didn’t move then why did the camera.  This was quickly cured by Tommy suggesting they turned off all the camera tally lights.

Ms D then turned her attention to the camera that had appeared behind her taking a rear pov of the audience with herself in the foreground, that quickly disappeared after she pointed out that she didn’t want everyone to see the zipper in the back of her dress.  I don’t know if it was true or not but many people stated later that the show took years off MrT’s life?

I also remember an exchange between Tommy and the racks guy.  He asked him to check the exposure of a particular camera – several minutes past and nothing happened so he asked again.  Still no change and with that Tommy left the lighting box, which was at the very back and at the top of the auditorium.  Several minutes passed while those remaining focused their eyes on the preview monitor with the errant camera still selected.  After several more minutes the picture’s exposure was corrected and Tommy reappeared in the lighting box gasping for breath and muttering words to the effect that if you want something doing…

Its also worth saying that Joe Davis was an absolute gentleman and did a very good job of liaising between the requirements of TV lighting and those of a Star – in every sense of the word.’

The New London was always intended to be used as a theatre rather than a studio but initially it struggled to attract productions.  The most successful around that time was Grease.

Thames TV realised it would make a very effective television theatre so they took it over between 1977 and 1980, using it on a regular basis using Marconi Mk VII cameras.  John O’Brien tells me that the OB truck they used was such a tight fit to get into the car park that it was put on trolley jacks and pushed in sideways.  Later, the racks area and production gallery were installed in the building but the aircon struggled to keep all the equipment cool.  I’m told it was not unheard of to let off a CO2 fire extinguisher on the racks of equipment just before a live transmission to cool everything down.

Thames used the New London for a range of variety shows and quiz shows such as Name That Tune.  It seems that they also shared the theatre with the BBC for some productions.  It was for example used for the Masters Snooker Championships between 1976 and 1978.  The BBC also used it for Sports Personality of the Year in 1977 and in August of the same year they staged the Song For Europe show here.  The notable thing about this show was that apparently it was blacked out due to industrial action.

In 1981 Thames moved its operation to the Royalty Theatre.

Cats was the musical that subsequently took up a long-term residence, running from May 1981 until 2002.  Various other productions were then staged here.

In August 2021 following an extensive refurbishment, the theatre re-opened with the musical Cinderella.  It was re-named the Gillian Lynne Theatre, after the choreographer of Cats – the longest running previous occupant of the theatre.  It has since hosted several successful productions including The Lehman Trilogy, Crazy For You, Standing at the Sky’s Edge and the RSC’s  My Neighbour Totoro.