London Capital Projects…
Theatre Royal Drury Lane (photo credit: Andy Paradise)
While regional theatre have been starved of capital Investment over the last few decades, the West End has fared much better with some major wonderful refurbishment and several new venues opening and planned. It is a reflection on the size of the market they serve in local residents and masses of tourists and the UK’s reputation for high quality theatrical productions in London.
The Lane and Andrew Lloyd Webber
Of course, the most glorious refurbishment is the spectacular £60 million project to completely restore and reimagine the historic Theatre Royal Drury Lane for the modern day. The Grade I-listed Theatre Royal Drury Lane, owned and managed by Andrew Lloyd Webber’s LW Theatres and built originally in 1812, is the oldest theatre site in continuous use in the world. Under the leadership of award-winning architect Steve Tompkins, the auditorium was remodelled to create wider seats, more legroom and better sight lines. The auditorium has been reshaped to create a tighter curve, bringing the audience and the performer closer together, with flexibility built in to allow for both a thrust stage, and in-the-round performances.
Behind the scenes, a new flexible staging system has been installed as well as a new steel grid, making the stage capable of housing the biggest musicals in the West End. The front of house is more spacious with improved circulation. All lighting is replaced with LEDs, and there is a major intervention to the auditorium ventilation installation, with improvements to air distribution to avoid draughts and a 40% improvement to the efficiency of the system. It is a wonderful place to visit with inspiring foyer vistas creating a joyous experience. It is an example of what philanthropy and the desire for legacy can create.
The Shaftesbury and Judi Dench
Another smaller scale refurbishment is the Shaftesbury Theatre, which underwent works to upgrade areas of the original theatre for a modern audience and shows in 2016, with a new RIBA award-winning fly tower which sits above the original theatre, allowing for greater loading on the grid, as well as providing additional backstage space. Between 2020 - 2023, the theatre undertook major expansion of its front of house spaces, building a new Stalls bar under the pavement outside the theatre, increasing the accessibility of the Stalls, and increasing the number of toilets, alongside the creation of two hospitality rooms.
In 2026, the next phrase of the renovation includes restoration of the gorgeous dome in the auditorium where a new painting will take inspiration from the original and be specifically commissioned, renewal of some of the decorative designs and the next phase of auditorium redecoration and recarpeting, as well as using this period to undertake other improvement works in the theatre including enhancing backstage areas, auditorium ventilation and accessibility in the theatre foyer. The latest phase is thought to cost £10 million.
Moreover, it was announced In June 2026 that it will be renamed the Judi Dench Theatre from February 2027.
New London Venues
Many recent new venues in London have been outside the traditional West End area. This is an interesting development, obviously allowing room for good facilities, foyer spaces and cheaper land, but requiring audiences to travel away from Central London to see a show and unlikely to get passing traffic along Shaftesbury Avenue or the Leicester Square ticket booth. The titles in these venues need to have an extra hook to draw audiences in travelling out to them.
Troubadour Wembley Park where Starlight Express ran until May 2026 seats 1200. It opened in 2019 at the former Fountain Studio site where the X Factor was once filmed, but requires a tube journey into North London. I’m Every Woman - The Chaka Khan Musical will run for a limited season there from 22 July - 27 September, followed by High School Musical on 12 October. It will be interesting to see if these titles are strong enough to get audiences to travel out to Wembley.
Equally The Hunger Games opened in 2025 at the Troubadour Canary Wharf Theatre, a purpose-built venue for the show which seats 1200. It too requires a tube or DLR journey to East London. It is currently booking until October 2026.
It does show that there is a willingness to invest in Theatreland, perhaps driven by the new levels of premium prices that top shows can attract and a recognition that, at these prices, audience expect large foyer spaces, good food facilities, excellent and plentiful toilets and good leg room, and these can’t be retro fitted to existing traditional theatres. The next few years sees a mix of refurbishment and new builds in London, the most eye-catching of which is the headline cost of the brutalist Barbican Theatre.
The Barbican was opened in 1982 by Queen Elizabeth II and now attracts over a million visitors annually. As its 50th anniversary approaches, The City Corporation has committed £191 million towards the £231 million needed to complete Phase 1 of the Barbican Renewal programme. Additional philanthropic and partnership support will be sought to ensure the full artistic and civic ambition of the programme can be realised and a total of £40million needs to be raised to fund that.
The approved scheme focuses on access, sustainability, and more dynamic use of space for arts and bringing people together. It has been designed with access and inclusion at its core and is expected to deliver the most significant accessibility improvements in the Barbican’s history. The work is intended to enable greater flexibility to programme within the Barbican’s public spaces, expand creative opportunities and attract new audiences. It hopes to bring people together through creative programming, learning, and community engagement, reaffirming the Barbican’s role as a platform for artists, educators, and the public to debate, collaborate, and drive social change.
The Barbican’s distinctive Brutalist foyers and lakeside terrace will also be developed through a sustainable, retrofit approach which will protect the heritage of the Grade II-listed building while significantly reducing long-term environmental impact. The revitalised conservatory will become a major visitor destination, offering regular free public access to experience an immersive, lush environment where temperate, tropical, and arid species will flourish. A new lift and stairs will offer public access to the conservatory’s raised balconies and will open up spectacular new views across this iconic space. A second lift in the main foyer will significantly enhance accessibility to the Concert Hall, Theatre, and surrounding spaces. The design team delivering the programme are led by Allies & Morrison, working with Asif Khan Studio, engineers Buro Happold, and landscape designers Harris Bugg Studio.
It is an extraordinary price tag, but will it genuinely change the perception of the venue? We always find it cold, labyrinth-like, with facilities and wide-open spaces in a dreary grey. Even when you enter the theatre itself and the side walls close in on you shutting out the greyness, we still find the design with no central gangway and tiny circles spaces rather unappealing, and it takes a very good show to tempt us there. High Society (until 11 July), Death Note (30 July - 12 September), and Sunday in the Park with George (summer 2027) should at least give it a good send off before the work starts and tempt audiences to journey there.
The British Airways Theatre is a new development and the biggest theatre to open in London in 50 years. The 1,575-seater theatre, set to open in 2027, is the anchor of a £1.3 billion redevelopment of the 140-year-old Olympia exhibition site. Designed by Haworth Tompkins to be the largest new permanent theatre in London since 1976, it will include modern amenities including 100+ toilets, extra-wide seats, and a large playing space to accommodate major productions. It will be operated by Trafalgar Entertainment in partnership with The Shubert Organisation (Broadway’s largest owner) on a 70-year lease. The “British Airways Wing” will offer a private lounge, cocktail bar, and balcony access for premium guests. It will be reached by the Kensington (Olympia) tube station and will need strong programming to attract audiences to travel west of London. We expect to see a big show open there in the hope of an extended stay and that will need an exceptional title and appeal, but it will be exciting to see the venue and what it has to offer.
Another fascinating development was the announcement of Burlesque returning to London from 12 September - 31 January 2027 at The Arts at Marble Arch, with Heathers opening the venue from 9 July - 22 August. This temporary theatre at Marble Arch is a new 550-seat, semi-permanent, and purpose-built demountable theatre venue designed by Reed Watts architects to host top-tier musicals and plays. Located at the former Marble Arch Mound site, it serves as a temporary home for the Arts Theatre in Leicester Square during its two-year refurbishment. Planning permission and conservation area consent were granted in December 2025.
The building will be wrapped in a lightweight fabric, woven between vertical posts, referencing the layered texture of the surrounding tree canopies, subservient to the arch and surrounding stone buildings. The theatre has been designed as a highly sustainable, temporary structure with a projected lifespan of up to 20 years.
The building is organised into three zones - with the foyer at the front, and the stage in the centre of the plan. The stage will be surrounded on three sides by stacked shipping containers which will not only provide space for toilets, dressing rooms and offices, but also function as an acoustic buffer. If they pull this off as a venue and a successful show, it will be quite an achievement but at least Burlesque has a following already.
Meanwhile, the 350-seat Arts Theatre Leicester Square, located on Great Newport Street in the West End, first built in 1927, is undergoing a modernisation. Significant productions over the years have included Dirty Linen (1976-1980), SIX the Musical (2017-2020), and The Choir of Man (2022-2025). Under new proposals, the theatre’s space will grow from a dedicated 860 square metres to 1044 square metres. Redevelopment will also secure the theatre’s future. The West End’s smallest commercial receiving house, its programme is chosen by executive director Louis Hartshorn, while Lizzie Scott is the managing director.
Led by Soda Studio, the redesign includes a two-storey roof extension, aiming to address the current poor condition of the venue, improve wheelchair access, and fix the fly tower.
Work is now believed to be on track for Capital Theatre’s new scheduled opening of 16 October, with Dirty Dancing booking through to 21 March 2027. The production will be the first major show to open at the 620-seat venue at Westfield White City, designed to offer an intimate audience experience with no seat more than nine rows from the stage. One plus is that there is plenty of nearby car parking for those driving to Shepherds Bush.
Yoo Capital is leading the “restoration” of the historic Shaftesbury Avenue site, Saville Theatre, which first opened in 1931 into a 622-seat venue in the basement of the site with a hotel and new hospitality spaces. It was most recently an ODEON cinema (from 1970 - 2024). It was suggested that it would be a permanent home for Cirque du Soleil. The site is Grade II listed and the project will involve part demolition, and part refurbishment causing some major concerns to be expressed about the development, especially as the original stage house was intact and will be lost in the rebuilding. Camden Council gave planning permission in June 2025, but we should not expect it to open until 2028.
Secret Cinema – Greenwich
Secret Cinema has entertained London audiences for many years with its immersive experiences built around famous film brands and a re-showing of those films. We have seen many of their excellent shows including Back to The Future, Star Wars, Moulin Rouge, James Bond, Stanger Things, Blade Runner and most recently Grease. The economics of staging these has forced changes over time. The secret element has now been dropped (you used to not find out the location until the day of visiting) and the interactive recreation of film scenes as the film played so brilliantly done in Bond and Star Wars events has been curtailed. Now they seek a permanent home. Like the Troubadour Theatre nearby in Greenwich, Secret Cinema would be in place for up to ten years, on a site that is earmarked for development in the future. The venue is subject to planning permission being granted. We fear the venue will lose part of the Secret Cinema event appeal but the announced opening show of Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean starting on 2 March 2027 will surely encourage fans to travel out east to try it.
Based in Walker’s Court, Underbelly Boulevard Soho was previously known as the Boulevard Theatre and has now gained a reputation as “Soho’s hottest new venue” for theatre, cabaret, comedy, magic, and burlesque. The original venue operated as a sister venue to the Raymond Revuebar in the 1950’s before closing in the 1990’s and reopened in 2019 before being taken over by Underbelly in 2023, with a seating capacity of around 200. It is an attractive cabaret venue in the heart of Soho.
Theatre Trust – Great British Theatre Awards
To celebrate their 50th anniversary, The Theatre Trust have launched a new awards programme, dedicated to theatre buildings and spaces where extraordinary performances come to life and communities gather to connect. The Great British Theatres Awards will recognise excellence across 10 open award categories, ranging from awards for particular types of buildings to categories to celebrate how those buildings are used.
1) Great New Build - Awarded to a newly built theatre or a new extension to an existing theatre. Open to projects completed in the past 5 years.
2) Great Renovation - Awarded to a theatre retrofit or refurbishment project, which has adapted an existing theatre to meet the needs of modern and future audiences and performances.
3) Great Amateur Theatre - Awarded to an amateur theatre that’s making great use of its building.
4) Great Found Space - Awarded to a live performance venue created in a found or repurposed space, rather than a traditional or purpose-built theatre.
5) Great Community Connection - Awarded to a theatre that is going above and beyond to open its doors and offer a warm welcome to everyone, whether that’s through adaptation to its building, programming, or outreach work.
6) Great Use of Space - Awarded to a theatre making innovative or unconventional use of a space or spaces in a theatre building. It could be temporary or permanent, on a grand scale or a just a small corner used imaginatively.
7) Great Placemaking Partner - Awarded to a local authority that truly values culture and is investing in cultural infrastructure to meaningfully benefit its local community.
8) Great Green Theatre - Awarded to a theatre that has put environmental sustainability at the heart of the building, whether through changes to the theatre itself, its operations, or its performances.
9) Great Public Space - Awarded to a theatre with a space beyond the auditorium that is well-loved and well used by the community or a specific user group.
10) Great British Theatres Shining Star - Awarded to an individual or a group of individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to create, save, or adapt a theatre building for the community.
At a time when the Theatre Trust’s statutory role established in 1976 as a national advisory body for theatres is under threat from the current Labour Government as “an impediment to growth”, it is timely for them to launch a celebration of excellence in theatre buildings that serve their audiences. Too often, the Trust gets cast in a negative light as it promotes venues most at risk of closing and that require support to save on an annual basis. These awards will cast its expertise and role in a more positive light. Though it will be interesting to see whether any of those projects highlighted above will get an award in the coming years.
We expect the British Airways Theatre at Olympia to lead the way in audience experience when it opens, and we can’t wait to see what is programmed there.
Nick Wayne
Nick has been involved as a Trustee/Director in UK Producer and Venue Organisations for twenty-six years, seen over 1350 productions, visited over 160 of the UK Venues, seen overseas productions in USA, Canada, France, Hungary, Austria, Czech Republic, and Australia and invested in over 40 West End Productions. You can read his long form articles on Stage Whispers UK - Nick Wayne