The Piccadilly Theatre opened in 1928 with the premiere of Blue Eyes, a musical play by renowned composer Jerome Kern. The theatre was designed by Bertie Crewe and Edward A. Stone and its unassuming exterior conceals an impressive Art Deco interior that has housed many incredible productions.
Decades before Moulin Rouge! The Musical took up residence, successful productions at the Piccadilly were few and far between until impresario Donald Albery added the theatre to his portfolio in the 1960s. He staged the UK premieres of plays such as A Streetcar Named Desire and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , and in the 1990s, the Piccadilly Theatre expanded its programming to include dance productions. It went on to produce the most commercially successful season of ballet the West End had ever seen, including an acclaimed production of Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake.
More recently the theatre has housed several successful musical revivals, such as Guys & Dolls from 2005-2007, Grease from 2007-2011, and Jersey Boys from 2014-2017. The theatre was temporarily closed for several days in 2019 when part of the ceiling above the upper circle section collapsed, caused by a water leak, during a performance of Death of a Salesman ; this was the second occurrence of a theatre’s interior collapsing in the 2010s, after the ceiling of the Apollo Theatre collapsed after heavy rainfall in 2013.
