The Sondheim Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue, opened on 8 October 1907 as the Queen's Theatre, is one of the legendary houses of London's West End. After an extensive restoration worth 13.8 million pounds, the house was renamed in 2019 in honour of the composer Stephen Sondheim on the occasion of his 90th birthday — the first renaming of a major West End theatre in decades. Since 2004 the house has been the home of Cameron Mackintosh's "Les Misérables" — the longest-running musical of the West End, which premiered in 1985 and has since reached over 130 million spectators worldwide. With 1,074 seats on three levels, the Sondheim offers a comparatively intimate stage experience that makes the emotional force of Victor Hugo's story in Claude-Michel Schönberg's setting particularly compelling.
Sondheim himself attended the 2019 renaming and joked he was the first living person to have a West End theatre dedicated to him in his lifetime — he died two years later.
At a glance
- Type
- Musical theatre
- Location
- London, United Kingdom
- Address
- 51 Shaftesbury Avenue, London W1D 6BA
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