Garrick Theatre

About

The Garrick Theatre is a West End theatre, located in Charing Cross Road, in the City of Westminster. It is named after the stage actor David Garrick. The theatre was built for and owned by the dramatist W. S. Gilbert and originally leased to the actor-manager John Hare. It opened in 1889 with Hare's production of The Profligate, a new play by Arthur Wing Pinero; another Pinero play, The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith, was an early success, scandalising some audience members.

After Hare retired from management in 1895 another actor-manager, Arthur Bourchier, ran and starred at the Garrick for fifteen years. Bourchier and his wife, Violet Vanbrugh, presented plays by a range of contemporary authors including J. M. Barrie, Anthony Hope, Rutland Barrington, Henry Arthur Jones and Alfred Sutro; they staged and starred in Gilbert's last full-length play The Fairy's Dilemma (1904) and also in The Merchant of Venice (1905) and a stage version of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment (1911). After the First World War the theatre's fortunes ebbed. Some well-known performers appeared there including Edith Evans and Tallulah Bankhead, but by the 1930s there was an abortive plan to convert the building into a cinema. A long running success, Love on the Dole (1935–36), restored the profitability of the theatre.