The New London Theatre is a West End theatre based in London at the corner of Drury Lane and Parker Street in Covent Garden and there has been a place of entertainment standing on the site since Elizabethan times.
The theatre started out as a tavern called Mogul in the 17th century, named after the Mogul of Hindustan. Henry Cook later held his “sing songs” and “glee club” meetings in an adjoining Hall. In 1847 the Hall was changed and became known as the Mogul Saloon which seated 500 people. Musical performances became commonplace and in 1851 the Hall was renamed as the Middlesex Music Hall, but was affectionately nicknamed ‘The Old Mo’.
The Hall was rebuilt twice more, once in 1872 with alterations made in 1875, and then again in 1891. In 1910 the former barman of the Mogul Tavern, who had been managing the Middlesex Music Hall since 1878 teamed up with Oswald Stoll to rebuild the site as a theatre. Renowned theatre architect Frank Matcham, who also designed the London Coliseum, London Palladium and Victoria Palace theatres, built them a brand new theatre that was known as the New Middlesex Theatre of Varieties.
The theatre continued until 1919 when it was bought by George Crossmith and Edward Laurillard. The theatre was given a complete design overhaul and was renamed The Winter Garden Theatre. The original Mogul tavern which had been a part of the site now became incorporated as the Stalls Bar, which was later renamed the Nell Gwynn Tavern. The Winter Garden Theatre reopened in May, 1919, with the Guy Bolton and P.G.Woodhouse musical Kissing Time.
In 1959 the theatre was sold to a property developer and the doors were shut. The theatre stood unused and derelict until its final demolition in 1965.
Work on the theatre that we know as the New London Theatre started in 1971 and was completed in 1973 and opened with the show The Unknown Soldier and His Wife and then later was home to the musical Grease, starring the then-unknown Hollywood actor Richard Gere. The longest running show at the theatre was the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Cats which is one of the longest running musical in West End theatre history.
Between 2003 and 2005 the theatre was home to the revival of the musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat which closed after running for two and a half years. The theatre has also had its stage graced by the likes of Sir Ian McKellen in a production of King Lear in 2007. Musicals Gone With The Wind and Imagine This ran for short periods and the current production on the stage of the New London Theatre is that of the National Theatre’s War Horse, an adaptation of the acclaimed novel by Michael Morpurgo.
