Guess which theatre is the first to open to the paying public post-Covid? Not Lloyd Webber’s London Palladium, where small audiences have been invited on trials, nor any of the other West End giants. This weekend the Great Yarmouth Hippodrome — Britain’s last stand-alone circus building — is welcoming audiences to its ringside seats for the first time since March.
The Hippodrome is tucked behind a row of kerchinging arcades on Great Yarmouth’s decaying, half-lit seafront. But its imposing red brick facade, built by legendary showman George Gilbert in 1903, leads into a lobby glinting with art deco-glass. Its performance space is a traditional 42ft diameter sawdust ring that can be flooded and filled with water like a pool.
The Hippodrome hasn’t only hosted knife-throwing, sword-juggling and the occasional dancing bear. Lloyd George held political rallies there, an ageing Lillie Langtry warbled through her vaudeville shows and Houdini staged his escape acts.
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