The history of the Theatre Royal Drury Lane is the theatrical history of England

Andrew Lloyd Webber has not been in the best of moods lately, largely thanks to all the Covid delays to his new musical Cinderella, now finally about to open — for the umpteenth announced time — at the Gillian Lynne Theatre. The bigger news, however, is that his theatre at the other end of Drury Lane, the grand old Theatre Royal, is finally finished after massive renovations.

Lloyd Webber has spent an awesome £60 million on the rebirth of his Grade I-listed theatre, known to show folk as ‘the Lane’, with his wife Madeleine heavily involved and in cahoots with the heritage expert Simon Thurley and the great theatre architect Steve Tompkins. The result? Oh my goodness! The sheer elegance of its 1812 Greek revival design by Benjamin Wyatt is drop-dead.

Few theatregoers ever really notice the building in the stampede for the bar and seats and 55 new ladies’ loos.