Theatre of the United Kingdom

Theatre of United Kingdom plays an important part in British culture, and the
countries that constitute the UK have had a vibrant tradition of theatre since the
Renaissance with roots going back to theRoman occupation.

Contents
Beginnings
Medieval theatre: 500–1500
The Royal Shakespeare Theatre,
Renaissance theatre: 1500–1660
opened in Stratford-upon-Avon in
Restoration theatre: 1660 to 1710 1932, named after the famous
18th-century playwright, William Shakespeare
Romanticism: 1798–1836
Scotland
Victorian era: 1837–1901
20th-century
After 1945
Radio drama
National theatres
West End theatre
See also
References

Beginnings
Theatre was introduced from Europe to what is now the United Kingdom by the
Romans and auditoriums were constructed across the country for this purpose (an
example has been excavated at Verulamium). By the medieval period theatre had
developed with the mummers' plays, a form of early street theatre associated with
the Morris dance, concentrating on themes such as Saint George and the Dragon and
Robin Hood. These were folk tales re-telling old stories, and the actors travelled
from town to town performing these for their audiences in return for money and
hospitality.

Roman theatre excavated at

Medieval theatre: 500–1500 Verulamium

The medieval mystery plays and morality plays, which dealt with Christian themes,
were performed at religious festivals. The most important work of literature surviving from the Middle Cornish period is An Ordinale
Kernewek ("The Cornish Ordinalia"), a 9000-line religious drama composed around the year 1400. The longest single surviving work
of Cornish literature is Bywnans Meriasek (The Life of Meriasek), a play dated 1504, but probably copied from an earlier manuscript.

There are four complete or nearly complete extant English biblical collections of plays from the late medieval period; although these
collections are sometimes referred to as "cycles," it is now believed that this term may attribute to these collections more coherence
than they in fact possess. The most complete is the York cycle of forty-eight pageants. They were performed in the city of York, from

A moment from The Second
Shepherds' Play in the Wakefield
Mystery Plays as performed by The
Players of St Peter in London in
2005.
and Coronation of the Virgin. In given cycles, the plays came to be sponsored by the newly emer
the middle of the fourteenth century until 1569. There are also the Towneley plays of
thirty-two pageants, once thought to have been a true 'cycle' of plays and most likely
performed around the Feast of Corpus Christi probably in the town of Wakefield,
England during the late Middle Ages until 1576. The Ludus Coventriae (also called
the N Town plays" or Hegge cycle), now generally agreed to be a redacted
compilation of at least three older, unrelated plays, and the Chester cycle of twenty-
four pageants, now generally agreed to be an Elizabethan reconstruction of older
medieval traditions.
These biblical plays differ widely in content. Most contain episodes such as the Fall
of Lucifer, the Creation and Fall of Man, Cain and Abel, Noah and the Flood,
Abraham and Isaac, the Nativity, the Raising of Lazarus, the Passion, and the
Resurrection. Other pageants included the story of Moses, the Procession of the
Prophets, Christ's Baptism, the Temptation in the Wilderness, and the Assumption
ging Medieval craft guilds.[1][2]

Having grown out of the religiously based mystery plays of the Middle Ages, the morality play is a genre of Medieval and early
Tudor theatrical entertainment, which represented a shift towards a more secular base for European theatre. In their own time, these
plays were known as "interludes", a broader term given to dramas with or without a moral theme.[3] Morality plays are a type of
allegory in which the protagonist is met by personifications of various moral attributes who try to prompt him to choose a Godly life
over one of evil. The plays were most popular inEurope during the 15th and 16th centuries.

Renaissance theatre: 1500–1660

The reign of Elizabeth I in the late 16th and early 17th century saw a flowering of
the drama and all the arts. Perhaps the most famousplaywright in the world, William
Shakespeare, wrote around 40 plays that are still performed in theatres across the
world to this day. They include tragedies, such as Hamlet (1603), Othello (1604),
and King Lear (1605); comedies, such as A Midsummer Night's Dream (1594—96)
and Twelfth Night (1602); and history plays, such as Henry IV, part 1—2. The
Elizabethan age is sometimes nicknamed "the age of Shakespeare" for the amount of
influence he held over the era. Other important Elizabethan and 17th-century
The Comedy of Errors in
playwrights include Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, and John Webster.
performance at the Shakespeare's
The English playwrights were intrigued by Italian model: a conspicuous community Globe Theatre in 2002
of Italian actors had settled in London. The linguist and lexicographer John Florio
(1553–1625), whose father was Italian, was a royal language tutor at the Court of
James I, and a possible friend and influence on William Shakespeare, had brought much of the Italian language and culture to
England. The earliest Elizabethan plays includes Gorboduc (1561) by Sackville and Norton and Thomas Kyd's (1558–94) revenge
tragedy The Spanish Tragedy (1592). The Spanish Tragedy, or Hieronimo is Mad Again[4] is an Elizabethan tragedy written by
Thomas Kyd between 1582 and 1592. Highly popular and influential in its time, The Spanish Tragedy established a new genre in
English literature theatre, the revenge play or revenge tragedy. Its plot contains several violent murders and includes as one of its
characters a personification of Revenge. The Spanish Tragedy was often referred to, or parodied, in works written by other
Elizabethan playwrights, including William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Christopher Marlowe. Many elements of The Spanish
Tragedy, such as the play-within-a-play used to trap a murderer and a ghost intent on vengeance, appear in Shakespeare's Hamlet.
Thomas Kyd is frequently proposed as the author of the hypothetical Ur-Hamlet that may have been one of Shakespeare's primary
sources for Hamlet.

George Chapman (?1559-?1634) was a successful playwright who produced comedies (his collaboration on Eastward Hoe led to his
brief imprisonment in 1605 as it offended the King with its anti-Scottish sentiment), tragedies (most notably Bussy D'Ambois) and
court masques (The Memorable Masque of the Middle Temple and Lincoln's Inn).
David Lyndsay's Ane Pleasant Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis (1552), is a surviving example of a Scots dramatic tradition in the period
that has otherwise largely been lost. James Wedderburn is recorded as having written anti-Catholic tragedies and comedies in Scots
around 1540 before being forced to flee into exile. Although the propaganda value of drama in the Scottish Reformation was
important, the Kirk hardened its attitude to such public entertainments. In 1599 James VI had to intervene to overturn a prohibition
on attending performances by a visiting theatre troupe from England. Scottish drama did not succeed in becoming a popular artform
in the face of religious opposition and the absence of King and court after 1603. As with drama in England, only a small proportion
of plays written and performed were actually published, and the smaller production in Scotland meant that a much less significant
record of Scottish drama remains to us.[5] The ribald verse play in Scots, Philotus,[6] is known from an anonymous edition published
in London in 1603.[7]

Drama in Wales as a literary tradition dates to morality plays from north-east Wales in the second half of the 15th century. The
development of Renaissance theatre in England did not have great influence in Wales as the gentry found different forms of artistic
patronage. One surviving example of Welsh literary drama is Troelus a Chresyd, an anonymous adaptation from poems by Henrysoun
and Chaucer dating to around 1600. With no urban centres to compare to England to support regular stages, morality plays and
[8]
interludes continued to circulate ininn-yard theatres and fairs, supplemented by visiting troupes performing English repertoire.

Restoration theatre: 1660 to 1710

During the Interregnum 1642—1660, English theatres were kept closed by the Puritans for religious and ideological reasons. When
the London theatres opened again with the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, they flourished under the personal interest and
support of Charles II (reigned 1660–1685). Wide and socially mixed audiences were attracted by topical writing and by the
introduction of the first professional actresses (in Shakespeare's time, all female roles had been played by boys). New genres of the
Restoration were heroic drama, pathetic drama, and Restoration comedy. The Restoration plays that have best retained the interest of
producers and audiences today are the comedies, such as William Wycherley's The Country Wife (1676), The Rover (1677) by the
first professional woman playwright, Aphra Behn, and John Vanbrugh's The Relapse (1696). Restoration comedy is famous or
notorious for its sexual explicitness, a quality encouraged by Charles II personally and by therakish aristocratic ethos of his court.

Although documented history of Irish theatre began at least as early as 1601, the earliest Irish dramatists of note were: William
Congreve (1670–1729), author of The Way of the World (1700); late Restoration playwright, George Farquhar (?1677–1707), The
Recruiting Officer (1706); as well as two of the most successful playwrights on the London stage in the 18th century, Oliver
Goldsmith (?1730-74), She Stoops to Conquer (1773) and Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816), The School for Scandal (1777).
Anglo-Irish drama in the 18th century also includes Charles Macklin (?1699–1797), and Arthur Murphy (1727–1805).[9] Thomas
Sydserf was behind the establishment in Edinburgh of the first regular theatre in Scotland, and his 1667 play Tarugo's Wiles: or, The
Coffee-House, based on a Spanish play, was produced in London to amazement that a Scot could write such excellent English.[10]
Scottish poet John Ogilby, who was the first Irish Master of the Revels, had established the Werburgh Street Theatre, the first theatre
in Ireland, in the 1630s. It was closed by the Puritans in 1641. The Restoration of the monarchy in Ireland enabled Ogilby to resume
his position as Master of the Revels and open the first Theatre Royal in Dublin in 1662 in Smock Alley. In 1662 Katherine Philips
went to Dublin where she completed a translation of Pierre Corneille's Pompée, produced with great success in 1663 in the Smock
Alley Theatre, and printed in the same year both in Dublin and London. Although other women had translated or written dramas, her
translation of Pompey broke new ground as the first rhymed version of a French tragedy in English and the first English play written
by a woman to be performed on the professional stage. Aphra Behn (one of the women writers dubbed "The fair triumvirate of wit")
was a prolific dramatist and one of the first English professional female writers. Her greatest dramatic success was The Rover (1677).

Theatre began to spread from the United Kingdom to the expanding British Empire. Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer was the first
play to be staged in New York City on December 6, 1732.[11] It was also the first play to be staged in the Colony of New South
Wales,[12] which is now Australia.

The age of Augustan drama was brought to an end by the censorship established by the Licensing Act 1737. After 1737, authors with
strong political or philosophical points to make would no longer turn to the stage as their first hope of making a living, and novels
began to have dramatic structures involving only normal human beings, as the stage was closed off for serious authors. Prior to the
Licensing Act 1737, theatre was the first choice for most wits. After it, the novel was.
18th-century
In the 18th century, the highbrow and provocative Restoration comedy lost favour,
to be replaced by sentimental comedy, domestic Bourgeois tragedy such as George
Lillo's The London Merchant (1731), and by an overwhelming interest in Italian
opera. Popular entertainment became more important in this period than ever before,
with fair-booth burlesque and mixed forms that are the ancestors of the English
music hall. These forms flourished at the expense of legitimate English drama,
which went into a long period of decline. By the early 19th century it was no longer
Carruber's Close, site of an early, but
represented by stage plays at all, but by the closet drama, plays written to be
short-lived attempt by the poet,Allan
privately read in a "closet" (a small domestic room).
Ramsay, to reintroduce theatre to
Scotland in 1737.
Romanticism: 1798–1836
Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron were the most important literary dramatists of their time (although Shelley's plays were not
performed until later in the century). Shakespeare was enormously popular, and began to be performed with texts closer to the
original, as the drastic rewriting of 17th and 18th century performing versions for the theatre (as opposed to his plays in book form,
which were also widely read) was gradually removed over the first half of the century
.

Melodramas, light comedies, operas, Shakespeare and classic English drama,

pantomimes, translations of French farces and, from the 1860s, French operettas,
continued to be popular, together with Victorian burlesque.

Scotland
Scottish "national drama" emerged in the early 1800s, as plays with specifically
Scottish themes began to dominate the Scottish stage. The existing repertoire of
Scottish-themed plays included John Home's Douglas (1756) and Ramsay's The
Gentle Shepherd (1725), with the last two being the most popular plays among
amateur groups.[13] Douglas elicited the famous "Whaur's Yer Wullie Shakespeare
Noo?" jeer from a member of one of its early audiences, and was also the subject of
a number of pamphlets for and against it. It also arguably led to James MacPherson's
Ossian cycle.[14][15] Home was hounded by the church authorities for Douglas. It
may have been this persecution which drove Home to write for the London stage, in
addition to Douglas' success there, and stopped him from founding the new Scottish
national theatre that some had hoped he would.[14] Walter Scott was keenly
interested in drama, becoming a shareholder in the Theatre Royal, Edinburgh.[16]
Baillie's Highland themed Family Legend was first produced in Edinburgh in 1810
with the help of Scott, as part of a deliberate attempt to stimulate a national Scottish A Theatre Royal, Exeter playbill from
drama.[17] Scott also wrote five plays, of which Hallidon Hill (1822) and MacDuff's 1836, featuring Charles Kean in a
performance of Richard III
Cross (1822), were patriotic Scottish histories.[16] Adaptations of the Waverley
novels, largely first performed in minor theatres, rather than the larger Patent
theatres, included The Lady in the Lake (1817), The Heart of Midlothian (1819), and Rob Roy, which underwent over 1,000
performances in Scotland in this period. Also adapted for the stage were Guy Mannering, The Bride of Lammermoor and The Abbot.
These highly popular plays saw the social range and size of the audience for theatre expand and helped shape theatre going practices
in Scotland for the rest of the century.[13]

Victorian era: 1837–1901

In 1847, a critic using the pseudonym Dramaticus published a pamphlet[18] describing the parlous state of British theatre. Production
of serious plays was restricted to the patent theatres, and new plays were subjected to censorship by the Lord Chamberlain's Office.
At the same time, there was a burgeoning theatre sector featuring a diet of low melodrama and musical burlesque; but critics
described British theatre as driven by commercialism and a 'star' system. Kotzebue's plays were translated into English and Thomas
Holcroft's A Tale of Mystery was the first of many English melodramas. Pierce Egan, Douglas William Jerrold, Edward Fitzball,
James Roland MacLarenand John Baldwin Buckstone initiated a trend towards more contemporary and rural stories in preference to
the usual historical or fantastical melodramas. James Sheridan Knowles and Edward Bulwer-Lytton established a "gentlemanly"
drama that began to re-establish the former prestige of the theatre with thearistocracy.[19]

For much of the first half of the 19th century, drama in London and provincial theatres was restricted by a licensing system to the
Patent theatre companies, and all other theatres could perform only musical entertainments (although magistrates had powers to
license occasional dramatic performances). By the early 19th century, however, music hall entertainments had become popular, and
provided a loophole in the restrictions on non-patent theatres in the genre of melodrama which did not contravene the Patent Acts, as
it was accompanied by music. The passing of the Theatres Act 1843 removed the monopoly on drama held by the Patent theatres,
enabling local authorities to license theatres as they saw fit, and also restricted the Lord Chamberlain's powers to censor new plays.
The 1843 Act did not apply to Ireland where the power of the Lord Lieutenant to license patent theatres enabled control of stage
[20]
performance analogous to that exercised by the Lord Chamberlain in Great Britain.

James Planché was a prolific playwright. He revolutionised stage productions of Shakespeare and the classics by introducing the use
[21]
of historically appropriatecostume design, working with antiquarians to establish what was known about period dress.

Dion Boucicault (1820–90) made the latest scientific inventions important elements in his plots and exerted considerable influence on
theatrical production. His first big success, London Assurance (1841) was a comedy in the style of Sheridan, but he wrote in various
styles, including melodrama.T. W. Robertson wrote popular domestic comedies and introduced a more naturalistic style of acting and
stagecraft to the British stage in the 1860s.

A change came in the late 19th century with the plays on the London stage by the Irishmen George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde
and the Norwegian Henrik Ibsen, all of whom influenced domestic English drama and vitalised it again. The Shakespeare Memorial
Theatre was opened in Shakespeare's birthplace Stratford upon Avon in 1879; and Herbert Beerbohm Tree founded an Academy of
Dramatic Art at Her Majesty's Theatre in 1904.

Producer Richard D'Oyly Carte brought together librettist W. S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan, and nurtured their
collaboration.[22] Among Gilbert and Sullivan's best known comic operas are H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The
Mikado.[23] Carte built the Savoy Theatre in 1881 to present their joint works, and through the inventor of electric light Sir Joseph
Swan, the Savoy was the first theatre, and the first public building in the world, to be lit entirely by electricity.[24][25] The success of
Gilbert and Sullivan greatly expanded the audience for musical theatre.[26] This, together with much improved street lighting and
transportation in London led to a late Victorian and Edwardian theatre building boom in the W
est End.

20th-century
At the end of the century, Edwardian musical comedycame to dominate the musical stage.[27]

Irish playwrights George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) and J. M. Synge (1871–1909) were influential in British drama. Shaw's career
as a playwright began in the last decade of the nineteenth century, while Synge's plays belong to the first decade of the twentieth
century. Synge's most famous play, The Playboy of the Western World, "caused outrage and riots when it was first performed" in
Dublin in 1907.[28] George Bernard Shaw turned the Edwardian theatre into an arena for debate about important political and social
[29]
issues, like marriage, class, "the morality of armaments and war" and the rights of women.

In the 1920s and later Noël Coward (1899–1973) achieved enduring success as a playwright, publishing more than 50 plays from his
teens onwards. Many of his works, such as Hay Fever (1925), Private Lives (1930), Design for Living (1932), Present Laughter
(1942) and Blithe Spirit (1941), have remained in the regular theatre repertoire. In the 1930s W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood
co-authored verse dramas, of which The Ascent of F6 (1936) is the most notable, that owed much to Bertolt Brecht. T. S. Eliot had
begun this attempt to revive poetic drama with Sweeney Agonistes in 1932, and this was followed by The Rock (1934), Murder in the
Cathedral (1935) and Family Reunion (1939). There were three further plays after the war
.

Saunders Lewis (1893–1985), writer in Welsh, was above all a dramatist. His earliest published play wasBlodeuwedd (The woman of
flowers) (1923–25, revised 1948). Other notable plays include Buchedd Garmon (The life of Germanus) (radio play, 1936) and
several others after the war.

James Bridie, the pseudonym used by Osborne Henry Mavor (1888–1951), was a Scottish playwright, screenwriter and surgeon,
considered to be a founding father of modern Scottish theatre, following his involvement with the founding of both the Citizens
Theatre and Scotland's first college of drama, now known as theRoyal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.

After 1945
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe started life when eight theatre companies turned up uninvited to the inaugural Edinburgh International
Festival in 1947. Seven performed in Edinburgh, and one undertook a version of the medieval morality play "Everyman" in
Dunfermline Abbey, about 20 miles north, across the Firth of Forth, in Fife. These groups aimed to take advantage of the large
assembled theatre crowds to showcase their own, alternative, theatre. The Fringe got its name the following year (1948) after Robert
Kemp, a Scottish playwright and journalist, wrote during the second Edinburgh International Festival: ‘Round the fringe of official
Festival drama, there seems to be more private enterprise than before ... I am afraid some of us are not going to be at home during the
evenings!’.[30] The artistic credentials of the Fringe were established by the creators of the Traverse Theatre, John Calder, Jim
Haynes and Richard Demarco in 1963. While their original objective was to maintain something of the Festival atmosphere in
Edinburgh all year round, the Traverse Theatre quickly and regularly presented cutting edge drama to an international audience on
both the Edinburgh International Festivaland on the Fringe during August.

Sadler's Wells, under Lilian Baylis, nurtured talent that led to the development of an opera company, which became the English
National Opera (ENO), a theatre company, which evolved into the National Theatre, and a ballet company, which eventually became
the English Royal Ballet.

The Royal Shakespeare Company operates out of Stratford-upon-Avon, producing mainly but not exclusively Shakespeare's plays.
The RSC was formally established on 20 March 1961 with the royal announcement that the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre would
henceforth be known as the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and the company as the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 1962 the RSC
established the Aldwych Theatre as its London base for productions transferred from Stratford to London, its stage redesigned to
match the RST's apron stage. In 1982, the company took up London residence in both the Barbican Theatre and The Pit studio space
in the Barbican Centre under the auspices of the City of London. The RSC was closely involved in the design of these two venues.
Since 2002 the RSC has had no regular London home, concentrating its work in Stratford at the Swan Theatre and the redeveloped
Royal Shakespeare Theatre (re-opened in 2010).

An important cultural movement in the British theatre that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s was Kitchen sink realism (or
kitchen sink drama), art (the term itself derives from an expressionist painting by John Bratby), novels, film, and television plays.[31]
The term angry young men was often applied members of this artistic movement. It used a style of social realism which depicts the
domestic lives of the working class, to explore social issues and political issues. The drawing room plays of the post war period,
typical of dramatists like Terence Rattigan and Noël Coward were challenged in the 1950s by these Angry Young Men, in plays like
John Osborne's Look Back in Anger (1956). Arnold Wesker and Nell Dunn also brought social concerns to the stage.

Again in the 1950s, the absurdist play Waiting for Godot (1955) (originally En attendant Godot, 1952), by the Paris-based Irish
expatriate Samuel Beckett profoundly affected British drama. The Theatre of the Absurd influenced Harold Pinter (1930-2008), (The
Birthday Party, 1958), whose works are often characterised by menace or claustrophobia.[32] Beckett also influenced Tom Stoppard
(1937-) (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead,1966).[33] Stoppard's works are however also notable for their high-spirited wit and
the great range of intellectual issues which he tackles in different plays. Both Pinter and Stoppard continued to have new plays
produced into the 1990s.
Beyond the Fringe was a comedy stage revue written and performed by Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett, and Jonathan
Miller. It played in London's West End and then on New York's Broadway in the early 1960s, and is widely regarded as seminal to
the rise of satire in 1960s Britain.

The Chichester Festival Theatrewas Britain's first modern thrust stage theatre. It was inspired by the Festival Theatre of the Stratford
Shakespeare Festival launched by Tyrone Guthrie in the Canadian city of Stratford, Ontario.[34] The inaugural Artistic Director of the
Chichester Festival was Sir Laurence Olivier, and it was at Chichester that the first National Theatre company was formed.
Chichester's productionswould transfer to the National Theatre's base at theOld Vic in London.

The Theatres Act 1968 abolished the system of censorship of the stage that had existed in Great Britain since 1737. The new
freedoms of the London stage were tested by Howard Brenton's The Romans in Britain, first staged at the National Theatre during
1980, and subsequently the focus of an unsuccessful private prosecution in 1982.

The height of Alan Ayckbourn's commercial success includedAbsurd Person Singular (1975), The Norman Conquests trilogy (1973),
Bedroom Farce (1975) and Just Between Ourselves (1976), all plays that focused heavily on marriage in the British middle classes.
Throughout his writing career, all but four of his plays were premièred at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough in its three
different locations.[35] The Stephen Joseph Theatre was the first theatre in the round in Britain.

Other playwrights whose careers began later in the century are: Caryl Churchill (Top Girls, 1982), Michael Frayn (1933-) playwright
and novelist, David Hare (1947- ), David Edgar (1948- ). Dennis Potter's most distinctive dramatic work was produced for television.

Translations by Brian Friel was first performed at the Guildhall, Derry, Northern Ireland, in 1980. An Irish-language version of the
play has been produced.[36] The play has also been translated into Welsh by Elan Closs Stephens. The Welsh version has visited a
number of venues in Wales and was first published by Gwasg Carreg Gwalch, under its Welsh title Torri Gair ("Breaking the Word"),
in 1982. It is "a play about language and only about language", but it deals with a wide range of issues, stretching from language and
communication to Irish history and cultural imperialism. Friel responds strongly to both political and language questions in modern-
day Northern Ireland.

In 1970, American actor and directorSam Wanamaker founded the Shakespeare Globe Trust and the International Shakespeare Globe
Centre, with the objective of building a faithful recreation of Shakespeare's Globe close to its original location at Bankside,
Southwark. Shakespeare's Globe opened to the public in 1997. Performances are engineered to duplicate the original environment of
Shakespeare's Globe; there are no spotlights, plays are staged during daylight hours and in the evenings (with the help of interior
floodlights), there are no microphones, speakers or amplification.

Radio drama
During the 1950s and 1960s many major British playwrights either effectively began their careers with the BBC, or had works
adapted for radio. Most of playwright Caryl Churchill's early experiences with professional drama production were as a radio
playwright and, starting in 1962 with The Ants, there were nine productions with BBC radio drama up until 1973 when her stage
work began to be recognised at theRoyal Court Theatre.[37] Joe Orton's dramatic debut in 1963 was the radio playThe Ruffian on the
Stair, which was broadcast on 31 August 1964.[38] Tom Stoppard's "first professional production was in the fifteen-minute Just
Before Midnight programme on BBC Radio, which showcased new dramatists".[38] John Mortimer made his radio debut as a
dramatist in 1955, with his adaptation of his own novel Like Men Betrayed for the BBC Light Programme. But he made his debut as
an original playwright with The Dock Brief, starring Michael Hordern as a hapless barrister, first broadcast in 1957 on BBC Radio's
Third Programme, later televised with the same cast, and subsequently presented in a double bill with What Shall We Tell Caroline?
at the Lyric Hammersmith in April 1958, before transferring to the Garrick Theatre. Mortimer is most famous for Rumpole of the
Bailey a British television series which starred Leo McKern as Horace Rumpole, an aging London barrister who defends any and all
clients. It has been spun off into a series of short stories, novels, and radio programmes.[39]

Other notable radio dramatists included Brendan Behan and novelist Angela Carter. Novelist Susan Hill also wrote for BBC radio,
from the early 1970s.[40] Irish playwright Brendan Behan, author of The Quare Fellow (1954), was commissioned by the BBC to
write a radio play The Big House (1956); prior to this he had written two playsMoving Out and A Garden Party for Irish radio.[41]
Among the most famous works created for radio are Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood (1954), Samuel Beckett's All That Fall
(1957), Harold Pinter's A Slight Ache (1959) and Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons (1954).[42] Samuel Beckett wrote a number of
short radio plays in the 1950s and 1960s, and later for television. Beckett's radio play Embers was first broadcast on the BBC Third
Programme on 24 June 1959, and won the RAI prize at thePrix Italia awards later that year.[43]

National theatres
From the 1840s there was a demand to commemorate serious theatre, with the "Shakespeare Committee" purchasing the playwright's
birthplace for the nation demonstrating a recognition of the importance of 'serious drama'. The following year saw more pamphlets on
a demand for a National Theatre from London publisher, Effingham William Wilson.[44] The situation continued, with a renewed call
every decade for a National Theatre. In 1879 the residency of the Comédie-Française at the Gaiety Theatre inspired further demands,
including: a structure in the capital that would present "exemplary theatre"; that would form a permanent memorial to Shakespeare; a
supported company that would represent the best of British acting; and a theatre school.[45] A London Shakespeare League was
founded in 1902 to develop a Shakespeare National Theatre and – with the impending tri-centenary in 1916 of his death – in 1913
purchased land for a theatre in Bloomsbury. This work was interrupted by World War I. Finally, in 1948, the London County Council
presented a site close to the Royal Festival Hall for the purpose, and a "National Theatre Act", offering financial support, was passed
by Parliament in 1949.[46] In July 1962, a board was set up to supervise construction of a National Theatre on the South Bank site
and a separate board was constituted to run a National Theatre Company and lease the Old Vic theatre. The Company was to remain
at the Old Vic until 1976, when the newSouth Bank building was opened.

The theatrical landscape has since been reconfigured, moving from a single national theatre at the end of the 20th century to four as a
result of the devolution of cultural policy.[47] National theatre companies were founded in Scotland and Wales as complements to the
Royal National Theatre in London: Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru (the Welsh language national theatre of Wales, founded 2003),
National Theatre of Scotland (founded 2006), National Theatre Wales (the English language national theatre company of Wales,
founded 2009). Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru attempts to shape a distinctive identity for drama in Welsh while also opening it up to
outside linguistic and dramatic influences.[48]

West End theatre

The West End of London has a large number of theatres, particularly centred around Shaftesbury Avenue.

West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's "Theatreland".[49]
Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre
in the English-speaking world. Seeing a West End show is a commontourist activity in London.[49]

A prolific composer of musical theatre in the 20th century, Andrew Lloyd Webber
has been referred to as "the most commercially successful composer in history".[50]
His musicals have dominated the West End for a number of years and have travelled
to Broadway in New York City and around the world as well as being turned into
films. Lloyd Webber's musicals originally starred Elaine Paige, who with continued
[51]
success has become known as the First Lady of British Musical Theatre.

See also
Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim
Theatre of Scotland Rice's Jesus Christ Superstarin
Theatre of Wales performance at the Minack Theatre,
Theatre of Ireland near to St Levan, Cornwall
List of theatres in the United Kingdom

References
 1. Oxenford, Lyn (1958). Playing Period Plays. Chicago, IL: Coach House Press. p. 3.ISBN 0853435499.
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3. Richardson and Johnston (1991, 97-98).
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ve.org/details/spanishtragedya00kydgoog). Archive.org (2001-03-10). Retrieved on 2013-07-29.
5. Watson, Roderick (2007).The Literature of Scotland. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.ISBN 9780333666647.
6. The first ever known full production of the text was mounted byBiggar Theatre Workshop in September 1997 under
the direction of Ann Matheson. SeeTheatre in Scots (http://www.electricscotland.com/poetry/purves/SlinDrama2.pdf)
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George: The Account of a Rehearsal, Nick Hern Books, London, 1997. ISBN 978-1-85459-317-7
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tp://math.boisestate.edu/gas/html/quarrel.html)
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27. The first "Edwardian musical comedy" is usually considered to beIn Town (1892). See, e.g., Charlton, Fraser. "What
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Machine. accessed 5 January 2009
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(1995-11-13). Retrieved on 2013-07-29.
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bber+%22the+most+commercially+successful+composer+in+history .%22&source=gbs_navlinks_s)The New York
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51. BBC - Radio 2 - Elaine Paige(http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/shows/paige/biography.shtml) BBC Radio

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