Apollo Victoria Theatre

The Apollo Victoria Theatre was originally opened as a huge cinema in the 1930s, seating over 2,000 people. Architects Ernest Wainsley Lewis and William Trent designed the building as the first of its kind in the Germanic expressionist style. Inside the theatre the décor has a nautical theme with fish, shells, portholes and, somewhat bizarrely, a Cleopatra style reclining mermaid above the entrance to the gentlemen’s toilets. After six years of being closed after its cinema career, the Theatre reopened in 1981 for musical shows, with Shirley Bassey singing at the opening ceremony. That year kicked off with famous number The Sound of Music. Starlight Express was also performed here – for an incredible 7,406 performances over 18 years. The whole seating area was reconstructed for the Starlight Express, which required a track to be built, right down the middle of the audience. In 2006 another block buster show came to the Apollo – the new American musical Wicked. Wicked is the untold story of the witches of the Wizard of Oz – although it has been told enough times now to have received a massive 50 million pounds in box office takings in London alone.