 Hampstead Theatre
Eton Avenue, Swiss Cottage, NW3 3EU
What's on at Hampstead Theatre
Nearest underground:
Swiss Cottage (Jubilee Line), Finchley Road (Jubilee Line, Metropolitan Line)
Nearest rail:
South Hampstead
A scout hut in Hampstead Village was the incongruous beginning for the Hampstead Theatre, but it was there that it was first established in 1959 by its artistic director, James Roose-Evans. Its first production, The King’s Daughter, was set to music coming from the rather surprising direction of a young Peter O’Toole. The Hampstead theatre’s next home was just as unlikely – a portakabin – and not even in Hampstead, but in neighbouring Swiss Cottage. It was only intended to be temporary and the cramped bar and foyer were ill sized to receive the audience numbers it did. Fortunately, a new building was constructed on the site next to Swiss Cottage station, a striking structure that opened in 2003.
The theatre’s aim has always been to promote and nurture new works and talent, and it has managed to ensure this has always been of the highest quality. In the 1960s some of theatre’s greatest luminaries worked with the Hampstead Theatre, and it was then that it produced its first transfer to the West End, with Noel Coward’s Private Lives. During the last 14 years it has done this with 21 productions and two (Aristocrats and Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me) have even gone to Broadway.
What's on at Hampstead Theatre
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