About the Arts Theatre
Located in Leicester Square, the Arts Theatre is an intimate West End venue renowned for providing a platform for smaller plays and musicals to open in London. The Arts Theatre originally opened in 1927 as a private members club in a bid to avoid censorship from the Lord Chamberlain’s office, where all new plays were required to be licensed before being granted permission to be performed in a theatre. During this time theatremakers took risks staging a range of diverse and experimental plays that weren’t viable in West End theatres at the time.
The legendary director Sir Peter Hall took the reigns of the Arts Theatre in the late 1950s. During this time he staged the English Language premiere of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and an acclaimed production of Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra which saw comedian Ronnie Barker make his West End debut.
More recently, the Arts Theatre was the home of Six the Musical when it premiered in London, following a hugely successful Edinburgh Fringe debut. It has since transferred to the larger Lyric Theatre, followed by the Vaudeville Theatre in 2021. The Arts Theatre is now the rowdy but loveable place to book The Choir of Man tickets. This homegrown jukebox musical about pubs and friendship is the perfect fit for the venue’s small and welcoming auditorium.
