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Adelphi theatre

Adelphi Theatre
1806 Sans Pareil
1844 Adelphi
1858 New Adelphi
1901 Century Theatre
1930 Royal Adelphi
Evita at the Adelphi.jpg
Adelphi Theatre in 2007
Address Strand
London, WC2
United Kingdom
Coordinates 51°30′36″N 0°07′22″W / 51.510063°N 0.122900°W / 51.510063; -0.122900
Public transit London Underground Charing Cross
National Rail Charing Cross
Owner Nederlander Organization / Really Useful Theatres
Designation Grade II
Type West End theatre
Capacity 1,500 seated
Production Kinky Boots
Construction
Opened 1806
Rebuilt 1840 Samuel Beazley (new facade)
1858 T.H. Wyatt and Stephen Salter
1901 Ernest Runtz
1930 Ernest Schaufelberg
Architect John and Jane Scott
Website
Official website at Really Useful Theatres Group

The Adelphi Theatre /əˈdɛlfi/ is a London West End theatre, located on the Strand in the City of Westminster. The present building is the fourth on the site. The theatre has specialised in comedy and musical theatre, and today it is a receiving house for a variety of productions, including many musicals. The theatre was Grade II listed for historical preservation on 1 December 1987.

It was founded in 1806 as the Sans Pareil ("Without Compare"), by merchant John Scott, and his daughter Jane (1770–1839). Jane was a British theatre manager, performer, and playwright. Together, they gathered a theatrical company and by 1809 the theatre was licensed for musical entertainments, pantomime, and burletta. She wrote more than fifty stage pieces in an array of genres: melodramas, pantomimes, farces, comic operettas, historical dramas, and adaptations, as well as translations. Jane Scott retired to Surrey in 1819, marrying John Davies Middleton (1790–1867).

On 18 October 1819, the theatre reopened under its present name, which was adopted from the Adelphi Buildings opposite.

In its early years, the theatre was known for melodrama, called Adelphi Screamers. Many stories by Charles Dickens were also adapted for the stage here, including John Baldwin Buckstone's The Christening, a comic burletta, which opened on 13 October 1834, based on the story The Bloomsbury Christening. This is notable for being thought the first Dickens adaption performed. This was the first of many of Dickens's early works adapted for the stage of the Adelphi, including The Pickwick Papers as William Leman Rede's The Peregrinations of Pickwick; or, Boz-i- a-na, a three-act burletta first performed on 3 April 1837, Frederick Henry Yates's production of Nicholas Nickleby; or, Doings at Do-The-Boys Hall in November and December 1838, and Edward Stirling's two-act burletta The Old Curiosity Shop; or, One Hour from Humphrey's Clock (November and December 1840, January 1841). The theatre itself, makes a cameo appearance in The Pickwick Papers


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