How judgmental of me. I had passed the crimson banners of the Palace Theatre several times and never thought The Commitments could impress me. That was until I saw it and gosh, I was proven wrong. Originally written as a book in 1987, it was turned into a film by director Alan Parker and fine-tuned for the West End stage by Jamie Lloyd in 2013. Many will be familiar with funky songs from Parker’s film including ‘Mustang Sally’, ‘In The Midnight Hour’ and ‘What Becomes of the Broken … [Read more...]
Palace Theatre London Harry Potter and The Cursed Child Parts I and II
The regular performance schedule is as follows – Monday – no performance, Tuesday – no performance, Wednesday – 2pm Part One & 7.30pm Part Two, Thursday – 7.30pm Part One, Friday – 7.30pm Part Two, Saturday – 2pm Part One & 7.30pm Part Two, Sunday – 1pm Part One & 6.30pm Part Two.
Every Friday, The Friday Forty takes place at 1pm when 40 tickets are released for every performance the following week for some of the very best seats in the theatre. Subsequent ticket releases take place each Friday for performances the following week. Priced at £40 (£20 per part) tickets will secure a seat for both Part One and Part Two on consecutive performances. Customers will be selected at random for the opportunity to buy tickets online and will be able to purchase a maximum of two tickets for both Part One and Part Two in one transaction. To ensure that as many people as possible have the chance to access these tickets, they will only be available to buy online.
Travel Information
Nearest Tube: Leicester Square
Tube Lines: Piccadilly, Northern
Directions from nearest tube: Take Charing Cross Road until you reach the crossroads with Shaftesbury Avenue.
Railway Station: Charing Cross
Bus Numbers: (Shaftesbury Avenue) 14, 19, 38; (Charing Cross Road) 24, 29, 176
Night Bus Numbers: (Shaftesbury Avenue) 14, N5, N19, N20, N38; (Charing Cross Road) 24, 176, N29, N41, N279
Car Park: Chinatown
Within Congestion Zone: Yes
Venue Facilities: Bar, Disabled toilets, Infrared hearing loop, Toilets and Wheelchair accessible
The Palace Theatre London: Opened in 1891 as the Royal English Opera House, grand opera flopped here and the theatre was re-opened as the Palace, a music hall, two years later on 10th December 1892. During the late 1950′s the interior marble work was painted over but thankfully during the last half of the 1980s, the theatre was extensively restored to its former glory without closing the theatre.
The interior painting was removed to once again reveal the marble and onyx, while on the exterior the huge illuminated billboards, advertising productions at the theatre, have been removed to provide a clear view of the building which has a prominent position on Cambridge Circus at the Junction of Shaftesbury Avenue with Charing Cross Road.
Since the mid-1920s, the Palace has been predominantly home to musicals which have included, in 1925 No No Nanette! running for 655 performances, Song of Norway in 1946, in 1949 839 performances of King’s Rhapsody, The Sound of Music in 1961 running for 2385 performances, Cabaret in 1968, and 1972 Jesus Christ Superstar which had a run of 3358 performances. Les Miserables originally opened at the Barbican on 8th October 1985 before transferring to the Palace Theatre on 4th December 1985. Les Miserables became the Palace Theatre’s longest-running show on 10th January, 1994.
4 Stars for The Commitments at the Palace Theatre London
The Commitments seems to have been around for a really long time. The original book of the same name by Roddy Doyle was published in 1987 and turned into an Oscar nominated movie in 1991. However, Roddy’s adaptation of his book into the musical, at the Palace Theatre, only opened in 2013. Following a re-vamp and some cast changes at the end of its first year I finally got to see it this week and wow, what a show. Once the ‘wall of lights’ goes up at the start of the show to reveal a run-down … [Read more...]