There was previously another theatre that was sometimes called the Garrick in London, in Leman Street, opened in 1831 and demolished in 1881.[3]
The new Garrick Theatre was financed in 1889 by the playwright W. S. Gilbert, the author of over 75 plays, including the Gilbert and Sullivancomic operas. It was designed by Walter Emden, with C. J. Phipps brought in as a consultant to help with the planning on the difficult site after an underground river was discovered in the excavation. Originally the theatre had 800 seats on four levels, but the gallery (top) level has since been closed and the seating capacity reduced to 656.[4]
The theatre's first manager was Gilbert's friend John Hare.[4] The first play at the theatre, The Profligate, by Arthur Wing Pinero and starring Hare, opened on 24 April 1889. Sydney Grundy's long-running French-style comedy A Pair of Spectacles opened here in February 1890. Mrs Patrick Campbell starred five years later in Pinero's The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith.[3] Afterwards, the theatre suffered a short period of decline until it was leased by Arthur Bourchier for six years, whose wife, Violet Vanbrugh, starred in a series of successful productions ranging from farce to Shakespeare.[5]
In 1900, the theatre hosted J. M. Barrie's The Wedding Guest. Rutland Barrington presented several stage works at the Garrick, including his popular "fairy play" called Water Babies in 1902, based on Charles Kingsley's book, with music by Alfred Cellier, among others. The only piece actually premiered by W. S. Gilbert here was Harlequin and the Fairy's Dilemma (retitled The Fairy's Dilemma after a few days), a "Domestic Pantomime" (1904). In 1921, Basil Rathbone played Dr. Lawson in The Edge o' Beyond at the Garrick, and the following year Sir Seymour Hicks appeared in his own play, The Man in Dress Clothes. In 1925, Henry Daniell played there as Jack Race in Cobra and appeared there again as Paul Cortot in Marriage by Purchase in March 1932.
A proposed redevelopment of Covent Garden by the GLC in 1968 saw the theatre under threat, together with the nearby Vaudeville, Adelphi, Lyceum, and Duchess Theatres. An active campaign by Equity, the Musicians' Union, and theatre owners under the auspices of the Save London Theatres Campaign led to the abandonment of the scheme.[6] The gold-leaf auditorium was restored in 1986 by the stage designer Carl Toms, and in 1997 the front façade was renovated.
The theatre has mostly been associated with comedies or comedy-dramas. More recent productions are listed below and include No Sex Please, We're British (1982), which played for four years at the theatre before transferring to the Duchess Theatre in 1986. In 1995, the Royal National Theatre's multi-award-winning production of J. B. Priestley's An Inspector Calls opened here, having played successful seasons at the Royal National Theatre's Lyttelton and Olivier theatres as well as the Aldwych Theatre and a season on Broadway.
1967 – Brian Rix presented and appeared in Stand By Your Bedouin, the first in several seasons of farces, including Uproar in the House and Let Sleeping Wives Lie
^Littlewood, S. R. "Vanbrugh, Dame Irene (1872–1949)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edition, January 2011, accessed 7 Jan 2011 (subscription required)
