The Phoenix Theatre is a West End theatre in the London Borough of Camden, located in Charing Cross Road (on the corner of Flitcroft Street). The entrances are on Phoenix Street and Charing Cross Road. The Phoenix Theatre was built on the site of a former factory and then music hall Alcazar before.[1]
Built for Sidney Bernstein, Baron Bernstein, the theatre was designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, Bertie Crewe, and Cecil Massey. It has a restrained neoclassical exterior, but an interior designed in an Italianate style by director and designer Theodore Komisarjevsky. Vladimir Polunin copied works by Tintoretto, Titian, Pinturicchio, and Giorgione. It has a safety curtain that holds Jacopo del Sellaio's The Triumph of Love.[2]
There are golden engravings in the auditorium, and red seats, carpets and curtains. This look is based on traditional Italian theatres. There are decorated ceilings and sculpted wooden doors throughout the building.
It opened on 24 September 1930 with the premiere of Private Lives by Noël Coward, who also appeared in the play, with Adrienne Allen, Gertrude Lawrence and Laurence Olivier. Coward returned to the theatre with Tonight at 8.30 a series of ten[3] plays, in 1936 and Quadrille in 1952.
On 16 December 1969, the long association with Coward was celebrated with a midnight matinee in honour of his 70th birthday, and the foyer bar was renamed the Noel Coward Bar.