Getting ready for Piccadilly: Some background

Post date: Jan 14, 2018 9:55:22 AM

(Summarized from the video below)

On 27 April, 1928,  Piccadilly Theatre opened with a musical play called Blue Eyes, written by Jerome Kern and starring Evelyn Laye,  one of the most acclaimed actresses of that period. 

Soon after, Warner took over the Piccadilly and began using it as a cinema to show the

new craze of the time. Indeed, it was here that the very first talkie was shown in Britain, The Singing Fool, staring Al Jolson.

However, Piccadilly returned to live theater use again in November 1929.  

There were an enormous amount of difficulties to building a theater in the West End of London. The building of the theater involved the labor of 200 men per day for twelve months. The auditorium holds 1,400 people and the number of bricks employed in the building, if placed end to end in one straight

line, would reach from London to Paris. 

The Piccadilly Theatre is one of the first in London for luxurious comfort and practical utility, for the audience and the artist.  Behind the stage there are thirty luxurious dressing rooms, all supplied with hot and cold water, and an electric passenger lift has been installed for easy access to the higher levels of the dressing rooms.  No effort has been spared to give the necessary convenience and safety to the

artists. On the Stage there is a very up-to-date system of lighting, comprising all the latest devices for producing lighting effects.  In addition, the new Piccadilly Theatre was served by the largest tube station in the world, the new Piccadilly Tube Station. This permitted every social class to reach the west end easily. 

Piccadilly sadly closed at the outbreak of the War in 1939,  but it reopened in July 1941 with a production of Noel Coward's Blithe Spirits.  Unfortunately, the theater was later damaged by German flying bombs and was closed for a few years until it reopened under the management of The Piccadilly Theatre Ltd.

People always need to be angry at something, but the British seem to handle things much better when they think about things less: get everything out of their head; trust their gut; trust their heart; focus less on what people say and more on what can be accomplished. Nothing makes you quite so aware of a person's presence as the loss of it. Where there is heroism there will always be hope- The Piccadilly Theatre has always been a place were hope can be found. 

Therefore, I’m not sure I can trust a modernist with an English name. Give me a German or Italian modernist. They’re the ones who have to start all over again. Whatever would an Englishman want to change?  Those were the good old days.