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London
Theatre Guide
Donmar Warehouse
Address: Earlham Street, WC2H 9LD
Tube: Covent Garden
Architect: Unknown. The building was initially a hop warehouse owned by a brewery.
Opened: 1977 as a theatre
Capacity: 252
The Donmar Warehouse Theatre is one of the newest and smallest of the London theatres with the Almeida Theatre in Islington. Its first theatrical producer Donald Albery devised the rather unusual name, when he founded the company in 1953. He was a close friend of ballerina Margot Fonteyn, and took the first three letters of both their names to make the word Donmar.
In 1961 he purchased a site for his company from a brewery, but it did not become a theatre immediately. Albery, used it as a private drama studio, and the London Festival ballet used it as a rehearsal room. In 1977, the Royal Shakespears Company acquired the theatre; it became independent and non-profit making in 1992. Since then it has attracted many movie actors including Nicole Kidman in The Blue Room, Gwyneth Paltrow in Proof and Ian McKellen in The Cut. Artistically it has featured new translations of classics such as Ibsen’s classic the Wild Duck. Eight of the productions have transferred to Broadway from the Donmar.
Past performances at the Donmar Warehouse Theatre:
- Kander and Fred Ebb's Cabaret,
- Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie, Stephen Sondheim's Company,
- Alan Bennett's Habeas Corpus
- Chekhov's Uncle Vanya
- Twelfth Night, which transferred to the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
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