West End Entertainment – London's Theatre

London's Westend is very well thought of for professional stage shows. Together with New York's Broadway, West End entertainment is often considered to deliver some of the greatest productions in the world. Seeing a West End production is very popular entertainment particularly among visitors. Many stage shows and in particular best hit musicals are staged in the great theatres of London's Theatre Land. Large numbers of people go to a Westend theatre show each year. West End Theatre Breaks are also particularly common in the UK. Theatre Breaks are often booked as a short break luxury to celebrate a special occasion. A West End show is the focal entertainment but booked along with accommodation and often restaurant reservations for a special meal.

The main theatre area of London consists of about forty venues and was renamed by Westminster Council and the Society of London Theatre as "Theatreland". It is situated in the middle of the Westend of Central London and is historically defined by The Strand to the South, Oxford Street to the North, Regent Street to the West and Kingsway to the East. Prominent theatre streets are Drury Lane, Shaftesbury Avenue and The Strand. Most of the works staged are musicals, classic plays and comedy performances.

London's Westend entertainment district started to be established with the opening of countless small theatres about 1806. The expansion of the West End theatre region gained pace with the Theatres Act 1843 which relaxed the conditions for the performance of plays. In the following decades, countless new venues were opened. The pattern continued until the 1st world war. For the duration of the 50s and 60s, many plays ended up being created in theatre clubs in order to evade the censorship at that time exercised by the Lord Chamberlain's Office. However, the Theatres Act 1968 at long last abolished censorship of the stage.

Many of the theatres in the West end are of late Victorian or Edwardian construction and a good number are privately owned. The majority of them have great character and the biggest and best maintained feature grand neo-classical, Romanesque or Victorian façades and luxurious detailed interior design and decoration. Then again, leg room is usually cramped and audience amenities like bars and public conveniences are usually much smaller than in modern venues. The protected status of the structures and their confined urban locations, combined with economic constraints, make it very difficult to make substantial enhancements to the furnishings, fixtures and fittings.

Some of the longest running theatre shows performed in the Westend have successfully played to audiences for several years. Some of the most well-liked theatre shows include We Will Rock You which is set in a futuristic world where rock music is banned, Les Miserables which is an international award winning musical about an epic tale of passion and destruction, Chicago is about a girl who has murdered her lover but is acquitted, The Lion King which is an adaptation of the Disney film, The Phantom of the Opera which tells the tale of the phantom that terrorises the Paris Opera, Billy Elliot which is the touching tale of a boy who falls in love with ballet, Dirty Dancing which is the stage version of the classic film, Sister Act is another adaptation of a hit movie, Mamma Mia is about a mother and daughter and 3 potential dads, and Stomp which is a fast paced mixture of music, tap dance and percussion. The list is endless as there are so many Westend stage productions to choose from. There really is a show that could appeal to everyone. A West end Theatre show is a really lovely night out to remember.

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