St James's Theatre

51°30′22″N 0°08′15″W / 51.50603°N 0.13758°W / 51.50603; -0.13758

The St James's Theatre was in King Street, St James's, London. It opened in 1835 and was demolished in 1957. The theatre was conceived by and built for a popular singer, John Braham; it lost money and after three seasons he retired. A succession of managements over the next forty years also failed to make it a commercial success, and the St James's acquired a reputation as an unlucky theatre. It was not until 1879–1888, under the management of the actors John Hare and Madge and W. H. Kendal that the theatre began to prosper.

The Hare-Kendal management was succeeded, after brief and disastrous attempts by other lessees, by that of the actor-manager George Alexander, who was in charge from 1891 until his death in 1918. Under Alexander the house gained a reputation for programming that was adventurous without going too far for the tastes of London society. Among the plays he presented were Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan (1892) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), and A. W. Pinero's The Second Mrs Tanqueray (1893).

After Alexander's death the theatre came under the control of a succession of managements. Among the long-running productions were The Last of Mrs Cheyney (1925), Interference (1927), The Late Christopher Bean (1933) and Ladies in Retirement (1939). In January 1950 Laurence Olivier and his wife Vivien Leigh took over the management of the theatre. Their successes included Venus Observed (1950) and for the 1951 Festival of Britain season Caesar and Cleopatra and Antony and Cleopatra.

In 1954 Terence Rattigan's Separate Tables began a run of 726 performances, the longest in the history of the St James's. During the run it emerged that a property developer had acquired the freehold of the theatre and obtained the requisite legal authority to knock it down and replace it with an office block. Despite widespread protests the theatre closed in July 1957 and was demolished in December of that year.