Westend London Stage Shows

London's West End is very well regarded for professional stage shows. Together with Broadway in New York, West End theatre is frequently thought to deliver some of the greatest productions in the world. Viewing a Westend show is very popular entertainment particularly with holiday-makers. Countless theatre shows and in particular hit musicals are staged in the large theatres of London's Theatre Land. Large numbers of people go to a Westend theatre show each year. Westend Theatre Breaks are also very common in the UK. Theatre Breaks are often booked as a weekend treat to celebrate a special occasion. A Westend show is the focal entertainment however booked along with accommodation and often reservations in a top restaurant.

London's main theatre region includes around forty theatres and was rebranded by Westminster Council and the Society of London Theatre as "Theatreland". It is located in the middle of the West End of Central London and is historically defined by Oxford Street to the North, The Strand to the South, Kingsway to the East and Regent Street to the West. Prominent theatre streets are Drury Lane, Shaftesbury Avenue and The Strand. Most of the shows are musicals, traditional plays and comedy performances.

London's West End theatre region started to be established through the opening of many small venues around 1806. The expansion of the West End entertainment area gained pace with the Theatres Act 1843 that relaxed the conditions for the performance of plays. In the decades that followed, many new theatres were opened. That pattern continued until the first world war. All through the 1950s and 1960s, lots of plays were created in theatre clubs so as 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 in the UK.

Many Westend theatres are of Victorian or Edwardian construction and the majority are privately owned. The bulk of them have great character and the biggest and best maintained include grand neo-classical, Romanesque or Victorian façades and luxurious detailed interior design and decoration. On the other hand, leg space is often cramped and audience facilities for instance bars and toilets are usually a good deal smaller than in modern venues. The protected status of the buildings and their confined city locations, combined with financial constraints, make it very hard to make significant improvements to the level of comfort offered.

Some of the long running musicals staged in the West End have successfully played to audiences for several years. A few of the most well-liked theatre shows are We Will Rock You which is set in a futuristic world where rock music is banned, Les Miserables which is a worldwide award winning musical about an epic story of passion and destruction, Chicago is about a girl who has killed her lover but is acquitted, The Lion King that is an adaptation of the Disney film, The Phantom of the Opera which tells the story of the phantom that terrorises the Paris Opera, Billy Elliot which is the touching story of a boy who falls in love with ballet, Dirty Dancing which is the stage version of the classic movie, Sister Act is another adaptation of a hit movie, Mamma Mia is about a mother and daughter and three possible dads, and Stomp which is a fast paced combination of music, tap dance and percussion. The list is endless as there really are so many Westend stage productions to pick from. There really is a show that would appeal to everybody. A Westend Theatre show is a truly magnificent night out to remember.

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