About the Empress Museum

This corner of London has been in the entertainment business for a very long time. The Earls Court Exhibition Ground opened in 1887 and drew crowds to attractions including the Gigantic Wheel, a 300-foot Ferris wheel that stood on the site for a decade. The Exhibition Centres that followed were among London's best known event spaces for most of the twentieth century, until they were demolished in the 2010s.

The Empress Museum building survived it. Most recently it housed the BBC Earth Experience before being converted into a Big Top for Come Alive!, which opened on 27 September 2024 after previews from 23 September.

It is a purpose-built entertainment space, not an old theatre, so don't come for the architecture. You get a ring, seating on all four sides of it in colour-coded banks, and a full hour of circus before the circus proper begins.

It is run by Outside the Box Amusements and TSG Entertainment alongside the Earls Court Development Company, and tickets are issued through KX Tickets rather than any of the West End operators.

Productions at the Empress Museum

• Come Alive! The Greatest Showman Circus Spectacular (from September 2024), the only production here since the Big Top opened

Other venues of similar size

• @sohoplace, 602 seats in Soho, a new theatre that can put its audience on all four sides
• Capital Theatre, 620 seats at Westfield London, also in West London
• Kit Kat Club at the Playhouse Theatre, 649 seats, an old theatre rebuilt in the round for Cabaret