About the London Palladium

The Palladium was built for variety, and it still behaves that way. Frank Matcham designed it, and if you have been to the London Coliseum you have seen his work. He was the most prolific British theatre architect of his era and the best at getting a very large audience close to the stage.

It opened on Boxing Day 1910 as a variety theatre and spent its first half-century under the impresarios George Black and Val Parnell, whose name is now on one of the bars. It is Grade II* listed, a higher grade than most West End theatres.

Television made the name. Sunday Night at the London Palladium ran from 1955 and put the address into living rooms every week. It is why "the Palladium" still means something to people who could not name another West End theatre, and why the Royal Variety Performance has lived here for decades.

The Beatles played Sunday Night at the London Palladium on 13 October 1963. The crowd outside on Argyll Street made the next morning's papers, and it is the night usually cited as the start of Beatlemania in Britain.

Evita, 2025. Jamie Lloyd's production sent Rachel Zegler onto the balcony above the front doors at the start of Act Two to sing "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" out to Argyll Street, with the music piped outside with her and the whole thing streamed onto a big screen for the audience inside. Well over a thousand people filled the street most nights, and more than two thousand on the busiest, all of them watching for nothing.

The programme is unusually varied for a theatre this size. Musicals, concerts, comedy, one-off events and the Christmas panto all play here, and it stands on its own street away from the Shaftesbury Avenue cluster, which adds to the sense of occasion. Andrew Lloyd Webber owns the building, through LW Theatres, which is why his shows keep turning up in it: Jesus Christ Superstar in 2026, Evita in 2025, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat before that, and Cats before that.

What's under it, and the ghost

Is anyone buried under the London Palladium? It is one of the most-asked questions about the building and the answer is no. What is down there is a wine cellar. The site was Argyll House, the London home of the Dukes of Argyll, demolished in 1860. The ground was then dug out to a depth of twenty-five feet and Haig & Co.'s five-aisled wine cellars were built across the whole footprint in 1865-66, with vaulting that became the foundation the theatre now stands on.

The theatre does have a ghost, though. A woman in a yellow crinoline dress is said to walk the Crimson Staircase behind the Royal Circle, and the staircase is thought once to have connected to Argyll House. Accounts differ on who she was: some say Helen Campbell, others the mistress of an eighteenth-century Duke of Argyll.

It is not London's oldest theatre, despite how often it is assumed to be. That is the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, where there has been a theatre on the same ground since 1663 and the present building dates from 1812. The Palladium's claim is a different one: fame, and the sense of occasion that came with television.

Notable past productions

• Jesus Christ Superstar (2026), with Sam Ryder as Jesus in his West End debut, before its move to the Theatre Royal Drury Lane
• Evita (2025), Jamie Lloyd's production with Rachel Zegler and the balcony scene on Argyll Street
• Hello, Dolly! (2024)
• The Wizard of Oz (2023)
• Beauty and the Beast (2022)
• Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (2019 and 2021)
• The King and I (2018)
• The Wind in the Willows (2017)
• Cats (2014 to 2016)
• Sunday Night at the London Palladium (from 1955), the television show that made the name

Other venues of similar size

• London Coliseum, 2,359 seats on St Martin's Lane, and Frank Matcham's other big theatre
• Lyceum Theatre, 2,185 seats off the Strand, with the same three levels: Stalls, Royal Circle and Grand Circle
• Apollo Victoria Theatre, 2,328 seats by Victoria station, over two levels