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West End Stage Shows - Compared to New York's Broadway

By: Peter Chadwick

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London's Westend is highly regarded for professional stage shows. Together with Broadway in New York, West End theatre is frequently considered to produce many of the greatest shows in the world. Viewing a Westend show is incredibly popular entertainment especially with tourists. A lot of stage shows and in particular hit musicals are performed in the great theatres of London's West End. A huge number of people go to a Westend theatre show every year. West End Theatre Breaks are also tremendously common in the United kingdom. Theatre Breaks are regularly booked as a short break treat to celebrate a special occasion. A Westend show is the main entertainment but booked together with a hotel and often reservations in a top London restaurant.

London's main theatre region consists of approximately forty venues and was rebranded by Westminster Council as well as the Society of London Theatre as "Theatreland". It is located in the heart of the Westend of Central London and is traditionally 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 plus The Strand. The majority of the works staged are musical theatre, comedy performances and classic drama.

London's Westend theatre region started to be established with the opening of many small venues around 1806. The expansion of the West End theatre region gained pace with the Theatres Act 1843 that relaxed the conditions for the performance of plays. In the decades that followed, numerous new theatres were opened. The development continued until the first world war. For the duration of the 1950s and 1960s, many plays were produced in theatre clubs so as to avoid the censorship at that time exercised by the Lord Chamberlain's Office. However, the Theatres Act 1968 at last abolished censorship of the stage in the UK.

Many Westend theatres are of late Victorian or Edwardian construction and the majority are privately owned. The majority 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. Then again, leg room is usually cramped and audience amenities like bars and public conveniences are usually a good deal smaller than in modern theatres. The protected status of the structures and their confined urban locations, combined with economic constraints, make it very hard to make substantial improvements to the level of comfort offered.

Some of the long running musical theatre staged in the Westend have successfully played to audiences for many years. A few of the most well-liked theatre shows include We Will Rock You that is set in a future world where rock music is banned, Les Miserables which is a worldwide 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 story of a boy who loves 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 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 choose from. There really is a show that would appeal to everyone. Attending a theatre show in the West end is truly rather special.

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