The history of London's Gate Theatre Studio, often referred to as simply the Gate Theatre, is typical of many small independent theatres of the period.

Founded in October 1925 by Peter Godfrey, a conjurer and clown, and his wife Molly Veness, the theatre was originally on the top floor of a ramshackle warehouse at 38 Floral Street, Covent Garden

Covent Garden

Covent Garden is a district in London on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St. Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit and vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and the Royal Opera House, which is also known as...

. Then known as the Gate Theatre Salon (The Gate to Better Things), it could hold an audience of 96, and opened on 30 October 1925 with Godfrey's production of Susan Glaspell

Susan Glaspell

Susan Keating Glaspell was an American Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, actress, director, novelist, biographer and poet. She was a founding member of the Provincetown Players, one of the most important collaboratives in the development of modern drama in the United States...

's Berenice

Berenice

Berenice or Berenike is the Ancient Macedonian form for Attic Greek Φερενίκη , meaning "bearer of victory", from φέρω "to bear" + νίκη "victory". Berenika priestess of Demeter in Lete ca. 350 BC is the oldest epigraphical evidence. The name also has the form Bernice...

, starring Veness as Margaret, 'the searcher for truth', and which ran for a fortnight.

With a series of challenging productions, including August Strindberg

August Strindberg

Johan August Strindberg was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg's career spanned four decades, during which time he wrote over 60 plays and more than 30 works of fiction, autobiography,...

's The Dance of Death, the Gate struggled to survive without attracting any particular attention, until the Sunday Times critic James Agate

James Agate

James Evershed Agate was a British diarist and critic. In the period between the wars, he was one of Britain's most influential theatre critics...

, enthusiastically reviewing Georg Kaiser

Georg Kaiser

Friedrich Carl Georg Kaiser, called Georg Kaiser, was a German dramatist.-Biography:Kaiser was born at Magdeburg....

's From Morn to Midnight, urged his readers to apply for membership of the theatre and to go and see the production. But at the end of a scheduled three-week run the play was transferred to the Regent Theatre in King's Cross

Kings Cross, London

King's Cross is an area of London partly in the London Borough of Camden and partly in the London Borough of Islington. It is an inner-city district located 2.5 miles north of Charing Cross. The area formerly had a reputation for being a red light district and run-down. However, rapid regeneration...

 when Claude Rains

Claude Rains

Claude Rains was an English stage and film actor whose career spanned 66 years. He was known for many roles in Hollywood films, among them the title role in The Invisible Man , a corrupt senator in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington , Mr...

 took over the leading role from Godfrey.

In March 1927 the Gate Theatre Salon closed and the company moved to a site at 16A Villiers Street, 'underneath the arches' and close to Charing Cross Station

Charing Cross station

Charing Cross station may refer to:In London, England:*Charing Cross railway station*Charing Cross tube station **Embankment tube station was previously named Charing CrossIn Glasgow, Scotland:...

. The new Gate Theatre Studio was constructed from a complex of premises acquired by Carlo Gatti

Carlo Gatti

Carlo Gatti was a Swiss entrepreneur in the Victorian era. He came to England in 1847, where he established restaurants and an ice importing business. He is credited with first making ice cream available to the general public. He moved into music halls. He returned to Switzerland in 1871, leaving...

 and which included Gatti's Underneath the Arches Musical Hall

Charing Cross Music Hall

The Charing Cross Music Hall was a music hall established beneath the Arches of Charing Cross railway station in 1866 by brothers, Giovanni and Carlo Gatti to replace the former Hungerford Hall...

 (now the Players' Theatre

Players' Theatre

The Players' Theatre was a theatre in London as well as a theatre club for music hall in the style of the BBC programme "The Good Old Days".-Origins:...

). But with reconstruction delays the first two productions of the third season were given at the Rudolf Steiner Hall, and it was not until 22 November 1927 that the newly named Gate Theatre Studio opened with Maya, a play by Simon Gantillon, with Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies

Dame Gwen Lucy Ffrangcon-Davies, DBE was a British actress and centenarian. She was born in London of a Welsh family; the name "Ffrangcon" originates from a valley in Snowdonia...

 in the lead, again produced by Godfrey and receiving 53 performances.

By 1934, Godfrey, a man grown tired of shouldering the burden of the theatre, handed it over to a new company formed by Norman Marshall, who took over and refurbished the Gate Theatre Studio, reviving the theatre’s reputation, often financing his productions with highly successful theatrical revues.

Productions, several of which transferred to the West End following censorship troubles with the Lord Chamberlain

Lord Chamberlain

The Lord Chamberlain or Lord Chamberlain of the Household is one of the chief officers of the Royal Household in the United Kingdom and is to be distinguished from the Lord Great Chamberlain, one of the Great Officers of State....

, included Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...

's Salome

Salome

Salome , the Daughter of Herodias , is known from the New Testament...

(1931), Laurence Houseman's Victoria Regina (1935), Elsie Schauffler's Parnell

Parnell

Parnell may refer to:People* Bobby Parnell, a baseball pitcher for the New York Mets* Charles Stewart Parnell , Irish politician* Chris Parnell, actor and comedian* Lee Roy Parnell, country & western singer...

(1936), Lillian Hellman

Lillian Hellman

Lillian Florence "Lily" Hellman was an American playwright, linked throughout her life with many left-wing causes...

's The Children's Hour

The Children's Hour (play)

The Children's Hour is a 1934 stage play written by Lillian Hellman. It is a drama set in an all-girls boarding school run by two women, Karen Wright and Martha Dobie. An angry student, Mary Tilford, runs away from the school and to avoid being sent back she tells her grandmother that the two...

(1936), John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck

John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was an American writer. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden and the novella Of Mice and Men...

's Of Mice and Men

Of Mice and Men

Of Mice and Men is a novella written by Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck. Published in 1937, it tells the tragic story of George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant ranch workers during the Great Depression in California, USA....

(1939) and Reginald Beckwith

Reginald Beckwith

Reginald Beckwith was a British film and television actor, who made almost one hundred film and television appearances in his career.-Filmography:* Freedom Radio * Scott of the Antarctic...

's Boys in Brown

Boys in Brown

Boys in Brown is a 1949 British drama film directed by Montgomery Tully. Depicting life in a borstal for young offenders, it starred Jack Warner, Richard Attenborough, Dirk Bogarde and Jimmy Hanley.-Cast:* Jack Warner as Governor...

(1940). In 1936 the young Robert Morley

Robert Morley

Robert Adolph Wilton Morley, CBE was an English actor who, often in supporting roles, was usually cast as a pompous English gentleman representing the Establishment...

, played the lead in the Stokes

Sewell Stokes

Francis Martin Sewell Stokes was an English novelist, biographer, playwright, screenwriter, broadcaster and prison visitor. He collaborated on a number of occasions with his brother, Leslie Stokes, an actor and later in life a BBC radio producer, with whom he shared a flat for many years...

 brothers' Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde (play)

The play Oscar Wilde, written by Leslie & Sewell Stokes, is based on the life of the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde in which Wilde's friend, the controversial author and journalist Frank Harris, appears as a character...

and later took the play to Broadway.

In the 1930s The Gate Theatre Studio was one of a number of small, committed, independent theatre companies which included the Hampstead Everyman

Everyman Cinema, Hampstead

The Everyman, in Hampstead, London, England opened as a cinema on 26 December 1933.The building was first opened as the Hampstead Drill Hall and Assembly Rooms in the 1880s...

, the Arts Theatre

Arts Theatre

The Arts Theatre is a theatre in Great Newport Street, in Westminster, Central London. It now operates as the West End's smallest commercial receiving house.-History:...

 Club and Q Theatre

Q Theatre

The Q Theatre, seating 490 in 25 rows with a central aisle, was opened in 1924 near Kew Bridge in west London by Jack and Beatie de Leon, and was one of a number of small, committed, independent theatre companies which included the Hampstead Everyman, the Arts Theatre Club and the Gate Theatre Studio...

 at Kew Bridge

Kew Bridge

Kew Bridge is a bridge in London over the River Thames. The present bridge was designed by John Wolfe-Barry and opened in 1903 by King Edward VII. The bridge was givenGrade II listed structure protection in 1983.- Location :...

. These theatres were able to avoid the Lord Chamberlain’s censorship by operating as theatre clubs, where membership was obligatory, and took risks by producing new and experimental plays, or plays by unknown or commercially unviable writers. Norman Marshall refers to these as ‘The Other Theatre’ in his 1947 book of the same name.

The Gate Revues, several starring Hermione Gingold

Hermione Gingold

Hermione Gingold was an English actress known for her sharp-tongued, eccentric persona, an image enhanced by her sharp nose and chin, as well as her deepening voice, a result of vocal nodes which her mother reportedly encouraged her not to remove. She starred on stage, on radio, in films, on...

 who made her first professional appearance at the Gate, restored intimate revue to favour in the West End. But following serious bomb damage in 1941 (the same air raid that destroyed the Little Theatre

Little Theatre

The Little Theatre in Rochester, New York, commonly known as "The Little" is a movie theatre located on historic East Avenue in downtown Rochester, New York and a modest non-profit multiplex specializing in art film, including independent and foreign productions outside the United States.Founded in...

 in the Adelphi

Adelphi

The name Adelphi comes from the Greek word adelphoi, meaning "brothers".Adelphi may refer to:-United States:*Adelphi, Iowa*Adelphi, Maryland*Adelphi, New York*Adelphi, Ohio*Adelphi, Texas-Hotels:...

), the theatre was finally forced to close. The theatre was never to re-open although, according to Norman Marshall, the manpower and material needed to resuscitate it would have been very small.

The spirit of the Gate Theatre Studio was taken up in 1979 by the new Gate Theatre

Gate Theatre (London)

The Gate Theatre is a London fringe theatre above the Prince Albert pub in Notting Hill Gate, from which it takes its name. It opened in 1979.-External links:*...

, a London fringe theatre

Fringe theatre

Fringe theatre is theatre that is not of the mainstream. The term comes from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, which name comes from Robert Kemp, who described the unofficial companies performing at the same time as the second Edinburgh International Festival as a ‘fringe’, writing: ‘Round the fringe...

 above a pub, which may draw its name from its location in Notting Hill Gate

Notting Hill Gate

Notting Hill Gate is one of the main thoroughfares of Notting Hill, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Historically the street was a location for toll gates, from which it derives its modern name.- Location :...

, but shares its innovative inspiration with the past.