The Shaw Theatre is a theatre in Somers Town

Somers Town, London

Somers Town, was named for Charles Cocks, 1st Baron Somers. The area in St Pancras, London, was originally granted by William III to John Somers, Lord Chancellor and Baron Somers of Evesham. It was to be strongly influenced by the three mainline north London railway termini: Euston , St...

, in the London Borough of Camden

London Borough of Camden

In 1801, the civil parishes that form the modern borough were already developed and had a total population of 96,795. This continued to rise swiftly throughout the 19th century, as the district became built up; reaching 270,197 in the middle of the century...

. It is located near the Euston Road

Euston Road

Euston Road is an important thoroughfare in central London, England, and forms part of the A501. It is part of the New Road from Paddington to Islington, and was opened as part of the New Road in 1756...

, beside the British Library

British Library

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...

 and St Pancras Chambers (formerly the Midland Grand Hotel), equidistant from King's Cross station and Euston station

Euston railway station

Euston railway station, also known as London Euston, is a central London railway terminus in the London Borough of Camden. It is the sixth busiest rail terminal in London . It is one of 18 railway stations managed by Network Rail, and is the southern terminus of the West Coast Main Line...

.

St Pancras library

Before being refurbished in 1998, the Shaw Theatre originally opened its doors in 1971 as a purpose built theatre within the St Pancras

St Pancras, London

St Pancras is an area of London. For many centuries the name has been used for various officially-designated areas, but now is used informally and rarely having been largely superseded by several other names for overlapping districts.-Ancient parish:...

 library. The opening production was the show Zigger Zagger with a cast that included Barrie Rutter

Barrie Rutter

Barrie Rutter is an English actor and the founder and Artistic Director of the Northern Broadsides theatre company based in Halifax, West Yorkshire, England....

 and Paula Wilcox

Paula Wilcox

Paula Wilcox is an English actress. She is best known for her role as Chrissy in the British comedy Man About the House .-Early sitcom fame:...

. In 1972, Simon Ward

Simon Ward

Simon Ward is an English stage and film actor.-Early life:Simon Ward was born in Beckenham, Kent, near London, the son of a car dealer. From an early age he wanted to be an actor. He was educated at Alleyn's School, London, the home of the National Youth Theatre, which he joined at age 13 and...

 and Sinéad Cusack

Sinéad Cusack

Sinéad Moira Cusack is an Irish stage, television and film actress. She has received two Tony Award nominations: once for Best Leading Actress in Much Ado About Nothing , and again for Best Featured Actress in Rock 'n' Roll .-Background:...

 appeared in Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written early in the career of playwright William Shakespeare about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately unite their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular archetypal stories of young, teenage lovers.Romeo and Juliet belongs to a...

. Later in the same year Vanessa Redgrave

Vanessa Redgrave

Vanessa Redgrave, CBE is an English actress of stage, screen and television, as well as a political activist.She rose to prominence in 1961 playing Rosalind in As You Like It with the Royal Shakespeare Company and has since made more than 35 appearances on London's West End and Broadway, winning...

, Nyree Dawn Porter and Windsor Davies

Windsor Davies

Windsor Davies is a British actor, well known for playing the part of Battery Sergeant Major Williams in the 1970s/1980s British sitcom It Ain't Half Hot Mum.-Early life and career:...

 starred in Twelfth Night. Other star

Star

A star is a massive, luminous sphere of plasma held together by gravity. At the end of its lifetime, a star can also contain a proportion of degenerate matter. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth...

s who appeared in the early days include Sir Ian McKellen

Ian McKellen

Sir Ian Murray McKellen, CH, CBE is an English actor. He has received a Tony Award, two Academy Award nominations, and five Emmy Award nominations. His work has spanned genres from Shakespearean and modern theatre to popular fantasy and science fiction...

, Mia Farrow

Mia Farrow

Mia Farrow is an American actress, singer, humanitarian, and fashion model.Farrow first gained wide acclaim for her role as Allison Mackenzie in the soap opera Peyton Place, and for her subsequent short-lived marriage to Frank Sinatra...

, Julia McKenzie

Julia McKenzie

Julia McKenzie is an English actress, singer, and theatre director. She is best-known for her performance in Fresh Fields, but to current television audiences, she is best known for her role as Miss Marple in Agatha Christie's Marple...

 and Raymond Francis

Raymond Francis

Raymond Francis was an English actor best known for his role as Detective Chief Superintendent Tom Lockhart in the Associated-Rediffusion detective series Murder Bag, Crime Sheet and No Hiding Place...

. The theatre hosted a series of Sunday nights at the Shaw, with many notable actor

Actor

An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...

s including Dame Judi Dench

Judi Dench

Dame Judith Olivia "Judi" Dench, CH, DBE, FRSA is an English film, stage and television actress.Dench made her professional debut in 1957 with the Old Vic Company. Over the following few years she played in several of William Shakespeare's plays in such roles as Ophelia in Hamlet, Juliet in Romeo...

, Dame Flora Robson

Flora Robson

Dame Flora McKenzie Robson DBE was an English actress, renowned as a character actress, who played roles ranging from queens to villainesses.-Early life:...

, Patricia Routledge

Patricia Routledge

Katherine Patricia Routledge, CBE is an English character comedy actress and singer. She is best known for her role as character Hyacinth Bucket in the British television series Keeping Up Appearances and Hetty Wainthropp in the British television series Hetty Wainthropp Investigates...

 and Michael Williams. It also hosted numerous productions by the National Youth Theatre

National Youth Theatre

The National Youth Theatre is a registered charity in London, Great Britain, committed to creative, personal and social development of young people through the medium of creative arts....

.

The theatre is now part of the four star Novotel

Novotel

Novotel is a mid-scale hotel brand within the Accor group. Novotel has close to 400 hotels and resorts in 60 countries, situated in the business districts and tourist destinations of major international cities.-History:...

 London St Pancras hotel. Its website states that it was originally known as the Library Theatre; its current name is in honour of George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...

.

Library closure and refurbishment

After the 1998 refurbishment, the Shaw has 446 seats and two large foyers, four large dressing rooms for up to 60 people and extensive high quality backstage

Backstage

Backstage may refer to:* Backstage , by Cher* Backstage , an Australian drama* Back Stage , a silent film starring Oliver Hardy* Back Stage , a silent film starring Buster Keaton...

 facilities which include a workshop

Workshop

A workshop is a room or building which provides both the area and tools that may be required for the manufacture or repair of manufactured goods...

 space and laundry

Laundry

Laundry is a noun that refers to the act of washing clothing and linens, the place where that washing is done, and/or that which needs to be, is being, or has been laundered...

 facilities.

Notable musicians, actors and comedian

Comedian

A comedian or comic is a person who seeks to entertain an audience, primarily by making them laugh. This might be through jokes or amusing situations, or acting a fool, as in slapstick, or employing prop comedy...

s who have performed at the Shaw Theatre include Dionne Warwick

Dionne Warwick

Dionne Warwick is an American singer, actress and TV show host, who became a United Nations Global Ambassador for the Food and Agriculture Organization, and a United States Ambassador of Health....

, Eartha Kitt

Eartha Kitt

Eartha Mae Kitt was an American singer, actress, and cabaret star. She was perhaps best known for her highly distinctive singing style and her 1953 hit recordings of "C'est Si Bon" and the enduring Christmas novelty smash "Santa Baby." Orson Welles once called her the "most exciting woman in the...

, Boy George

Boy George

Boy George is a British singer-songwriter who was part of the English New Romantic movement which emerged in the early 1980s. He helped give androgyny an international stage with the success of Culture Club during the 1980s. His music is often classified as blue-eyed soul, which is influenced by...

, Van Morrison

Van Morrison

Van Morrison, OBE is a Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician. His live performances at their best are regarded as transcendental and inspired; while some of his recordings, such as the studio albums Astral Weeks and Moondance, and the live album It's Too Late to Stop Now, are widely...

, Harry Connick Jr., Ron Moody

Ron Moody

Ron Moody is an English actor.- Personal life :Moody was born in Tottenham, North London, England, the son of Kate and Bernard Moodnick, a studio executive. His father was of Russian Jewish descent and his mother was a Lithuanian Jew. He is a cousin of director Laurence Moody and actress Clare...

, and Janie Dee

Janie Dee

Janie Dee is an English actress and singer.She is married to the actor Rupert Wickham.-Theatre:Dee is presently part of the Globe Theatre 2011 season playing The Countess of Roussillion in Shakespeare's "All's Well that Ends Well" and in October she goes to Nottingham Playhouse to play Amanda in ...

 whose concert included a surprise performance by Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber

Andrew Lloyd Webber

Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber is an English composer of musical theatre.Lloyd Webber has achieved great popular success in musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of...

. The successful An Evening With ... nights' guests included Tony Benn

Tony Benn

Anthony Neil Wedgwood "Tony" Benn, PC is a British Labour Party politician and a former MP and Cabinet Minister.His successful campaign to renounce his hereditary peerage was instrumental in the creation of the Peerage Act 1963...

, Ann Widdecombe

Ann Widdecombe

Ann Noreen Widdecombe is a former British Conservative Party politician and has been a novelist since 2000. She is a Privy Councillor and was the Member of Parliament for Maidstone from 1987 to 1997 and for Maidstone and The Weald from 1997 to 2010. She was a social conservative and a member of...

, Sir John Mortimer

John Mortimer

Sir John Clifford Mortimer, CBE, QC was a British barrister, dramatist, screenwriter and author.-Early life:...

 and Nicholas Parsons

Nicholas Parsons

Nicholas Parsons OBE is a British actor and radio and television presenter.-Early life:...

; the latter has also recorded his radio show Just a Minute

Just a Minute

Just a Minute is a BBC Radio 4 radio comedy panel game chaired by Nicholas Parsons. Its first transmission on Radio 4 was on 22 December 1967, three months after the station's launch. The Radio 4 programme won a Gold Sony Radio Academy Award in 2003....

at the Shaw.

For members of the public there is disabled access, cloakroom

Cloakroom

A cloakroom, or sometimes coatroom, is a room for people to hang their cloaks. They are typically found inside large buildings, such as gymnasiums, schools, churches or meeting halls....

 facilities and a bar serving drinks and refreshments. The venue is also used for exhibition

Art exhibition

Art exhibitions are traditionally the space in which art objects meet an audience. The exhibit is universally understood to be for some temporary period unless, as is rarely true, it is stated to be a "permanent exhibition". In American English, they may be called "exhibit", "exposition" or...

s.

The Shaw Theatre's policy as of 2009 is to present, as a receiving house, high quality drama from funded regional theatre

Regional theatre in the United States

Regional theaters, or resident theaters, in the United States are professional or semi-professional, theater companies that produce their own seasons. The term regional theatre most often refers to professional theatres outside of New York City...

 and independent theatre

Independent Theatre

The Independent Theatre was a dramatic society founded in 1930 by Doris Fitton , and was also the name given to the building it occupied from 1938. It was named for London's Independent Theatre Society founded by J. T...

 companies for short to medium length runs and short term hires. The theatre is also in demand from New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

 based Broadway

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 and off Broadway producers. The Artistic Director is John-Jackson Almond.

External links

• Shaw Theatre Official Site