London's West End is very well thought of for professional stage shows. Along with Broadway in New York, Westend theatre is often thought to deliver some of the best productions in the world. Seeing a Westend show is very popular entertainment particularly among visitors. Countless stage shows and in particular hit musicals are performed in the great theatres of London's West End. Millions of people attend a West End theatre show every year. Westend Theatre Breaks are also particularly popular in the United kingdom. Theatre Breaks are frequently booked as a short break luxury to celebrate a special occasion. A West End show is the focal entertainment but booked together with a hotel and often reservations in a top London restaurant.
The main theatre area of London contains approximately forty theatres and was renamed by Westminster Council as well as the Society of London Theatre as "Theatre Land". It is located in the middle of the West End 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 include Drury Lane, Shaftesbury Avenue plus The Strand. The majority of the shows are musical theatre, comedy performances and classic drama.
The Westend entertainment district started to be established with the opening of numerous small theatres around 1806. The expansion of the West End entertainment region gained pace with the Theatres Act 1843 which relaxed the conditions for the performance of plays. In the decades that followed, countless new venues were opened. That trend continued until the 1st world war. All through the 50s and 60s, many plays ended up being created in theatre clubs so as to evade 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 West End theatres are of Victorian or Edwardian construction and the majority are privately owned. The majority of them have great character and the largest and best maintained feature grand neo-classical, Romanesque or Victorian façades and magnificent detailed interior design and decoration. On the other hand, leg space is usually cramped and audience amenities for example bars and toilets are often a good deal smaller than in modern theatres. The protected status of the buildings and their confined city locations, combined with financial constraints, make it very difficult to make substantial enhancements to the level of comfort offered.
Many of the longest running musical theatre staged in the Westend have profitably played to audiences for many years. Some of the most well-liked theatre shows include We Will Rock You that is set in a futuristic world where rock music is banned, Les Miserables which is an international award winning musical about an epic story of passion and destruction, Chicago is about a young woman who has murdered her lover but is acquitted, The Lion King that is an adaptation of the Disney film, The Phantom of the Opera that tells the tale of the phantom that terrorises the Paris Opera, Billy Elliot which is the heartrending tale of a boy who falls in love with ballet, Dirty Dancing which is the stage version of the classic movie, Sister Act is another adaptation of a hit movie, Mamma Mia is about a mother and daughter and three potential 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 West End theatre shows to choose from. There really is a show that would appeal to everybody. A Westend show is a really brilliant night out to remember.
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