Panton StreetThe Harold Pinter Theatre, known as the Comedy Theatre until 2011, is a West End theatre, and opened on Panton Street in the City of Westminster, on 15 October 1881, as the Royal Comedy Theatre. It was designed by Thomas Verity and built in just six months in painted (stucco) stone and brick. By 1884 it was known as simply the Comedy Theatre. In the mid-1950s the theatre underwent major reconstruction and re-opened in December 1955; the auditorium remains essentially that of 1881, with three tiers of horseshoe-shaped balconies.
The theatre's reputation grew through the First World War when C B Cochran and André Charlot presented their famous review shows. The range of work at the Harold Pinter Theatre has been far reaching, from musical comedies to revival and experimental theatre and includes hugely successful shows such as Savages starring Paul Scofield in 1973 and The Rocky Horror Show making its West End debut in 1979.
Alan Bennet has appeared with Patricia Routledge in his Talking Heads and Stockard Channing appeared in Six Degrees of Separation, which won best play at the 1993 Olivier Awards.
The Homecoming, No-man's Land, Moonlight, The Hothouse and the Pinter at the Pinter Season directed by Jamie Lloyd. In recent years, Francesca Annis and Anthony Andrews have starred in Ibsen's Ghosts.