The sheer number of
cultural activities on offer in the capital is breathtaking, with
over 150 theatres and 300 art galleries. Contemporary figures like
Tracy Emin and Zadie Smith complement the rich heritage of Shakespeare
and Turner.
The concrete mass of the South
Bank Centre, South Bank, SE1 (telephone: (020) 7960 4242), is
one of the city’s cultural Meccas. It houses the Hayward Gallery
and three concert halls – the Royal Festival Hall, the Queen
Elizabeth Hall and the Purcell Room. Next door is the flagship Royal
National Theatre, South Bank, SE1 (telephone: (020) 7452 3400
(information) or 7452 3000 (box office). Flying the flag north of
the river, the labyrinthine Barbican
Centre, Silk Street, EC2 (telephone: (020) 7638 8891 (box office)
or 7638 4141 (information), is a performing and visual arts venue
with a varied all-year programme of events.
London Tourist Board’s Visitor Call service (telephone: (0906)
133 7799) and the weekly Time
Out magazine) has details of the week’s entertainment.
Ticket agencies include First
Call Ticketing (telephone: (0870) 840 1111) and Ticketmaster
UK (telephone: (0870) 534 4444).
Music
The world-famous Royal
Opera House, Covent Garden, WC2 (telephone: (020) 7304 4000),
is home to the excellent Royal Opera. Despite some attempts to cut
the price, ballet and opera tickets are still often fairly expensive.
More accessible are performances by the English
National Opera at the London Coliseum, St Martin’s Lane,
WC2 (telephone: (020) 7632 8300).
Large-scale concerts are staged at the Royal Festival Hall (see
above), home of the London
Philharmonic Orchestra (telephone: (020) 7840 4200 or 4242 (box
office), or the Barbican (see above), home of the London
Symphony Orchestra (telephone: (020) 7588 1116). The Royal
Albert Hall, Kensington Gore, SW7 (telephone: (020) 7589 8212
(box office), can also stage huge concerts, including London’s
annual musical highlight, the summer series of the Proms (see Cultural
events below).
Music lovers should head for the traditional but friendly surroundings
of the Wigmore
Hall, 36 Wigmore Street, W1 (telephone: (020) 7935 2141) to
hear chamber music and solo recitals. More informal concerts take
place in halls and churches all over London, including St Martin-in-the-Fields,
St John’s, Smith Square, SW1, and St James’s, Piccadilly,
W1.
Theatre
Within the extraordinary diversity of London’s theatre scene
(there are over 100 theatres in the capital, including 50 in the
West End), the Royal National Theatre (see above) and the Royal
Shakespeare Company (telephone: (01789) 403 404) compete for
audiences with commercial West End theatres, repertory companies,
‘off-West End’ productions and fringe theatres. The
National Theatre’s three auditoriums– The Olivier,
The Cottesloe and The Lyttleton
– allow productions of different scale, from classics to new
writing. The Royal Shakespeare Company, performing primarily Shakespeare
and based out of Stratford-upon-Avon, did use the Barbican as its
London home but now performs in a range of venues including the
Barbican.
The
Old Vic, The Cut, Waterloo, SE1 (telephone: (020) 7928 7616),
offers inspired traditional drama. Meanwhile, down the road, at
66 The Cut, the Young
Vic (telephone: (020) 7928 6363) presents modern productions
of contemporary and classic plays. The Royal
Court Theatre, Sloane Square, SW1 (telephone: (020) 7565 5000),
continues to foster excellent new writing.
Quality innovative productions can also be expected from ‘off-West
End’ theatres, such as the Donmar
Warehouse, Earlham Street, WC2 (telephone: (020) 7369 1732),
and the Almeida,
Almeida Street, N1 (telephone: (020) 7359 4404 (box office). Fringe
theatre, ranging from the inspired to the insane, is performed in
dozens of local venues, including the King’s
Head, 115 Upper Street, N1 (telephone: (020) 7226 1916), which
is the oldest pub-theatre in London.
From May to September, the Globe
Theatre, New Globe Walk, SE1 (telephone: (020) 7401 9919 (box
office), stages open-air productions of Shakespeare and his contemporaries.
There are also outdoor summer performances in Regents Park,at the
Open-air
Theatre, (telephone: (020) 7486 2431.
Theatre tickets in the West End cost £15-50. They can be purchased
in advance from the theatre box office. For purchases on the day
of the performance, there is a booth on the south side of Leicester
Square, formerly called the Half-Price Theatre Ticket Booth, now
called tkts.
This is the official Society of London Theatre’s booth; visitors
should avoid touts and other outlets in the area. The booth sells
mainly half-price tickets, some tickets at 25% discount and some
full-price tickets. Because of the booking fee, when only full-price
tickets are available for that night’s performance, visitors
are advised to go to the theatre box office.
Dance
Touring dance companies perform mostly contemporary dance at the
Sadler’s
Wells Theatre, Rosebery Avenue, EC1 (telephone: (020) 7863 8000
(box office). Ticket prices are usually more reasonable than at
the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, WC2 (telephone: (020) 7304
4000), which is home to the Royal
Ballet.
Film
Local cinemas are less expensive than those in the West End, where
tickets cost upwards of £10. Two main cinema chains are Odeon
(telephone: (0870) 505 0007) and Warner (telephone:
(0870) 240 6020), with venues all over London, their biggest in
Leicester Square, WC2. Barbican
Screen, Silk Street, EC2 (telephone: (020) 7638 8891), is London’s
leading independent cinema showing independent, arthouse and blockbuster
movies, along with the National Film Theatre, on the South Bank,
SE1 (telephone: (020) 7928 3232). IMAX magic can be experienced
at the largest cinema screen in the UK, the newer BFI
London IMAX Cinema, South Bank, SE1 (telephone: (020) 7902 1234).
Cultural Events
New Year revelry has long been a London tradition, with the focus
on an overcrowded Trafalgar Square. A few weeks later, Lion Dancers
welcome in the Chinese New Year in Chinatown, WC2. July begins with
the fun and festivities of the Coin
Street Festival at Gabriel’s Wharf, SE1, the arts extravaganza
that is the Greenwich
and Docklands Festival and a chance for the city’s gay
and lesbian population to strut their stuff in the Mardi Gras parade
and festival. The Notting Hill Carnival (a two-day celebration of
Afro-Caribbean culture during the August Bank Holiday weekend) is
Europe’s largest street carnival, attended by more than two
million people. More sedate events include the Trooping the Colour,
celebrating the Queen’s official birthday in June, and the
impressive Lord Mayor’s Show in November, which is a colourful
display of the long-standing independence of the City of London.
November also has the two-week London
Film Festival .
Summer brings the very popular music festival known as the Proms,
with concerts running from July to September. Tickets for these
BBC Promenade
Concerts start from £3 (non-seated) and the Last Night,
led by the BBC
Symphony Orchestra, is one of the few times when unabashed patriotism
is the order of the day. Summer also brings many other music festivals,
including the City
of London Festival, outdoor performances running from June to
July in the gardens of Kenwood House, on Hampstead Heath, NW3 (telephone:
(020) 7973 3427), and outdoor opera at Holland
Park theatre (telephone: (020) 7602 7856), from June to August.
Literary Notes
London has been home to writers for centuries. Bunhill Fields’
graveyard has monuments to John Bunyan, Daniel
Defoe and William Blake. Bloomsbury
gave its name to a literary set that included Virginia Woolf,
while the suburb of Hampstead was home to John
Keats, H G Wells and D H Lawrence.
Some of the country’s most famous writers are remembered in
Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey.
The mass of 19th-century London life and its legendary fog is vividly
recreated in the novels of Charles Dickens. Sinister
goings-on in the city surface in the Sherlock Holmes
stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis
Stephenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)
and The Secret Agent (1923) by Joseph Conrad.
Graham Greene captured the atmosphere of wartime
London in The Ministry of Fear (1943). |
