Tucked away between Oxford Circus and Great Marlborough Street with a discreetness that belies its enormous size, the London Palladium is one of the city's best-loved and most beautiful theatres. Opening on Boxing Day, 1910, its rose and gold interior has welcomed generations of audiences to shows with a populist, variety flavour. 'The Royal Variety Show', a perennial British favourite, is filmed here, while commercial stage shows from 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' to 'Scrooge' have benefited from a steady flow of popular TV faces.
Acquired by Andrew Lloyd Webber in 2000, the venue had a blockbuster '00s, the tail end fuelled by its owners hit talent search shows, foremost the production of 'The Sound of Music' spawned by 'How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?'
But with a whopping 2,286 seats, sometimes the Palladium struggles to find a hit big enough to fill it. Although 2011's 'The Wizard of Oz' was a legitimate box office success, the notorious flop of 'I Can't Sing!' in 2014 led to a period in the wilderness, where the theatre focused on limited run shows, comedy gigs, and one-off performances from bands. In 2019, that all changed with the prospect of a revival of Lloyd Webber's 'Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat', in a second coming for a hit of Biblical proportions.