Bridge Theatre

London's newest major theatre is a shiny-floored home for director Nick Hytner's dreams and schemes
  • Theatre | Drama
  • Tower Bridge
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Time Out says

Occupying a spot of prime real estate opposite Tower Bridge, this brand spanking new London theatre is a 900-seater space that's been dreamt up by Nicholas Hytner and Nick Starr's London Theatre Company. During his long reign over the National Theatre, Hytner found a winning formula of updates on classics and blockbusting new writing, and he's tried to apply the same approach to his new gaff, albeit with less immediate success. His rabble-rousing interactive take on 'Julius Caesar' wowed critics, but although this new space has attracted a roster of leading playwrights like Barney Norris, Martin McDonagh and Richard Bean, they haven't always done their best work here. 

Still, the Bridge Theatre does excel in providing a level of comfort and spaciousness that you won't get at the West End's charming-but-cramped historic playhouses. It has a grassy terrace with views of the Thames, a vast foyer perfect for sipping wine in a leisurely fashion, and a cafe-bar that makes much of its freshly baked madeleines. Oh, and if you've ever spent the whole interval waiting to spend a penny, know that Bridge Theatre has the most commodious toilets in all of theatreland.

Its 900-seater auditorium is fully flexible, meaning it can swap from a trad proscenium arch set-up to a promenade arrangement that lets audiences members move around. With some of the UK's most exciting writers under commission, there's still room for Bridget Theatre to brew a hit to rival Hytner's old stamping ground the National Theatre, just a few miles upstream.

Bridge Theatre says
The Bridge transforms for one of the greatest musicals of all time. It has more hit songs, more laughs and more romance than any show ever written.

The seating is wrapped around the action while the immersive tickets transport you to the streets of Manhattan and the bars of Havana in the unlikeliest of love stories.

Join us on Broadway for the explosion of joy that is Guys & Dolls.


Tickets are now on sale for Richard II starring Jonathan Bailey!
10 February – 10 May
Book now for Shakespeare’s subtle, ambiguous and beautiful play, directed by Nicholas Hytner.

Details

Address
Bridge Theatre
3 Potters Fields Park
London
SE1 2SG
Opening hours:
Performances: Mon – Sat 7.30pm; Thurs & Sat 2.30pm
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What’s on

Richard II

3 out of 5 stars
The first new Bridge Theatre production in over two years is a bit like excitedly running off to meet an old friend you haven’t seen in ages and then finding the conversation is… okay but a bit stilted.  Bridge boss Nicholas Hytner is a brilliant director of Shakespeare and Jonathan Bailey is a great stage actor. Hytner’s take on Richard II does nothing to make me think I’m wrong about either of these things. But it falls short of the rigorous textual reinvention of the typical Hytner Shakespeare revival – although he gives it a good try.  There is a clear nod to Succession in Grant Olding’s stringy score, and also in the modern dress production’s prevalent visual of besuited men trading a country away over glasses of expensive scotch.  If Bailey’s doomed king was one of the Roy brothers then I guess he’d be Roman. Richard’s defining characteristic is usually his absolute belief in his own divine right to rule England, which blinds him to the fact he’s really terrible at it. Bailey’s king, however, is a self-loathing fuck-up who at his best presents the air of a smug but inept middle manager: see his botching of the duel between Thomas Mowbray and Henry Bolingbroke, when his constant changing of his mind over whether to have the men fight to death or not looks incompetent, not simply capricious. And at his worst, well: he honks a load of coke and decides that screw it, he’s going to invade Ireland (we’ve all been there).  The strong suggestion that Bailey’s Richard knows...
  • Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

4 out of 5 stars
This review is from 2019. A Midsummer Night’s Dream returns to the Bridge Theatre in 2025 with a cast that includes JJ Feild as Oberon/Theseus, Susannah Fielding as Titania/Hippolyta, Emmanuel Akwafo as Bottom and David Moorst returning to the role of Puck/Philostrate. ‘For fuck’s sake,’ mumbled a member of the Bridge Theatre crew as he sprinted past me. It was three hours since Nicholas Hytner’s production of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ had begun and it was unclear as to whether it had technically finished or not. But it probably had, as the unfortunate staff member was trying to retrieve one of the two enormous glowing moon balls that the audience was still furiously punching around the theatre. Meanwhile, to my right, the actual Brienne of Tarth was having a boogie. It’s quite possible that she’s still there now. A weird dream? Nope: just Hytner finally tackling Shakespeare’s beloved comedy. Usually his modern-dress takes on the Bard are precise and revelatory, and certainly he applies *some* of his usual rigour here; but then there’s the feeling that he just got stumped by what is effectively a story about some fairies banging in a wood and decided that – screw it – he might gobble a couple of pills for inspiration (NB I am sure that Sir Nicholas did not actually do this). The results are messy, sprawling and quite glorious. Integral to Hytner’s vision is the effective swapping of the roles of fairy king Oberon (Hytner regular Oliver Chris) and queen Titania (towering...
  • Shakespeare

Into the Woods

When Nicholas Hytner’s Bridge Theatre launched in 2017 it was pretty much a new writing only theatre with a bit of Shakespeare tossed in for good measure, with no musicals at all on the agenda. Still, it’s not like any of this constituted a rule of physics: Hytner’s landmark 2023 revival of Guys & Dolls both broke the musicals omerta and (for now) ended the run of new writing at the theatre. Following the two-year-run for Guys & Dolls and a couple of Shakespeare productions, next up is a revival of the late, great Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods, his puckish musical subversion of the Brothers Grimm fairytales.  The show will be directed by Jordan Fein, an American making a serious name for himself over here thanks to his excellent 2024 Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre revival of Fiddler on the Roof. There’s no word on casting yet, though typically the Bridge can be relied upon for a few decent names. The show will run for 20 weeks only – a good chunk of time, but not a run as monolithic as that of Guys & Dolls.
  • Musicals