Lyric Hammersmith
Photo: Jim Stephenson
  • Theatre | Private theatres
  • Hammersmith
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Lyric Hammersmith

Leftfield theatre remains at the heart of this striking Hammersmith arts hub
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Time Out says

The Lyric Hammersmith is closed due to the coronavirus epidemic. The programme is technically due to resume with ‘Antigone: The Burial at Thebes’ on April 18.

Emerging in 2015 from a multimillion pound makeover, the Lyric Hammersmith is less a simple theatre, more a multipurpose community hub that includes everything from recording studios to digital development rooms.

But plays remain at the heart of it all, thanks to the singular artistic directorship of Sean Holmes, who has turned the Lyric Hammersmith into a venue both avant-garde and accessible, marking it with his own, very European directorial style. He's leaving in 2019, to be replaced by incoming artistic director Rachel O'Riordan, who's had an impressive run of success at the helm of Cardiff's Sherman Theatre.

Exploring the Lyric's interior is a play of two halves; the front of house areas are all shiny concrete-floored modernity. But step inside the theatre's auditorium and you're suddenly transported into a carefully preserved 1895 Frank Matcham-designed roccoco interior of rare splendour, complete with an unusual, curved proscenium arch. That's because when the original Lyric Theatre was demolished in 1969, its auditorium was painstakingly removed and carefully preserved in a new theatre down the road, which opened in 1979, before being thoroughly revamped and expanded in the 21st century. 

The Lyric Hammersmith's tickets are cheaply priced, with many major shows staging a free preview for local residents. It's never fuller than at panto season, when the auditorium is packed out with families, and its regular Little Lyric strand of programming lures in kids during the school holidays. 

It's also arguably one of the best spots in central Hammersmith to grab a pint and a bite to eat, not least on its first floor roof terrace, which is a green and pleasant oasis in the middle of gritty W6.

Details

Address
Lyric Square, King St
London
W6 0QL
Transport:
Tube: Hammersmith
Price:
Various
Opening hours:
Check website for show times
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What’s on

A Raisin in the Sun

4 out of 5 stars
Lorraine Hansberry’s great 1959 work A Raisin in the Sun is a hugely famous play, frequently staged on Broadway, but for whatever reason much less so over here. I wonder if artistic directors feel it’s too obvious, or that more obscure works of Black twentieth century drama are more deserving of a revival. Certainly the play is hardly lacking in cultural visibility: in recent-ish years we’ve had the rise of Bruce Norris’s Raisin-referencing Clybourne Park, Kwame Kwei-Armah’s Raisin sequel Beneatha’s Place, and a lavish NT production of Hansberry’s unfinished obscurity Les Blancs.   But Tinuke Craig’s touring Headlong revival is the first big UK production to come to London in a very long time, and to quote the actual words of the schoolgirl behind me at the matinee I caught it at: ‘yass Beneatha!’.  What a great play it is.  A rich and powerful mix of domestic blue-collar tragedy, capitalist critique, consideration of Segregation and clear-sighted look forward to a better Black future. It follows the Youngers, a resilient but fraying African American family crammed into a tiny Chicago apartment. Walter’s marriage to his wife Ruth is visibly strained – she’s a pragmatist, but he can only keep his head up high by dreaming bigger, and he chafes at his family’s refusal to get behind his desire to open a liquor store with a couple of semi-reputable pals. His student sister Beneatha dreams rather differently, of Black liberation and Nigerian culture. And stern widowed matriarch Len
  • Drama

Aladdin

The reputation of the Lyric Hammersmith panto is as the spikey satirical bad boy of the London pantomime scene. Last year’s ‘Cinderella’ was distinctly cuddlier, however, and the same may go for 2024 given that it reunites 2023 director Nicholai La Barrie and writer Sonia Jalaly. Specific details of their production are thin on the ground at the moment, but rest assured it’s not going to be one of those iffy yellowface productions you still hear about. Andre Antonio stars as Aladdin, with the redoubtable Emmanuel Akwafa returning on daming duties as Widow Twerkey.
  • Panto
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