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Victoria Palace Theatre

  • Theatre
  • Victoria
Victoria Palace Theatre, 2017
© Philip Vile
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Time Out says

This storied former music hall is the current home to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s ‘Hamilton’

A gilt statue of the late Russian prima ballerina Anna Pavlova is perched atop the charming Victoria Palace Theatre – a fitting decoration for a venue that hosted the long-running ‘Billy Elliot the Musical’ between 2005 and 2016.

Even prior to hosting pirouetting boys in tights, the theatre had a reputation for solid musical entertainment with shows such as ‘High Society’, ‘Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story’ and a revival of ‘Kiss Me, Kate’ all securing lengthy runs.

In fact, though the Victoria Palace Theatre has been through various incarnations, its history as an arts venue is rooted in music, the first theatre on the site being Moy’s Music Hall in 1832.

Following the closure of ‘Billy Elliot’, proprietor Cameron Mackintosh shut the Palace for a lavish refurbishment, which reportedly cost as much as £60m. However, you’d be hard pressed to argue it wasn’t worth it to get the venerable venue ship shape in time to play host to its current occupant: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s superlative ‘Hamilton’.

Details

Address:
Victoria Street
London
SW1E 5EA
Transport:
Rail/Tube: Victoria
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What’s on

Hamilton

  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • Musicals
  • Open run

This review is from 2017.  Okay, let’s just get this out of the way. ‘Hamilton’ is stupendously good. Yes, it’s kind of a drag that there’s so much hype around it. But there was a lot of hype around penicillin. And that worked out pretty well. If anything – and I’m truly sorry to say this – Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical about Alexander Hamilton, the first secretary of the US Treasury, is actually better than the hype suggests. That’s because lost in some of the more waffly discourse around its diverse casting and sociological import is the fact that ‘Hamilton’ is, first and foremost, a ferociously enjoyable show. You probably already know that it’s a hip hop musical, something that’s been tried before with limited success. Here it works brilliantly, because Miranda – who wrote everything – understands what mainstream audiences like about hip hop, what mainstream audiences like about musical theatre, and how to craft a brilliant hybrid. Put simply, it’s big emotions and big melodies from the former, and thrilling, funny, technically virtuosic storytelling from the latter. ‘Alexander Hamilton’, the opening tune, exemplifies everything that’s great about the show. It’s got a relentlessly catchy build and momentum, a crackling, edge-of-seat sense of drama, and is absolutely chockablock with information, as the key players stride on to bring us up to speed with the eventful life that Hamilton – the ‘bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman’ – led before he emigrated to Ameri

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