Dominion Theatre
268-269 Tottenham Court Road,
London,
W1T 5AQ
268-269 Tottenham Court Road,
London,
W1T 5AQ
14 people
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Showing 51 - 54 of 54 comments
The Dominion Theatre opened on 3rd October 1931 as a live theatre, but after a couple of ‘flops’(including a musical starring Maurice Chevalier) it showed its first film, the British premier of the Lon Chaney “Phantom of the Opera” with added talking sequences, sound effects and recorded music on 21st July 1930 (H.G. Wells attended the premier). Its 2nd film presentation was “City Lights” starring Charlie Chaplin, who attended the premier. A couple more live shows followed and then the owners of the Dominion ‘went bust’ in 1932. It was leased out as a full time cinema, first to United Artists for a few months, then on a long lease to a company who were part of Gaumont British Ltd and remained in their hands until it was sold by the company then known as The Rank Organisation in 1987.
Apollo Leisure and the Nedlander Theatre circuit have since operated it as a major home of big scale stage musicals, with a current seating capaity of 2,172.
The original seating capacity of the Dominion was 2,835 (1,340 in the orchestra stalls, 818 in the dress circle and 677 in the upper circle). During the period when it was a 70mm Roadshow movie theatre, the upper circle was sealed off and remained unused, a projection box was built into the rear orchestra stalls area which gave a reduced seating capacity of 1,654 as several rows of front seating were also removed.
The former upper circle is currently used as offices for a Ticketmaster theatre ticket booking agency.
The Dominion is a good example for fine preservation. Different from the mostly destroyed cinemas at Leicester Square or in the West End it looks like cinemas once were! Sadly it does not show movies anymore.
When it opened in 1930 it seated 2.835 patrons. When they used it for 70mm-presentation (“South Pacific”) and the upper circle was closed.
When I visited it first in the end of the 80ies, it was a very dark place. Everything in the auditorium was painted black. The walls and the roof, even the proscenium was black. As I read, this was made for a musical called Time which used laser projection. When I saw it, it was a parttime cinema, and I saw – “Sign of the Times”. The film was not to my liking and the seats neat and old. But even the lobby and a lot of interesting remains like the big circle impressed me much. I also saw that this very big cinema for around 2.000 people also had a second balcony which was closed by a wooden wall.
I visited the Dominion again in the Nineties, seeing a musical version of “Grand Hotel”. Now the Dominion was painted new and looked very bright.
Albert Knapp, Frankurt/Germany
This place is simply beautiful and looks to be unmodified in any way as far as I could tell from its original design. I went there to see the musical ‘We Will Rock You’, a story about the rock group Queen, here and the musical was so good and the theatre so nice, I went back to see it again 3 days later! Check it out if you can.
This is a fantastic Theatre as both a film palace and legitimate theatre. In 1975 I saw the film :The Wind and the Lion". In 2000 I saw the stage musical “The Beauty and The Beast. brucec