Hello Goodbye to the Saville Theatre

Charles Drazin

Sep 1

8 min read

Updated: Sep 2

There’s no worse sight on Shaftesbury Avenue than an empty theatre. Outside the old Saville, just across from Seven Dials, the players, depicted on Gilbert Bayes’ marvellous frieze, Drama through the Ages, insist the show must go on. But inside the stage is dark. And the funereal, blacked-out marquee does nothing to promise a different story.

But let’s go back to the beginning. It is Thursday 8 October 1931, the opening night of the first play to be shown in London’s newest theatre – For the Love of Mike, starring Bobby Howes. Promoted as “a play with tunes”, it is the first of many musicals that will be staged at the Saville Theatre over the decades that follow.

That first-night audience wouldn’t have given it any thought, but the new building was one of the very last to respect the traditional order of theatre-going – stalls, dress circle, upper circle. It was a rare example of an art deco theatre in the West End, whose counterpart was more likely to be found in the super-cinemas that were then being built up and down the country, but few of those could match the restrained elegance and luxury of the Saville. The Tatler called it “one of those ‘better 'oles’ which sybarites would do well to note.”¹ It admired its mural decorations, its “chic-ly modern” interior and seats that were made to be “sat in and not on” – altogether 1,250 seats across stalls, dress circle and upper circle.

In a century of unparalleled upheaval and conflict, the world that the Saville represented was in danger. It would be time to say goodbye to it soon. But when Hitler’s bombs began to fall on London, it was a bastion of resistance. Such wartime slogans as “Business as Usual” or “Make Do and Mend” – the Saville put them into practice.

During the Blitz, it was home to a successful musical revue show, Up and Doing, starring Binnie Hale, Leslie Henson and Stanley Holloway. The show carried on through the air-raids until the theatre was hit. While the building had to be closed for extensive repairs, Up and Doing itself “upped and did”, from November 1940 touring the country before the company returned to the rebuilt Saville several months later, on Tuesday 20 May 1941.

High-explosive munitions was one aspect of “drama through the ages” that Gilbert Bayes’ frieze had failed to imagine, but it had become a mundane part of 1941 theatre-going. That summer (when the clocks went forward two hours), shows began at 6pm to give audiences time to get home before the black-out. “Don’t forget your gas-mask,” urged the Saville’s programme. It pointed out too that, although the performance would continue in the event of an air-raid warning, “There is accommodation for nearly everyone in the theatre in the spacious salon underneath the orchestra stalls.”

When Up and Doing finally closed at the end of February 1942 after an exceptionally long run of 644 performances, it was replaced by another successful musical revue, Fine and Dandy. And so the theatre continued through the years until the next big drama through the ages: Rock ’n’ Roll.

In 1965 the manager of the Beatles, Brian Epstein, acquired the leasehold of the theatre from showbusiness impresario Bernard Delfont. What was striking about Epstein’s plans, which he described with great enthusiasm to the Melody Maker in January 1967,² was the way they remained true to the theatre’s musical tradition yet at the same time sought to carry it forward into what a new generation was calling the Age of Aquarius:

It’s not the Apollo, or the Olympia, it’s the Saville and it’s going to grow as the Saville. I’m convinced of its success. I’m out to make it a theatre for young people. I’m going to introduce film shows after a stage show, on a double ticket. There will be a break after the pop show and then you can return to your seat and see such films as the Beatles at the Shea Stadium, Cilla at the Savoy, the film of the Stones in Ireland,³ comedy films featuring Laurel and Hardy, Chaplin and so on and feature films as well...

It was a wonderful vision. The way Epstein talked about it, he obviously loved the building. The acts that would play there included the Who, the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix. It’s where, on 4 June 1967, Hendrix played “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Band” only a few days after the album had been released:

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/12e208_71c84a45ca854b01b49cb2d1a1956df6/240p/mp4/file.mp4

It’s where the Beatles themselves – dressed as Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – on 10 November 1967, made a promotional film for their single "Hello, Goodbye". But by that time Epstein was dead.

It was goodbye to Epstein, but hello to what? In 1968 Bernard Delfont bought back the leasehold from Epstein’s company, NEMS Enterprises. Soon afterwards he became chairman and chief executive of EMI Films. In 1969, the theatre was turned into the West End showcase of EMI’s ABC cinema chain. Business as Usual during the war had meant defiance, but now it meant rationalisation.

While the music revolution had been creating huge new audiences, the film industry in the 1960s was facing a steep decline in cinema attendances. To address this problem the big exhibition chains began to twin – or even triple – their larger theatres. The conversion of the Saville into two cinemas, one above the other, required the demolition of its circle and upper circle and the gutting of the entire theatre. All that was left was a shell. It was goodbye to the old Saville Theatre, but hello to Britain’s latest “Dual Luxury Cinema”.

“The new ABC 1 and ABC 2 cinemas really are rather splendid,” wrote a two-page advertorial in the London Evening News shortly before the opening of EMI’s new flagship in December 1969.⁴ “So comfortable – one cinema seats 616 people, the other 581... plenty of space, luxury seats, the intimate atmosphere.”

But the cost to the old theatre had been catastrophic. The heart of the building had been ripped out. The façade was defaced too: the great arched window above the entrance was filled in by a panel of metal plates, and a giant double marquee partially obscured the Gilbert Bayes frieze.

The Railway Children is a fine film. And many other fine films were showcased at the ABC 1 & 2, Shaftesbury Avenue, in the decades that followed. But the effacing of the old Saville was a notably brutal way to continue drama through the ages.

The theatre went through several changes of ownership but remained a cinema until 11 August 2024, when, as the 4-screen Odeon Covent Garden, it put on its last performance – the aptly named It Ends With Us.

***

Nearly sixty years after the Saville Theatre was deprived of its name, is it possible to bring it back again?

Yoo Capital, the property developer that acquired the building in 2021, is now promising the biggest of hellos. According to their successful application to Camden Council for planning permission, they will bring back the original name of the theatre, they will preserve the Gilbert Bayes frieze, and they will restore the great arch window which had been such a striking feature of the original design. They even promise to turn the building back into the live theatre it had been when it first opened in 1931.

But it requires only a cursory examination of what they have in mind to realize that they are no more friends of the Saville Theatre than EMI. Their website says that they intend to:

lead the transformation of the historic venue into a world-class cultural destination.

Originally opened in 1931, The Saville was once a beacon of West End performance, later replaced by a modest cinema in the 1970s. This ambitious development will restore the theatre’s former glory, delivering an immersive, state-of-the-art venue for up to 622 seats, alongside a thoughtfully designed citizen-M hotel and vibrant new hospitality spaces.

But very little of this promotional puff is actually true. “Modest cinema”? The cinema that replaced the Saville Theatre was actually the showcase cinema of one of Britain’s biggest film corporations. “Restore the theatre’s former glory”? But there’s very little left of the original theatre that can be restored. What Yoo Capital seem to have in mind is to exploit the heritage value of the site to justify a new hotel, but not to respect the integrity of the old theatre, which they will exploit to their own advantage every bit as much as EMI had before them. Business as Usual!

The Yoo artist’s impression of the final building shows a theatre that will be not so much “alongside” as squashed under. The splendid old façade, with the historic frieze, fronts a space that will be used much more for the hotel than the small theatre that they are promising to build. This will be stuck in a giant hole that they intend to dig under the present structure.

In the cross-section below, green indicates the existing above-ground structure, red the proposed new construction, and yellow the altered area beneath ground level. What is instantly striking is the eight floors of hotel rooms, with four penetrating deep into the existing building.

Not so much hello to the Saville Theatre then as hello to the Saville Tower. It’s hard to know exactly how Yoo imagine the future, but their idea of “a world-class cultural destination” doesn’t seem to amount to much more than a hotel’s restaurant entertainment for wealthy tourists. They have managed to get a big name, the Cirque du Soleil, to commit to a lease of the new theatre, but the limited space seems sufficient only to facilitate a pared-down dinner show experience rather than the large-arena performances for which the Cirque du Soleil is better known.

From what I can figure out, Camden Council, after rejecting Yoo Capital’s earlier application, finally granted planning permission only because allowing it seemed less harmful than stopping it. But the two statutory bodies that objected to the application can make the argument much better than me.

Theatres Trust commented: “The plans, if permitted, would see the theatre space reduced and relocated to subterranean levels with the majority of the Grade-II listed building converted to hotel use... We firmly believe that a dedicated theatre scheme with larger-scale offer is clearly the optimal use for the Saville.”⁵

When Historic England objected to the revised application in March 2025, having also opposed the original scheme, it said: “We consider the changes made have not markedly reduced the harm the scheme would cause to the listed building by comparison to that first submission. We maintain our objection to the application, which would cause a high level of harm to the listed building.”⁶ In its original objection, Historic England had described that harm as being “of a rare and serious nature”.⁷

The Bloomsbury Residents Action Group wasn’t a statutory body, but its members did live in the area. “What will the proposed design mean to people who wander down Shaftesbury Avenue in the future?” it asked. “They will see a crass, undignified, over-sized box on top of what is currently an elegant structure that even the Blitz didn’t destroy.”⁸ The Phoenix Garden (itself situated on a WW2 bombsite) is a community space and wildlife garden that the threatened Saville tower will deprive of sunlight. It called Camden Council’s decision to grant Yoo permission for the development as “earth-shattering” and announced a Call to Action for anyone who cares about the Garden to sign their petition and to spread the word, which I suppose is what I’m doing now.

Planning permission was finally granted in July 2025, but the redevelopment has yet to begin. Camden Council granted a temporary-use permission for the building to be used as a venue for cinema and live performance, but that permission expires on 30 September 2026. Is it too late for some miraculous, last-minute Perils of Pauline rescue? Probably, but while there’s life, let’s hope for one.

It’s pretty clear who I think the villains of this story are. Its heroes are the showbusiness people who kept the theatre going during the war, and Brian Epstein, who showed that you could create an exciting future for the Saville while at the same time remain true to what it had been.

Hello goodbye to the Saville Theatre. Yoo says yes, I say no.