More About the Kit Kat Club and the Playhouse Theatre
One building, two auditoria
The permanent name of this theatre is the Playhouse Theatre and it has carried it since 1907. The Kit Kat Club is what Cabaret has made of the inside of it since November 2021, and it is a conversion rather than a renaming: the auditorium was rebuilt in the round, the Stalls replaced with tables and flanking banks, and the front of house turned into a sequence of themed bars.
That matters for one practical reason. The Playhouse Theatre seating plan and the Kit Kat Club seating plan are two different auditoria, and a plan made before 2021 shows a layout that is not in the building now. The current one is on this site, row by row.
The Charing Cross roof
It opened on 11 March 1882 as the Royal Avenue Theatre, built by Sefton Henry Parry with around 1,200 seats, and it stood next to Charing Cross station.
On 5 December 1905, part of the station roof collapsed onto the theatre. The building was badly damaged and there was loss of life. What went up in its place opened as the Playhouse Theatre on 28 January 1907, and that is the building standing today, listed Grade II.
For much of the twentieth century the BBC used it for radio broadcasts and recordings, which is why it kept leaving and returning to theatrical use.
Who runs it
The theatre is operated by ATG Entertainment, which also runs the Trafalgar Theatre a few minutes up Whitehall. At 649 seats it is one of the smaller West End theatres, and in this configuration most of that seat count sits within a few metres of the stage.
Other theatres of a similar size
- sohoplace, 602 seats. The newest theatre in the West End, and the other central London auditorium that is rebuilt production by production rather than kept to one plan, in the round included
- Trafalgar Theatre, 630 seats, a few minutes away on Whitehall. Also a building whose seating was rebuilt entirely, in 2021, so its old plans are equally out of date
- Vaudeville Theatre, around 660 seats on the Strand. Three conventional levels facing a proscenium, which is what a theatre this size usually looks like