On a winter’s evening in November 1899 Charing Cross Road was a hubbub of excitement as Charles Wyndham’s new theatre had its grand opening with a revival of David Garrick, a play in which Charles Wyndham and his future wife, Mary Moore, both had a great success.  The site was owned by the Marquess of Salisbury who would only allow a theatre to be built if it was for Wyndham whom he considered the greatest actor of the day.  Wyndham lacked the necessary financial resources to build a theatre and so Mary Moore went out and raised the money from ten wealthy friends – little wonder he married her!

The theatre’s architect was William Sprague who was then at his peak.  Wyndham’s was the first West End theatre he designed in his own right and one of seven theatres that he completed that year.   It was, and still is, a theatrical gem.   The décor was in the Louis XVI style, in the auditorium the prettily painted balcony and box fronts were matched in lightness of touch by a circular ceiling in the style of François Boucher.  The original turquoise, cream and gold colour scheme is still very much in evidence today and will remain so as the theatre is gradually refurbished.  The exterior was built in Sprague’s favourite free classical style using Portland stone, a material with which he could combine the artistic and the practical.

As the Boer War was still raging Charles Wyndham generously gave all the opening night proceeds of £4,000 to the Soldiers’ Wives and Families Association.  David Garrick proved so popular that it was not until April 1900 that the first new production, Cyrano de Bergerac, was presented.  The public were doubtful about Wyndham spoiling his appearance with a protuberant nose and Mrs Dane’s Defence soon followed.  Mrs Dane, being a lady with ‘a past’, proved a great topic of conversation and the play ran for over 200 performances.

J.M. Barrie presented several plays at the Wyndham’s, Little Mary, ‘an uncomfortable play’, being the first in 1903.  Little Mary was a joke gently realised by Nina Boucicault and Gerald du Maurier.  The du Maurier family had a number of associations with Wyndham’s.  In January 1909 An Englishman’s Home, a story about a ‘Nearland’ invasion of Britain opened.  It was directed by Gerald du Maurier and written by A Patriot.  The ‘Patriot’ turned out to be none other than du Maurier’s brother Guy, a professional soldier who was bewildered by his sudden fame.   The following year Gerald became actor-manager of the theatre for more than a decade.  Some of his most famous roles were in Raffles and Bull-Dog Drummond.   Then in 1945 The Years Between, the first of only two plays written by du Maurier’s daugher, Daphne, was presented at Wyndham’s.

In 1923 Gerald du Maurier and Viola Tree wrote a light hearted piece called The Dancers that required an American actress who could dance, the impresario C.B. Cochran introduced du Maurier to Tallulah Bankhead.  She was given dance training by Leonide Massine and there were soon queues around the block to see this new sensation with her voice described by the actor Emlyn Williams as “steeped as deep in sex as the human voice can go without drowning”.  

The hugely popular crime writer, Edgar Wallace, whose books were said to be the biggest sellers after the Bible in the 1920s, took the lease on Wyndham’s in 1930.  Two of his detective dramas, The Ringer and The Calendar had already been produced at the theatre and a further six were to come before his premature death in 1932.   He developed such a passion for the theatre that for a time he took a flat above Wyndham’s where he sat in a capacious armchair, working at great speed with a copious supply of cigarettes and tea.

In 1936 Noël Coward directed Mademoiselle at Wyndham’s, included in the cast was a young actress called Greer Garson.   The play was adapted from the French by Audrey and Waveney Carten to whom Noel wrote: ‘About this play of Jacques Deval’s, You’ve been extremely clever gals…although it jerks from gloom to fun I think the bloody thing will run.’

After the compulsory closure of the theatres in September 1939 Wyndham’s was one of the first to reopen.  At the height of the blitz Diversion, a revue compiled by Herbert Farjeon brought together the talents of Edith Evans, Joyce Grenfell, Bernard Miles and Peter Ustinov.  The latter had a great success as the ageing Austrian lieder singer Madame Lizelotte Beethoven-Finck.   After the war Ustinov’s first internationally acclaimed play The Love of the Four Colonels ran for over 800 performances at Wyndham’s before winning the Critics Award for Best Foreign Play in New York.

In 1949 Edith Evans gave the performance of her life, ‘drinking double brandies at a rate that alarms the waiter’, in James Bridie’s comedy Daphne Laureola.  No other author could have put so much into this play, and no other actress could have got so much out of it’, wrote the critic W.A. Darlington.  
 
Donald Albery presented Graham Greene’s first play The Living Room starring Eric Portman as an ageing, crippled priest in 1953.    The following year Sandy Wilson’s 1920s musical The Boyfriend transferred to Wyndham’s.   Having started as a short piece at the Players’ Theatre, the extended version went on to become the theatre’s greatest success.  It ran for over five years to become one of the longest running musicals ever on the British stage.

The next play to open, A Taste of Honey written by the 19 year old Shelagh Delaney, could not have been more of a contrast to The Boyfriend.  Frivolity on the French Riviera was replaced by the gritty reality of the back streets of Lancashire.  It was the first of a series of ground-breaking productions including The Hostage, Sparrers Can’t Sing and Oh What a Lovely War that Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop presented at Wyndham’s over the following decade. 

John Osborne won the Critic’s Award for Best Play of 1964 with Inadmissable Evidence.  Nicol Williamson’s performance as the solicitor Bill Maitland was a tour de force during which he never left the stage for almost three hours. 

In succeeding years many of the best known names in British theatre appeared at Wyndham’s: Vanessa Redgrave in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Alec Guinness and Eileen Atkins in a production of The Cocktail Party that Guinness also directed, Paul Scofield as a magical Prospero in The Tempest and John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson in a seminal production of Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land, directed by Peter Hall.   Nicholas de Jongh wrote in The Guardian that it was the greatest character performance Gielgud had given in over a decade.

The cast of the rock-musical hit Godspell that opened in January 1972 included Julie Covington, Marti Webb and two heartthrobs making their West End theatre debuts called David Essex and Jeremy Irons. 

In 1976 Cameron Mackintosh transferred Side by Side by Sondheim to Wyndham’s.   This compilation of the best of Sondheim’s clever, perceptive songs introduced him to many British audiences for the first time and 30 years later is still a popular musical show.         

The comedy Once a Catholic and Dario Fo’s farce, based on a true story, Accidental Death of an Anarchist both enjoyed good runs.  In 1991 Wyndham’s presented the world premiere of Arthur Miller’s comedy The Ride Down Mount Morgan with Tom Conti as the insurance magnate visited in hospital by his two wives, Gemma Jones and Clare Higgins.  Diana Rigg returned to the theatre to give a scorching performance of Medea in 1993 before Edward Albee’s autobiographical play Three Tall Women received its British premiere and won Maggie Smith an Evening Standard Award for Best Actress.

Art, Yasmina Reza’s satirical triple-hander began it’s record breaking run of over 2,000 performances in 1996 before transferring to the Whitehall Theatre where, more than six years later, its 27th cast gave their final performance on 4 January 2003.  

More recent shows at Wyndham’s include The Play what I Wrote, Vincent in Brixton, directed by Richard Eyre, Up for Grabs in which Madonna made her West End debut, the National Theatre production of Democracy and Heroes translated from the French by
Tom Stoppard.