'Splinters Famous British Comedy' read the marquee on opening night of Walthamstow's Granada Theatre on 15 September 1930, a night which delighted audiences with a fragrant potpourri of panto, drag, comedy and music.
Just shy of 95 years on, the resplendent building is reborn as Soho Theatre Walthamstow — an impossibly grand cousin of the well-established Dean Street location — and here are the photos to prove it.
Designed by Cecil Masey — the architect also behind Tooting's famous Granada theatre — Walthamstow's palace of fun took its cue from the Alhambra Palace in Granada, with Theodore Komisarjevsky's (celebrated stage producer and former director of the Moscow Art Theatre) bulb-shaped door arches and star-coffered ceiling bringing more than a touch of the exotic to east London.
As the popularity of vaudeville and cinema waned, Walthamstow's grand theatre was recast as a venue for concerts, hosting the Beatles, Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, Dusty Springfield, The Who, The Ronettes, Chuck Berry, Duke Ellington and the Rolling Stones. Not all on the same night, we might add.
As the all-too-familiar story goes, the venue gradually fell out of favour over the years, with its last live show taking place in 1973. By the early 2000s, the building — and its beloved Christie organ — had fallen into disrepair.
Though the Granada's foyer later enjoyed a brief spell reincarnated as the Antic pub chain's Mirth, Marvel & Maud pub, a much bigger overhaul has now been a long time in the making: Soho Theatre's plans to revert it back into a performance space were first mooted in 2012, and to date, some £30m has been sunk into the project.
Ahead of a grand reopening night on Friday 2 May 2025, photos have been released of the revamped theatre, and it is clear that more than just a lick of fresh paint has gone into its restoration.
As well as a gloriously renovated auditorium — plush-looking seats now fitted into the Moorish space — there's a mirror ball-studded foyer area, two smart bars (the Crosshall and the Ziggurat) and dressing rooms, with all-important bulb-framed mirrors.
The first person to make use of those mirrors will be Natalie Palamides, bringing her much-lauded 90s rom-com-inspired piece, WEER, to the theatre on opening night.
She won't be performing to a crowd quite so large as that back in September 1930 — then, the venue held some 2,700 people — however, 960 is still quite the audience.
On the docket in the months ahead is a cavalcade of acclaimed comics and performers, including Ahir Shah, Mark Watson, Dara O'Briain, Josie Long, Adam Kay, Rosie Jones, Phil Wang and Catherine Bohart. The walls will once again ricochet with laughter night in, night out. And what glorious walls they are, too.
All images by David Levene.
