Here’s to the Gillian Lynne Theatre
For the first time ever, a West End theatre is being named after a woman. reports
Regular visitors to London’s theatreland have long been acquainted with establishments such as the Gielgud, the Novello, the Harold Pinter and the Noël Coward, not to mention the National’s Olivier, a short stroll across Waterloo Bridge. Very soon, however, there will also, for the first time ever, be a West End theatre named after a woman: Gillian Lynne.
Andrew Lloyd Webber revealed this happy turn of events in conversation with Graham Norton on Tuesday evening, at a special event as part of the Telegraph Legends interview series. They were speaking at the New London Theatre, which was doubly apposite. For not only is this the theatre that will soon bear her name, it was also the birthplace of one of the prolific choreographer’s most spectacular successes, Cats.
This renaming is all the more remarkable when you consider how shockingly rare it is for theatres to be named after women (or, for that matter, after choreographers). Sadler’s Wells’ “below stairs”, more experimental auditorium is named after Lilian Baylis, co-founder (with Ninette de Valois) of British ballet
– and that’s about it. What was once the Thorndike in Surrey, named after actress Sybil Thorndike, is these days the Leatherhead Theatre, and in the West End, there are none. Sorry, but the Duchess, Her Majesty’s and so on simply don’t count.
But what finer person to both buck and, you have to hope, reverse this longstanding, ridiculous trend – for Gillian Lynne has had a genrestraddling career like few others. Along with Lloyd Webber, she co-created two of the longest-running shows in the history of Broadway – not only Cats, but also The Phantom of the Opera. She has worked with the Royal Ballet, the RSC, Birmingham Royal Ballet and English National Opera, as well as creating movement for productions of (to name but a very few) My Fair Lady, Gigi, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Lloyd Webber’s Aspects of Love. In 2014, she was appointed DBE, and now, at 92 – although not so well of late – she owns a production company that is as busy as ever.
Lynne was born in Bromley, Kent, in 1926. It has been said that she started dancing as an escape from the
Mark Monahan
misery of losing her mother in a car crash in 1939, when she was just 13. But she was already a physically skittish girl, and had already discovered the joy of moving to music. “It’s a creed, not an escape,” she told the Financial Times a few years ago. “My mother’s death simply strengthened that creed. Then the war happened and I clutched at my creed.”
Lynne’s determination served her well. She trained at Molly Lake’s Ballet Guild and, at 16, was spotted by the always eagle-eyed de Valois. Within a year, she had joined Sadler’s Wells Ballet (the company that later became the Royal Ballet), and after the war, made a name for herself as a dancer of real dramatic bite. Her roles ranged from the Black Queen in de Valois’s Checkmate to the similarly crucial Queen of the Wilis in Giselle, and she also worked with Frederick Ashton, the Royal Ballet’s founding choreographer; Robert Helpmann, the founding male principal; and George Balanchine, the man who established ballet in America.
In the Fifties, Lynne effortlessly shifted from dancing in ballet to West End musicals, and soon after she crossed over to creating steps with equal ease. In 1962, the choreographer of a revue that she was acting in stormed out, and she stepped in. And this led, the following year, to her creating a dance version of Edward Lear’s nonsense poem, The Owl and the Pussycat, with none other than Dudley Moore. One of the most remarkable careers in choreography was suddenly under way, and Lynne would time and again impress for the energy, drama and musicality of her steps, as much as for her ability to marshal ensembles both large and small with élan.
Speaking in the wake of this week’s tribute, Lynne said: “I am thrilled and completely surprised at this honour. I am now 92 and my nineties have not been kind – I have not been well for over three months – but that said, as soon as I can, I will go over every inch of the Gillian Lynne Theatre and take even closer pride in it.”
The Gillian Lynne Theatre? It sounds so right that one already wonders how the West End ever managed without it.