Built in 1927 to a design by P Morley Holder, the Arts started as a members club to avoid the censorship of the Lord Chamberlain. It opened on April 20th with Picnic, a revue originated by the Club.

Over the next thirty years, the Arts gained an enviable reputation by producing over twenty shows a year with an ambitious mixture of classics and new writing. Actor manager Alec Clunes made a name for himself running the theatre in the 1940’s and a young Sir Peter Hall directed the UK premier of Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, Mourning Becomes Elektra by Eugene O’Neill and the Waltz of the Toreadors by Jean Anouilh in 1955/6. The hugely successful Arts Theatre Club was at one time described as “a pocket national theatre”. In 1962-63 The Arts was home to the experimental wing of the Royal Shakespeare Company, the venture was short-lived. Other notable plays received their UK or world premiers over the next ten years including Pinter’s The Caretaker, Orton’s Entertaining Mr Sloane, O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh and Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly Last Summer.

Caryl Jenner had been using the Arts from 1962 to stage new children’s shows at Christmas and it was her company the Unicorn Company that leased the Arts in 1967 becoming the first theatre building for children in the UK. The company produced children’s theatre in the daytime and more adult fare in the evening, during this period productions included The Reduced Shakespeare Company, A Slice of Saturday Night and Graham Norton’s one man show. The Unicorns original short run at the Arts came to an end in 1999 when they moved to offices in North London whilst their new home was under construction.

In 2000 a consortium of UK and American Producers invested ¼ million pounds into the refurbishment of the Front of House areas of the Theatre and took over the lease for a five-year period. Over the next five years the Arts presented highly successful runs including The Pet Shop Boys Musical, Closer to Heaven, Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues, Justin Butcher’s satire The Madness of George Dubya and Richard Dormer’s critically acclaimed Hurricane.

After being unable to come to resolutions regarding the lease the Arts Theatre closed in June 2005.

In April 2006 the Arts is re-established once again, with the building under new ownership and management we look to move forward and create once again a venue that is open to all, that creates new diverse work. After refurbishment work including the creation of a rehearsal rooms art galleries and studio spaces the Arts is ready to create once again. The plan is to programme the Arts with a variety of music, theatre and comedy working on the tag line “it all starts at the arts”. The bars are once again open and thriving and after discovering a Muriel of original arts club members in the original Arts Club we are already establishing the arts as a rendezvous for performing artists and the glitterati of the West End Scene!