Our building began its extraordinary life in 1895 as an intimate opera house. It was designed by the prolific theatre architect, Frank Matcham, and was originally built on another site a little further down King Street.

During the first 70 years of our life we fell on good times and bad. In 1966 the Lyric was forced to close its doors and scheduled for demolition to make way for a housing and shopping complex. But a public outcry ensued and, instead, the theatre was carefully dismantled piece by piece and rebuilt on the current site along with a contemporary black-box studio space. The new Lyric was re-opened in 1979 by the Queen.

In 2004 our building underwent another major redevelopment led by the internationally acclaimed architect Rick Mather. This reorientated the old small entrance on King Street to an impressive new entrance on Lyric Square and also created a new ticket office, street level cafe, rehearsal and workshop spaces.

We have recently started work on the next phase of our life. A multi-million pound project to expand the current building to create new facilities for training young people to become the theatre-makers of the future, scheduled for completion in 2013.

Over the hundred year history the Lyric has welcomed some of the world's finest writers, directors, actors and theatre companies to its stages. From Harold Pinter to Simon Stephens, Sir John Gielgud to Robert Lepage, Complicite to Frantic Assembly.

Today we present 1000 performances a year that bring over 150,000 people through our doors - people of all ages and backgrounds from across London and beyond.