Sadler's Wells Theatre is a performing arts venue in London, located in Rosebery Avenue, Islington. The present-day theatre is the sixth on the site. Sadler's Wells grew out of a late 17th-century pleasure garden and was opened as a theatre building in the 1680s.
Lacking the requisite licence to perform straight drama, the house became known for dancing, performing animals, pantomime, and spectacular entertainments such as sea battles in a huge water tank on the stage. In the mid-19th century, when the law was changed to remove restrictions on staging drama, Sadler's Wells became celebrated for the seasons of plays by Shakespeare and others presented by Samuel Phelps between 1844 and 1862. From then until the early 20th century the theatre had mixed fortunes, eventually becoming abandoned and derelict.
The philanthropist and theatre owner Lilian Baylis bought and rebuilt the theatre in 1926. Together with Baylis's Old Vic, Sadler's Wells became home to dance, drama and opera companies that developed into the Royal Ballet, the National Theatre and English National Opera. From the 1930s to the 1980s the theatre was home to 21 London seasons by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company; from the 1950s to the 1970s the English Opera Group, founded by Benjamin Britten, had its London base at Sadler's Wells; and between the 1950s and 1980s the Handel Opera Society staged productions there. Visiting dance troupes included the Alvin Ailey and Merce Cunningham companies, the Dance Theatre of Harlem, London Contemporary Dance Theatre and the Ballet Rambert.
The current theatre dates from 1998. It consists of two performance spaces: a 1,500-seat main auditorium and the Lilian Baylis Studio, with extensive rehearsal rooms and technical facilities also housed within the site. Sadler's Wells is now chiefly known as a dance venue. As well as hosting visiting companies, the theatre is also a producing house, with associated artists and companies who create original works for the theatre. Sadler's Wells maintains an additional base at the Peacock Theatre in the West End as well as opening a new theatre, Sadler's Wells East Theatre, in Stratford, London in 2025.
History
First theatre: 1683–1765
Details of the origins of Sadler's Wells are disputed. According to Dennis Arundell in his history of the theatre, its founder was called Dick Sadler. Many other sources, from the 18th century onwards, say the same, but others give Sadler the forename Thomas, and according to the Survey of London he was Edward. It is also uncertain when Sadler established his auditorium: many sources give the year as 1683; others give it as 1684 or 1685. According to Arundell, Sadler had already opened his "Musick-House" at an unspecified date before 1683;
thumb|upright=1.5|left|The first, wooden, Sadler's Wells "Musick-House"|alt=exterior of substantial wooden structure, with many trees around and a lane passing in front of it
A well with water from a mineral spring was discovered on Sadler's land in Islington, near the boundary with Clerkenwell. After an eminent physician tested the water and praised its supposed health-giving properties, Sadler found two more wells nearby. Taking the waters was fashionable at the time – there were popular spas at Bath, Tunbridge and Epsom – and Sadler started marketing the water from his wells. Visitors to the Musick-House began to drink it, and many London physicians recommended their patients to do so. By the end of the summer of 1685 five or six hundred people frequented the Musick-House every morning for the water. Sadler laid out ornamental gardens and engaged entertainers to amuse his patrons: there were tumblers, rope-dancers and musicians. Sadler took as his business partner a violinist, Francis Forcer, who was both dancing-master and composer.
The initial popularity of Sadler's spa did not last long, and by 1691 it had ceased to be a fashionable resort. He sold two of his wells, and the original one dried up for a time; his entertainments became the main draw for those of the public still interested. There is no documentary proof, but Arundell conjectures that by 1697 Sadler had either died or retired; Forcer went into partnership with a glover, James Miles, and the wooden auditorium was renamed "Miles's Musick-House".
thumb|upright=1.5|1700 newspaper advertisement|alt=press small ad seeking applications from "any fit person" to manage Sadler's Wells
In the early years of the 18th century the reputation of the spa declined. By the time Hogarth produced his Four Times of the Day series in 1736, the theatre had lost any vestiges of fashionability and was satirised as having an audience consisting of tradesmen and their pretentious wives. Ned Ward described the clientele in 1699 as:
The proprietors advertised for a new manager in 1700, but the decline continued. In 1711, after its fashionable clients had taken their trade elsewhere, Sadler's Wells was described in The Inquisitor as "a nursery of debauchery", and the place was frequented by many "unaccountable and disorderly" people. In 1712 a man called French was sentenced to death at the Old Bailey for killing a Mr Thwaits at Sadler's Wells.
Miles died in 1724, and under Forcer's son the auditorium was "entirely new modelled and made every way more commodious than heretofore for the better reception of company". Forcer junior sought to improve standards – according to one historian he "succeeded, to a great degree," in driving away "the mass of incomprehensible vagabonds" Rosoman substantially reconstructed the wooden building in 1748–49.
thumb|left|Sadler's Wells in 1745|alt=exterior of substantial wooden structure, with many trees around and a lane passing in front of the walls surrounding the site
Rosoman engaged a regular resident company of actors, and the old Musick-House became a theatre. Rosoman introduced burlettas, at that time a genre new to England. According to the current laws, only the two patent companies were permitted to present non-musical dramas. Sadler's Wells and other theatres were obliged by the Minor Theatres Act (1751) to avoid spoken dialogue. To circumvent this rule, theatre managers had their actors speaking against a continuous background of instrumental music, so that it was passed off as a musical entertainment. In general the authorities did not enforce the letter of the law with particular rigour. The Tempest was performed there in 1764, but Arundell suggests it was not Shakespeare's original, but "Garrick's version of the Dryden-Shakespeare-Purcell work castrated into an opera".
In 1763 Rosoman engaged the dancers from the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. This suited both theatres, as at that time Sadler's Wells customarily opened from late spring to early autumn and the patent theatres were open for the other half of the year. Arundell comments that this engagement added to the prestige of Sadler's Wells "and ultimately benefited the place enormously, for the new Ballet Master was Giuseppe Grimaldi".
Second theatre: 1765–1802
Rosoman's theatre|thumb|upright=1.2|alt=Exterior of detached theatre
Rosoman was a builder by trade, and he had the wooden theatre replaced with a brick structure. The new building was completed in seven weeks, and cost £4,225; it opened in April 1765.
In 1771 Rosoman retired. He sold his three-quarter share in the theatre to Thomas King, a friend and Drury Lane colleague of Garrick. King took over the management from December 1771, Although his own tastes favoured the dramatic, King catered for the tastes of his audiences, and in particular featured pantomimes, establishing the theatre as a rival to the Theatre Royal, Haymarket in that genre. His shows, with music by Charles Dibdin, included such pieces as Vineyard Revels, or, The Harlequin Bacchanal, and The Whim-Wham, or, Harlequin Captive. In 1781 Joseph Grimaldi made his debut, aged two, dancing with his sister.
In the 1790s Dibdin was stage manager as well as composer, with Grimaldi as comic star. The theatre was by now in need of renovation, not least because of concerns about safety. The proprietors, led by William Siddons, husband of Sarah Siddons, proposed "an Entire new inside" so that "the Building will be a stable one for fifty years to come".
Third theatre: 1802–1879
thumb | upright=1.15 |Press advertisement, 1802 – The patron, the Duke of Clarence, is the future [[William IV|King William IV|alt=Press ad: the text reads: NEW SADLER's WELLS. Under the Patronage of His Royal Highness the Duke of Clarence. The public are respectfully informed that the interior of this theatre has been entirely re-built, at an immense expence, upon an elegant and extensive scale, by that ingenious architect Mr Cabanel, from a model by Mr Hughes. Accommodations of a most superior nature, and of every description. It will open on Monday next, 19 April 1802 with a great variety of new entertainments, and several new performers.]]
Sadler's Wells reopened in 1802 with an interior "entirely re-built at an immense Expence". In 1804 it acquired a new attraction, dubbed the Aqua-show. A huge water tank was installed under the stage for the production of aquatic spectacles. This tank and a second, above the stage to provide waterfall effects, were supplied with water from the New River alongside the theatre. The historian Shirley S. Allen writes that such was the remarkable realism in the performance of sea stories that Sadler's Wells became for thirty years the home of the "nautical drama". continued as the theatre's principal clown until 1820, while pursuing a parallel career at Drury Lane. and the following year serious drama came to Sadler's Wells. From 1844 to 1862 the actor Samuel Phelps managed and starred at the theatre. He intended to bring Shakespeare to the masses. Sadler's Wells at this stage had a largely local Islington audience, working class and relatively uneducated; economically the theatre had its advantages: a large capacity (2,500) and a low rent.|
Among the leading players in Phelps's company were Laura Addison, George Bennett, Fanny Cooper and Isabella Glyn; Phelps starred in roles from Hamlet to Falstaff.
After Phelps's withdrawal in 1862 the theatre presented a variety of shows, but despite appearances by stars such as J. L. Toole, Hermann Vezin and the young Nellie Farren, they made little impact. A succession of managements tried unsuccessfully to make the theatre pay; in 1874 it closed, and there were plans to turn it into baths and washhouses. The building, by that time in a perilous state of repair, was used as a roller-skating rink and for lectures, boxing and wrestling, until in August 1878 Sidney Bateman, who had been running the Lyceum Theatre in the West End, bought the unexpired thirty-three year term of the lease of Sadler's Wells.
Fourth theatre: 1879–1915
thumb |upright=1.2|Interior of [[C. J. Phipps's theatre, 1879|alt=interior of Victorian playhouse, with stalls, circle and at top gallery]]
thumb|upright=1.2|1910 photograph, showing [[Bertie Crewe's portico added in 1894|alt=exterior of a theatre building with substantial portico parallel to a main road]]
Bateman commissioned C. J. Phipps to design a new interior for the theatre, which reopened in October 1879. Phipps remodelled the auditorium, with a stronger horseshoe profile for the front of the dress circle and the gallery above. These extended further toward the stage than the previous circle and gallery, increasing the theatre's capacity. The theatrical newspaper The Era reported, "The changes made are so remarkable that Sadler's Wells may now claim to be one of the largest and most conveniently-constructed London Theatres". By this time Islington was no longer an isolated village but an inner suburb of the capital, and The Era remarked, "no part of London can be reached with greater facility, as omnibuses, trams, &c, from various directions pass the Angel, not two hundred yards from Sadler's Wells."
Bateman hoped to restore the theatre's reputation as a classical playhouse, as in Phelps's time, but she died in 1881. The historian Philip Temple quotes an earlier writer's comment that despite Bateman's improvements, "in the 1880s the Saturday night gallery contained the most villainous, desperate, hatchet-faced assembly of ruffians to be found in all London". There were several attempts to convert the theatre into a music hall, but the authorities refused to license it.
The only major changes to Phipps's building was the addition by the architect Bertie Crewe of a new portico in 1894, aligned to the newly completed Rosebery Avenue. In the early years of the 20th century the theatre doubled as a cinema, showing films on Sundays, with live shows – described as "cowboy melodramas" – during the week, but it did not prosper. The drama critic of The Daily Chronicle wrote in February 1914, "Poor wounded old playhouse! Here it stands even now, shabby and disconsolate, its once familiar frontage half hidden with glaring posters".
With the support of leading theatre figures including Bernard Shaw, Arthur Wing Pinero and Seymour Hicks, a plan was put forward in 1914 for saving the building and turning it into "a people's theatre". The outbreak of the First World War led to the abandonment of the plan, and Sadler's Wells declined into dereliction. It closed in 1915 and did not reopen after the war.
Fifth theatre: 1931–1998
thumb|[[Lilian Baylis, 1924|alt=middle-aged white woman with dark hair, wearing academic cap and gown]]
Since 1914 the theatre proprietor and philanthropist Lilian Baylis had run drama and opera companies at her south London theatre, the Old Vic, with cheap prices aimed at attracting a local, working-class audience. In 1925 she began a campaign to reopen the derelict Sadler's Wells on a similar basis. She raised the necessary funds and the new theatre was designed by F.G.M. Chancellor, who had succeeded Frank Matcham as senior partner of Matcham and Co..
The new theatre opened with a gala performance on 6 January 1931 of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night starring John Gielgud as Malvolio and Ralph Richardson as Toby Belch. Acquiring Sadler's Wells enabled Baylis to set up a dance company, something she had wished to do since 1926 when she engaged Ninette de Valois to improve the standard of dancing in operas and plays at the Old Vic. The three companies Baylis founded developed over the next three decades to become the Royal Ballet, the National Theatre and English National Opera.
For the first few years the opera, drama and ballet companies, known as the "Vic-Wells" companies, moved between the Old Vic and Sadler's Wells but by 1935 the established pattern was drama at the former and opera and ballet at the latter. In 1935 both the opera and ballet companies went on summer tours for the first time. In their absence the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company took the theatre for a season of Gilbert and Sullivan, the first of 21 such London seasons at Sadler's Wells, returning in every decade until the 1980s.