Harold Pinter Theatre

The Harold Pinter Theatre, formerly known as The Comedy Theatre, is a theatre located on a corner site in the City of Westminster. It was designed by Thomas Verity and built in 1881. The exterior features stucco or painted stone and painted brick, topped with a slate roof. The front façade is an eclectic classical design, consisting of two storeys and five windows wide. The ground floor has grouped doorways beneath a 1950s cantilevered canopy. Above, there is a deep frieze and moulded cornice, with a centerpiece of three enriched architraved and corniced windows, a blind oeil-de-boeuf above, and pilasters that support an entablature and pediment. The façade is flanked by lower single bay wings and has a plain return to Oxendon Street.

While the vestibule foyer and bars were mainly altered in 1911 and 1933, with further changes in 1955, the auditorium retains its original 1881 design. It features three tiers of horseshoe-shaped balconies supported by slender iron columns, with the two lower tiers continuing as side slip boxes. At the dress circle level, a pair of boxes with slightly bowed fronts flank the stage, framed by an arch supported by columns on brackets. The proscenium is square and architraved, with the main entablature featuring a palmette-enriched frieze that extends over the boxes and around the gallery. Above the entablature, pendentives with relief decoration in the lunettes support a decorated domed ceiling with elaborate plasterwork surrounding a ventilator rose. Some of the original wood drum-and-shaft flying machinery is still in place above the stage grid.