Apollo Theatre London: What to See and When

The Apollo sits on Shaftesbury Avenue, right in the thick of the West End, one of the older houses on a strip that's mostly theatres end to end. It's a proper Edwardian building, ornate inside, and it feels different from the newer, boxier venues elsewhere in town. If you're picking a show here, you're also picking a night out in the heart of Soho and Covent Garden, which shapes what you do before and after.

Shaftesbury Avenue itself carries the bulk of West End theatre traffic, and the Apollo is one of several houses clustered within a few minutes' walk of each other. That density means if a show at the Apollo isn't quite what you're after, or sells out, there's usually something comparable close by worth checking. Worth building a bit of flexibility into your plans rather than fixing on one venue.

Timing matters more than people expect. Evening performances mean the surrounding streets get busy fast as crowds spill out of nearby restaurants and bars before curtain, so building in extra time to get seated is sensible. Matinees run a different crowd entirely, quieter and often better if you want to avoid the evening rush around Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square tube stations.

Because it's an older building, seating and sightlines vary more than in a modern venue, so it's worth reading up on the specific layout before booking rather than assuming standard rules apply. Good instinct: check reviews or seating plans against the specific production before you commit to a particular part of the house.

The area around the Apollo rewards a bit of wandering. Chinatown is a few minutes north, Soho's smaller bars and restaurants fill in the streets to the west, and Covent Garden's mix of shops and street performers sits just east. A show here works well as the centrepiece of a longer evening rather than the whole plan.