City Varieties Music Hall

All images are credit Leeds Heritage Theatres or Northern Theatre News.

Some theatres shout about themselves with big plazas and glass fronts. City Varieties hides down a little ginnel off Briggate and somehow still feels like one of the most theatrical spot in Leeds. Slip under the green sign on Swan Street and you are walking into one of the oldest working theatres in the city, a proper Victorian music hall that has hung on with a grin abd a prayer for more than 150 years. Not bad for what started as a room above a pub.

It began life in the eighteen sixties as a singing room at the White Swan Inn. Local landlord and impresario Charles Thornton saw the potential in the upstairs space and rebuilt it as Thornton’s New Music Hall and Fashionable Lounge. Inside he created a long, narrow auditorium with cast iron columns, two bow fronted balconies and a small stage crowned with a royal coat of arms. Sit there today, wrapped in red plush and gold details, and you are basically in the same space a nineteenth century audience knew, just with better electrics and fewer cigars.

Over the decades a serious roll call of stars has trod that tiny stage. Marie Lloyd, Harry Houdini, Charlie Chaplin and all manner of music hall and variety acts entertained the working folk of Leeds. People came to drink, laugh, heckle a little and sing along. It was noisy, cheeky and occasionally a bit chaotic.

National fame arrived in the 50s when the BBC chose City Varieties as the home of The Good Old Days. For thirty years television audiences watched Leeds recreate Victorian music hall, complete with Leonard Sachs and those tongue twisting introductions, the audience dressed up in period finery and a big sing song of Down at the Old Bull and Bush to finish.

In 2009 City Varieties closed for a major restoration. When it reopened in 2011 it still seated around four hundred and sixty odd people and still looked every inch the Victorian gem, only now with a lot less risk of bits falling off!

Today City Varieties is part of Leeds Heritage Theatres alongside Leeds Grand Theatre and Hyde Park Picture House. At Christmas it hosts the amazing Rock n Roll Panto, a gloriously loud mash up of classic panto gags and live band energy. The rest of the year you might find folk and acoustic gigs, stand up, a live talk. It is the kind of venue where big name comics talk about it as one of their favourite rooms, because the audience is practically in their lap.

What really makes City Varieties special is the feel of the place. Sit in the stalls and you are close enough to catch every wink and raised eyebrow. Sit up in the balcony and you get that postcard view of red plush, ornate plasterwork and a small but mighty stage that has seen more than a century and a half of showbusiness. It started as a singing room above a pub and somehow grew into a national treasure without losing its friendly, slightly cheeky heart.

Next time you are on Briggate, duck down the ginnel and have a look. Leeds does not get much more theatrical than this.