New End Theatre

The New End Theatre stood in Hampstead, in the London Borough of Camden. It began life in 1974 inside the old mortuary of the now-closed New End Hospital. The mortuary had once been joined to the hospital across the road by an underground passage. Buddy Dalton founded the theatre in this unusual space. Later owners included Roy and Sonia Saunders, who ran it from 1986 to 1997. After 1997 Brian Daniels became both owner and artistic director until the theatre closed in 2011. It won a reputation for bold new work and transfers to the West End and Broadway. A double bill by American writer Tom Kempinski, A Day in Hollywood / A Night in the Ukraine, moved from New End to the West End and then to Broadway. The theatre gave world premieres to plays by Steven Berkoff, Arnold Wesker, Jean Anouilh and others. Geoffrey Williams’s Tunnels Without End also had its first performance there. Visitors found an intimate 80-seat space shaped from the former hospital mortuary. The building’s layout still shows the original tiled walls and narrow corridors. A small stage faced a steeply raked auditorium. Though no longer a theatre, the site now serves as a synagogue and Jewish cultural centre, preserving the character of the converted building.