Mermaid Theatre

The Mermaid Theatre once stood beside Puddle Dock in the City of London, occupying a site scarred by wartime bombing. It was the first new playhouse built in the City since Shakespeare’s day and broke with tradition by placing the stage at the centre with seats on three sides. Bernard Miles and his wife Josephine Wilson created the theatre after years of touring plays in a converted hall at their home in St John’s Wood. The theatre opened in 1959 with a production of Lock Up Your Daughters and soon became a lively home for new writing and classic revivals. It staged the première of Tom Stoppard’s Every Good Boy Deserves Favour in 1978 and hosted annual performances of Treasure Island, with Miles himself playing Long John Silver. The Molecule Club introduced children to science, while the Royal Shakespeare Company brought Stratford productions to the Mermaid during a 1987 residency. Today the building survives as a conference centre, its auditorium replaced by meeting rooms and a fitness suite. The BBC still records Friday Night Is Music Night there, keeping music alive in the old playhouse’s walls. Though the stage no longer hosts plays, the Mermaid’s story remains visible in its surviving fabric and the memories of actors who once trod its boards.