Team behind Bridge Theatre to open new venue in London’s King’s Cross

Nicholas Hytner and Nick Starr are set to open their second commercial theatre venue in London, following their recent venture at the Bridge Theatre in London Bridge.

Designed by Howard Tompkins Architects in collaboration with TAIT, the theatre will include a 600-sear flexible auditorium, based on the Bridge's current auditorium capable of "streamlined transformation between formats". It will have a foyer, featuring a café/bar open to the public during the day and during show times.  

The building containing the theatre, called P2, is currently under construction and planned to open in the winter of 2021. It will include nine floors of office space, and be a London base for Facebook's offices, as well as retail space on the ground floor. It will be situated on Lewis Cubitt Square, adjacent to Coal Drops Yard.

Hytner, who was director of the National Theatre for ten years, and Starr, who was an executive director at the same venue, formed the London Theatre Company and launched the Bridge Theatre in 2017.

They said: "We've been delighted with the welcome the Bridge has received, and with the intimacy, comfort and adaptability of Haworth Tompkins'/Tait auditorium.

"We're looking forward to joining the vibrant King's Cross neighbourhood in a few years' time.

Programming at the Bridge over the last couple of years has included Maggie Smith appearing in A German Life, Rory Kinnear starring in Young Marx, Laura Linney in My Name is Lucy Barton, and a promenade production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.

The new venue is set to similarly support a 'varied programme of new commissions and classics'.

A theatre has previously operated in the King's Cross area, called the King's Cross Theatre, where productions of The Railway Children, Lin-Manuel Miranda's In The Heights, David Bowie musical Lazarus and the Donmar's Shakespeare Trilogy all ran.