Seven Dials Playhouse put up for sale

The long lease for the Covent Garden studio theatre Seven Dials Playhouse has been placed up for sale, it has been revealed.

The property is currently held in a long lease by Seven Dials Playhouse Limited at a peppercorn rent, due to expire at the end of the millennium. That long lease has been valued for prospective buyers at over £4 million.

The listing has stated that the venue, if the long lease is acquired, will then be leased back to Seven Dials Playhouse Limited for a shorter duration of 15 years, at passing rent of £300,000 per annum. A closer examination of the offered lease has been detailed in The Stage. 

Formerly known as the Actors Centre, the Covent Garden-based venue was rechristened in late 2021 with an opening season featuring Jenna Russell and David Ames. At the time, Amanda Davey, who had been the chief executive of the Actors Centre from October 2019, said the move came following an “incredibly challenging 18 months”. The theatre is currently hosting a series of preview performances for Edinburgh Fringe productions set to travel to the famed arts festival over the coming weeks.

The move to sell the long lease for the venue has drawn intense criticism from a number of parties, following years of controversy around the Playhouse. A campaign group, titled Actor at the Centre, criticised the change to the venue, especially the withdrawal of weekly actor training programmes. They stated in a petition that the move “ripped the core out of one of our industry’s most valuable resources during one of the most challenging periods many of us have ever faced.”

Creative artist union Equity has criticised the sale, with general secretary Paul Fleming stating: “We need to get some answers about why the Seven Dials Playhouse are selling the lease on the building, a building bought by actors for actors to deliver affordable, accessible training way back 50 years ago. It’s a vitally important part of our infrastructure to keep our industries representative and to keep the workforce, particularly the workforce at rest, in the game.

“The lease went up for sale in May, we’re almost the beginning of mid-July/August now, but no one knows anything about it. We don’t know what the plan is or how we’re going to protect this building that has had the heart and soul of so many of our members poured into it over the decades. First and foremost we want answers, we want to know why their business model has failed so epicly badly that they have to sell key real-estate that belongs to our industry, our community and our workforce.”

The venue has declined to comment on the sale.