Theater

London’s West End Faces Existential Crisis as Theaters Stay Dark

  • Most venues’ business models jeopardized by social distancing
  • ‘Can Christmas be made to work?’ pandemic-hit theaters ask
Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg

Agatha Christie’s murder mystery play, “The Mousetrap” has been staged continuously in London since 1952, making it the world’s longest-running show.

But the coronavirus lockdown brought the famous production to an abrupt halt in March, along with the musicals Les Miserables -- showing since 1985 -- and the composer Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera -- staged since 1986.