London's West End is greatly regarded for professional stage shows. Along with Broadway in New York, Westend entertainment is often considered to produce many of the very best shows in the world. Seeing a West End show is incredibly popular entertainment particularly with tourists. A lot of stage shows and specifically best hit musicals are performed in the large theatres of London’s Theatreland. Large numbers of people go to a Westend theatre show every year. Westend Theatre Breaks are also really common in the UK. Theatre Breaks are frequently booked as a short break treat to celebrate a special occasion. A Westend show is the focal entertainment however booked together with accommodation and often reservations in a top London restaurant.

The main theatre region of London consists of approximately forty theatres and was renamed by Westminster Council as well as the Society of London Theatre as ‘Theatre Land. It is located in the middle of the Westend of Central London and is historically defined by The Strand to the South, Oxford Street to the North, Regent Street to the West and Kingsway to the East. Prominent theatre streets include Drury Lane, Shaftesbury Avenue and The Strand. Most of the shows are musical theatre, traditional plays and comedy performances.

The Westend entertainment region started to be established through the opening of numerous small venues around 1806. The expansion of the Westend entertainment region gained pace with the Theatres Act 1843 which relaxed the conditions for the performance of plays. In the following decades, many new theatres were opened. That pattern continued until the first world war. All through the 50s and 60s, lots of plays ended up being produced in theatre clubs in order to escape the censorship at that time exercised by the Lord Chamberlain’s Office. However, the Theatres Act 1968 at last abolished censorship of the stage in the UK.

Many of the theatres in the West end are of Victorian or Edwardian construction and most are privately owned. The majority of them have great character and the biggest and best maintained include grand neo-classical, Romanesque or Victorian façades and luxurious detailed interior design and decoration. On the other hand, leg room is often cramped and audience facilities like bars and toilets are usually a good deal smaller than in modern venues. The protected status of the buildings and their confined urban locations, together with financial constraints, mean it is awfully hard to make extensive improvements to the furnishings, fixtures and fittings.

Some of the longest running musical theatre performed in the West End have successfully played to audiences for many years. Some of the most well-liked theatre shows are We Will Rock You that is set in a future world where rock music is banned, Les Miserables which is an international award winning musical about an epic tale of passion and destruction, Chicago is about a young woman who has killed her lover but is acquitted, The Lion King which is an adaptation of the Disney film, The Phantom of the Opera that tells the tale of the phantom that terrorises the Paris Opera, Billy Elliot which is the heartrending story of a boy who loves ballet, Dirty Dancing which is the stage version of the classic film, Sister Act is another adaptation of a hit movie, Mamma Mia is about a mother and daughter and three potential dads, and Stomp which is a fast paced mixture of music, tap dance and percussion. The list is endless as there are so many West End theatre productions to pick from. There really is a show that would appeal to everyone. Attending a theatre show in the Westend is truly something special.