A famous story about the two greatest British playwrights of the twentieth century is that Harold Pinter once complained to Tom Stoppard by letter that he felt the Comedy Theatre in the West End should be renamed after him while he was still alive, to which Stoppard amusingly replied by suggesting that Pinter simply change his name to Harold Comedy.
Now, alas, both men have passed on, Pinter in 2008 and Stoppard last year. And just as the Comedy Theatre did indeed become the Harold Pinter Theatre, now the Duke of York’s Theatre becomes the Tom Stoppard Theatre, with the name broadly in effect now and signage to be updated over the next few weeks.
That’s good as not only is the name a fitting tribute generally to the man who wrote Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, it’s also the case that his greatest play Arcadia is currently conveniently running at the Duke of York’s (and therefore will end its run at the Tom Stoppard).
Stoppard’s ’00s hit Rock ‘n’ Roll also ran at the Duke of York’s, and – like the Pinter – it’s a smaller venue that stages plays rather than musicals. It’s a good fit. The name was probably also due for change: there is longer a Duke of York after the erstwhile Prince Andrew gave the title up. While the theatre wasn’t named after Andrew (it’s had the name since 1895), the Tom Stoppard feels like an altogether more solid title in general.
It marks a relatively busy spell for name changes on the West End, with the Shaftesbury Theatre soon to become the Judi Dench and the Queen’s Theatre having become the Sondheim Theatre in 2019.
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