Underbelly has announced the closure of Underbelly Boulevard Soho, with the venue ending its lease early and playing its final performance on 10 January 2027. Formerly known as the Boulevard Theatre, the venue was taken on by Underbelly in October 2023 under a lease from owner Soho Estates.
Directors Ed Bartlam and Charlie Wood said the decision was “incredibly sad,” but that “the costs associated with the venue versus its size, and the wider economic challenges facing the sector, have proved a challenge we can’t quite surmount.” They added: “We gave it our best shot, with a wonderful and varied programme… but sometimes you just have to hold your cow-shaped hands up and accept it.”
The closure, they said, will allow Underbelly to focus on “a number of other exciting, Underbelly-imbued theatrical and venue projects in development.”
In its three years under Underbelly, the intimate 200-capacity venue has hosted over 1,700 performances, welcoming artists including Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Michael McIntyre, Self Esteem, David Letterman, John Cleese, James Acaster and Kiefer Sutherland.
Before its closure, it will showcase Fringe Fix, an Edinburgh Festival Fringe transfer season, in September, the London premiere of Off-Broadway musical parody Heated Rivalry in October, and the return of circus spectacular Sophie’s Surprise Christmas Party from November into early January. “We still have six brilliant months ahead of us at Underbelly Boulevard,” the directors said, “and we’re determined to go out with a bang.”
The building itself has a colourful history stretching back decades. It first opened as the Elle et Lui theatre within the Raymond Revuebar strip club in the late 1950s, before becoming a theatre in its own right.
Renamed the Boulevard Theatre in the late 1970s, it became home to The Comic Strip, featuring Rik Mayall, Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders and Adrian Edmondson among others, and later Eddie Izzard’s Raging Bull comedy club, before closing in the early 1990s. Soho Estates regenerated the site in 2010, reopening the Boulevard Theatre before handing the lease to Underbelly in 2023.
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