Taking time out from interviewing celebs, TV writer Steve Pratt spends a weekend taking a look behind the scenes of London's theatreland

THE members of the cast of the London West End production of A Weekend At The Strand Palace were assembled in the bar, supping cocktails with producer and host Ben. This was the start of a three-act drama that proved full of laughter, tears and a few shocks with appearances by ghosts, Shakespeare and the women of Troy.

We were guests at the "opening night"

to mark the £2.5m makeover of the Strand Palace Hotel in the heart of London's Theatreland. With Lee Mead wearing Joseph's Technicolor Dreamcoat down the road and Disney's The Lion King and the musical take on Lord Of The Rings round the corner, the hotel is right to make a song and dance about its place on the stage.

The 785-bedroom hotel itself is big but not impersonal. The lobby has been revamped along with 400 or so of the bedrooms.

These contemporary club rooms offer a stylish and restful place to lay your head after the discovering the history of London's theatres and sampling the productions on offer.

The clean-cut, modern decoration is all very different to 1909 when the hotel opened, with a single room and breakfast costing five shillings and six pence - that's 31p in today's money.

After the adjoining Haxell's Hotel was acquired to expand and improve the hotel in the 1920s, art deco features were incorporated into many of the public areas and can still be seen today.

Behind the scenes changes were taking place too. Two second-hand coal-fired steam boilers, salvaged from First World War battleships, were installed in the boiler house. During the Second World War, the hotel was popular with American armed forces personnel before they were sent into action.

Again, it became an important social venue where soldiers jived and jitterbugged - in contrast to the bright young things who did the Charleston and tango back in the roaring Twenties.

During excavation work in the fields of Normandy some years ago, a Strand Palace Hotel room key was found in a First World War trench. The key and other art deco features are now held in the archives of London's Victoria and Albert Museum.

Further changes came in 1958 with private bathrooms introduced in all guestrooms in 1958, along with new oil-fired boilers to cope with increased demand for hot water.

Nearly 50 years later, we moved from Mask's Bar to the hotel's charming Johnston's Brasserie for a pre-theatre meal before heading to the Fortune Theatre for the fright of our lives. Somehow I've managed to miss The Woman In Black, despite 19 years in the West End and several regional tours since the chiller taken from Susan Hill's novel premiered at Scarborough's Stephen Joseph Theatre in 1987.

The Fortune, the first London theatre built after the First World War, was once described as "this most intimate of theatres"

on account of its size, or lack of it.

It occupies the site of the old Albion Tavern and is attached to a church, so how appropriate that the opening play was called Sinners.

The Woman In Black is a play with two actors and many more shocks, proving that theatre can do the supernatural and unexplained as scarily as any book or film.

If you don't jump out of your seat at least once during the play then you're probably as dead as the apparitions that materialise on stage.

GHOSTLY females proved a taster for things to come in Act Two on Sunday as Blue Badge guide Diane Burstein led a walking tour of London's Theatreland. I sent my understudy (take a bow, Mrs Pratt) due to a prior appointment to interview Michael Caine and Kenneth Branagh, for The Northern Echo's film pages.

The tour took in the Lyceum, dating back to the 18th Century and remembered by many as a popular dance hall between the 1940s and 1970s. Along the road in Drury Lane, Nell Gwynn, orange seller and king's mistress, became the first actress to tread the boards at the Theatre Royal. Mules, the restaurant where they enjoyed liaisons, still exists.

Across the road is the Royal Opera House, with the current building the third theatre built on the site. In contrast to the grand operatic style of productions there, you can often see performers outside St Paul's Church, Covent Garden, where there's been street entertainment since 1662.

These days you'll find fans outside the Adelphi stage door waiting to see Lee Mead, winner of the BBC1's Any Dream Will Do now starring in Joseph And The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat.

There's a chance they might also see William Tierri, who was stabbed there 20 years ago and whose ghost continues to hang around despite an exorcism to banish him.

Lunch in the Strand Palace Carvery, offering fish and salad as well as the more obvious meat dishes, saw the curtain fall on the second act.

The final act, and a new day, took us behind the scenes at very different theatrical institutions across the river, the National Theatre and the Globe Theatre.

Public backstage tours of these buildings offer a contrasting insight into how plays are put on.

Our National guide took us into all three auditoria. In the Lyttleton, stagehands were busy putting the finishing touches to the set for The Women Of Troy. The work of the theatre went on around us as we followed the labyrinth of rooms and corridors backstage.

The auditoria offer contrasting theatrical experiences. The Lyttelton's traditional proscenium arch layout (with its neutral, earthy colours and seats once voted the most comfortable in Britain) is very different to the Olivier, which resembles a classical Greek theatre. Seats are purple, favourite colour of the National's first director Laurence Olivier. The third space, the Cottesloe, is versatile, with seating that can be moved and arranged in various layouts. An Elizabethan courtyard was the inspiration.

Workshops make 90 per cent of what appears on the stage. There's an armoury, a metalwork studio, a computer operated flying system for scenery, a revolving drum for magic stage transformations in the Olivier and a staff of 800 people.

Shakespeare's Globe, down the river, is different again. The puritanical city fathers regarded theatres as scandalous places, forcing the Globe to be sited on the opposite side of the river, away from the city's jurisdiction and laws.

There were four theatres in the area during Shakespeare's time, facing competition from other entertainment including bear-baiting, cock-fighting and women of ill repute. Our guide told us it was "very naughty to be this side of the river". Flying the flag, which could be seen on the city side of the river, was the traditional way of signalling that the fun was beginning.

THE present theatre, the third Globe on the site, exists thanks to the tireless efforts of American actor, producer and director Sam Wanamaker to recreate Shakespeare's playhouse. Building began in 1987, with the Globe opening ten years later. Wanamaker didn't live to see his dream realised, although the family link is maintained by actress daughter Zoe Wanamaker, who is honorary president of the Globe Trust.

The Globe operates as an independent working theatre, with performances throughout the summer, as well as a tourist attraction and educational resource.

The auditorium itself is modelled on Shakespeare's Globe and open to the skies. Audiences in the dearer seats are under cover. Only those standing in front of the stage risk getting wet in the rain.

This intimacy with the actors means a more emotional theatrical experience, although audiences have been known to get carried away. French students, unhappy with the anti-France sentiments in Shakespeare's Henry V, threw baguettes at the stage in protest.

After that, we headed for the gift shop to chose between purchasing a life-size, plastic Yorick's Skull or a Titania porcelain mug. Then we took a bow, gave our tireless guide Ben (the PR man who'd organised the weekend) a round of applause and returned to the normal world.

*The Strand Palace Hotel is at 372 Strand, London WC2R 0JJ.

Information 0207-8368080, reservations 0207-73794737 or visit www.strandpalacehotel.co.uk National Theatre tours 0207-4523400 or email info@nationaltheatre.org.uk Shakespeare's Globe 0207-9021400 or visit www.shakespeares-globe.org The Woman In Black is at the Fortune Theatre, box office 0870-0606626 Secret London walks, visit www.secretlondonwalks.co.uk

9:50am Saturday 19th April 2008

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