Theatre Royal Windsor

Theatre Royal Windsor is a historic theatre at 32 Thames Street in Windsor, Berkshire, standing directly opposite Windsor Castle. Windsor has a theatrical tradition stretching back to the early 18th century, while a purpose-built theatre was established on the present site in 1815. That building survived for almost a century before being gutted by fire in February 1908. Its replacement, the Theatre Royal seen today, was designed by architect Frank Verity and opened in December 1910. The Edwardian building later struggled with the arrival of talking pictures and spent part of the early 1930s operating as a cinema, but theatre manager John Counsell successfully re-established it as a repertory theatre in 1938. Counsell and his wife, actress Mary Kerridge, remained closely associated with the venue for decades, helping establish Windsor as an important regional theatre where productions could develop before moving into London. The auditorium was extensively redesigned by theatre designer Carl Toms in 1965 and has since undergone several further refurbishments while retaining its traditional character. The Grade II-listed theatre continues to stage drama, comedy, musicals and its long-running annual pantomime, and remains unusual in Britain as a producing theatre operating year-round without public subsidy.

Theatre Royal Windsor has appeared in The Critic (2024), Hamlet (2024) and Ludwig (2024–). The Critic (2024) uses the theatre as part of its recreation of London’s theatrical world in the 1930s, while Hamlet (2024) goes considerably further by transforming almost the entire building into Elsinore Castle. Ludwig (2024–) uses both the exterior and interior in the opening episode of its second season, where the Windsor theatre stands in for the fictional Theatre Royal Cambridge and becomes the scene of an unusual murder investigation.

In The Critic (2024), Theatre Royal Windsor becomes the London theatre where actress Nina Land performs in John Webster’s The White Devil under the unforgiving eye of newspaper critic Jimmy Erskine. Nina already knows that Erskine has spent years attacking her performances, and his presence in the audience makes the opening night particularly nerve-racking. Erskine watches from the auditorium alongside members of London’s theatrical and social elite, including newspaper proprietor David Brooke, who secretly admires Nina. Her performance once again fails to impress the critic, and the vicious review he writes afterwards becomes another humiliation for Nina. Their increasingly hostile relationship eventually takes a much darker turn when Erskine, facing the loss of his own position at the Daily Chronicle, realises that Brooke’s feelings for Nina can be exploited. The real auditorium and theatrical surroundings of Theatre Royal Windsor fit naturally into a film in which performances, audiences and the power wielded by critics are central to the story.

In Hamlet (2024), Theatre Royal Windsor is transformed almost completely into Elsinore Castle for Sean Mathias’s screen adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy, starring Ian McKellen as Hamlet. Rather than simply filming the 2021 stage production that had previously been performed at the theatre, Mathias and cinematographer Neil Oseman spread the action throughout the building. Corridors, staircases, dressing rooms, front-of-house areas, spaces beneath and above the stage and even the roof become different parts of the Danish royal castle. The rooftop is used for the battlements where Hamlet encounters the ghost of his murdered father, while darker backstage and basement spaces become the more oppressive corners of Elsinore. Characters move through narrow passages and working areas that an ordinary theatre audience would never normally see, allowing the building itself to become part of the film’s interpretation of the story. McKellen later recalled that they filmed everywhere from the cellar beneath the stage to the flies and roof, and the finished film uses almost every part of Theatre Royal Windsor rather than attempting to hide the architecture behind conventional theatrical scenery. The result makes Hamlet (2024) one of the most extensive uses of the building ever captured on screen.

In Ludwig (2024–), Theatre Royal Windsor stands in for the fictional Theatre Royal Cambridge in the first episode of season two, broadcast in 2026. The case is John “Ludwig” Taylor’s first major investigation after officially becoming a crime-scene consultant rather than secretly impersonating his missing detective brother. During a performance at the theatre, an elderly woman named Lilibeth Lowery is fatally stabbed while sitting in a box with her daughters Patricia and Portia. The lights have briefly gone out during the performance, apparently creating the opportunity for the murder, but the investigation immediately becomes unusual when both daughters independently confess to killing their mother. John therefore faces the reverse of a normal murder mystery: rather than identifying which suspect committed the crime, he must work out which confession is false and reconstruct exactly what happened inside the theatre during the blackout. Much of the episode is filmed throughout the real Theatre Royal Windsor, including the auditorium, boxes, foyer and exterior, with the building itself becoming essential to the puzzle as John studies sightlines, seating and what the various witnesses could actually have seen from different parts of the auditorium.

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