Criterion Theatre, Piccadilly Circus 1980

Criterion Theatre, Piccadilly Circus, London, 1980. This lively street-level view shows the brightly lit entrance of the Criterion Theatre during its run of Neil Simon’s Last of the Red Hot Lovers, with the large heart-topped fascia, illuminated canopy and a dense cluster of review boards and posters filling the frontage. Beside it is the boldly signed Henekey’s White Bear Steak Bar, with further signs for Bars and Restaurant and Henekey’s Restaurants & Bars, while pedestrians in coats and flared trousers pass along the pavement beneath Westminster’s distinctive bronze-painted lamp column. The combination of theatre hoardings, restaurant signage and busy foot traffic captures Piccadilly Circus as a very commercial and theatrical part of the West End at the start of the 1980s.