Dame Judi Dench is to have a West End theatre renamed after her, becoming only the second non-royal woman to be honoured in such a way.
The Shaftesbury theatre will be known as the Judi Dench theatre from February 2027 in celebration of the actor’s “unparalleled contribution to British theatre and the performing arts”.
The theatre said Dench was “one of the greatest actors of our time” and that the name change would “ensure Dame Judi’s legacy continues to inspire future generations of performers and audiences alike”.
Dench has a long association with the Shaftesbury, which is one of the largest independent theatre in London and is the only West End location with a dome that opens.
She was part of Ray Cooney’s Theatre of Comedy Company, which had part-shares in the Shaftesbury. Don Taffner, of DLT Entertainment, which produced the sitcom As Time Goes By in which Dench starred, also bought shares in the theatre.
Dench said: “The Shaftesbury theatre has always held a special place in my heart. My relationship to the Theatre of Comedy and to the Taffner family goes back many years, and to have this beautiful theatre renamed after me is truly overwhelming.
“Live theatre continues to be so important as a way of telling stories and entertaining audiences, something I have aimed to do all my working life.”
The Shaftesbury theatre was originally called New Princes theatre, but its name was changed in 1962 to honour the original Shaftesbury theatre, which was destroyed in the Blitz. The renaming will follow a renovation, including restoration of the building’s dome and backstage area.
It is unusual for a theatre to be named after a living person. The vast majority were named posthumously to honour men, including John Gielgud, Harold Pinter and Noël Coward.
The first West End theatre to honour a woman was Andrew Lloyd Webber’s New London theatre, which was renamed after Gillian Lynne (the Cats choreographer) in 2018.
Lynne was 92 when the theatre was renamed, having previously been known as the Winter Garden theatre and the Mogul music hall.
This is not the only place to be named after Dench recently. A street in Swindon was called “Dench Close” as part of a naming scheme on a new estate that used actors associated with the James Bond films.
The Robin Gardens development named its roads after people who starred in the The World Is Not Enough for the slightly tenuous reason that the town’s former Motorola building briefly appeared in the film.
The Shaftesbury renaming is more firmly tied to Dench’s career, with the theatre’s chief executive, Eleanor Lang, saying: “We don’t celebrate brilliant women enough in our West End theatre names, so we are delighted that her name will be forever in lights above our doorway.”
Dench, 91, has been vocal about ageing.
In December last year she said she could still recite Shakespeare but “I can’t remember what I’m doing tomorrow”; and she has talked about how macular degeneration, which she was diagnosed with in 2012, made it difficult for her to see on film sets.