Capacity: 588
Currently home to: The Comedy about a Bank Robbery
In 1870, the caterers Spiers and Pond began development of the site of the White Bear, a seventeenth-century posting inn. The inn was located on sloping ground stretching between Jermyn Street and Piccadilly Circus, known as Regent Circus. A competition was held for the design of a concert hall complex, with Thomas Verity winning out of 15 entries. He was commissioned to design a large restaurant, dining rooms, ballroom, and galleried concert hall in the basement. The frontage, which was the façade of the restaurant, showed a French Renaissance influence using Portland stone. During World War II, the Criterion was requisitioned by the BBC- as an underground theatre it made an ideal studio safe from the London blitz – and light entertainment programmes were both recorded and broadcast live.