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Type:
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Club
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Location:
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United Kingdom, London
1A Camden High Street
NW1 7JE
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Contacts:
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Tel: 0870 4325527
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Website:
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www.koko.uk.com |
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Monday - Thursday: Doors 7pm. Headline act usually on at 8.30-9pm. Gig ends at 11pm.
Friday: Doors 7pm. Headline act usually on at 7.45-8.15pm. Gig ends at 10pm and Club NME starts straight afterwards. Anyone at the gig can stay at Club NME for free.
Saturday: When bands play on a Saturday night event the headline act usually doesn't come on before midnight. The exception to this is the iTunes Festival where bands will come on at the same time as on a weekday.
The Camden Theatre, opened on Boxing Day 1900, with a capacity of 2,434 it was one of the largest theatres in London outside the West End. The theatre was designed by the prolific theatre architect W.G.R. Sprague with an exterior symmetrical stone façade in a Classical style with four stone pillars that are spaced between windows. The building is dominated by a large copper dome, that originally had an open lantern that was topped by a statue. There were also eight statues of classical figures mounted on the corner pediments of the building. Decorated in a Baroque style with naked female figures holding supports for the boxes and columns, the rectangular marble proscenium is topped by more plaster reliefs of reclining naked women. The ceiling contains a shallow dome.
The theatre was opened by Ellen Terry, then the most celebrated actress in England, who had lived in nearby Stanhope Street as a child. The St Pancras Gazette, a local newspaper, commented as follows in a review of the theatre's production of an opera called The Geisha in 1901:
"It is a matter of special gratification that the opera was presented at our beautiful local theatre on a scale of magnificence and completeness which would do credit to a West End theatre, but this is nothing new at the Camden Theatre, being rather a continuation of the policy with which the proprietors started their enterprise, viz. to offer nothing to their patrons but standard work, which has received the unmistakable approval of critics and public."
On 6 December 1909 it reopened as a variety theatre and became the Camden Hippodrome Theatre. By 1911 films were being presented as part of the programme and in January 1913 it became a cinema known as the Camden Hippodrome Picture Theatre, operated by Biocolour Picture Theatres Ltd. From January 1928, they were taken over by the Gaumont British cinema circuit in July 1930.
Closed during World War II, it survived the mid 20th century, when many similar buildings were demolished, including Camden Town's other theatre, the Bedford Theatre, largely because it became a BBC radio theatre from 1945, however some voices called for its demolition in the 1970s. Programmes recorded at the theatre included the Goon Show. The BBC moved to the Golders Green Hippodrome in 1972, and it became a live music venue, called The Music Machine, and in 1982 became the Camden Palace, and in 2004 it was redeveloped and renamed once again as KOKO, with a capacity of 1,500. The previous industrial fittings of the Camden Palace were removed and it was repainted in a dark red colour.
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