Theatre Royal, Drury Lane

For more than 100 years the theatre has become famous for staging some of the most ambitious, breath-taking spectacles seen on a West End stage. Audiences over the decades have been delighted and astounded by chariot races in Ben Hur, the Derby and an earthquake in The Hope, the Battle of Rorke’s Drift in Youth, and a train crash in The Whip, as well as sinking ships, air balloons and underwater fights – not to mention the Chelsea Flower Show, Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors, the flooding of Paris and Alpine avalanches.