This volume reveals a theater culture more complex and contradictory than previous histories have allowed for. Combining the popular with the commercial, the book includes accounts of the craze for thriller and detective plays and musical comedy and revue, alongside analyses of historical pageantry and the development of politicized productions of Shakespeare. It initiates a long overdue reassessment of mid-twentieth century British theater cultures. The book will appeal to advanced undergraduates and postgraduates as well as scholars interested in twentieth-century British theater.