Bridge Theatre's Nicholas Hytner and Nick Starr to open a new theatre in King's Cross

Curtain-raiser: Plans for the King’s Cross venue, set to open in 2021

Former National Theatre supremos Nicholas Hytner and Nick Starr are to build a 600-seat King’s Cross venue.

The pair, known as “the two Nicks”, produced a string of hits at the National, including One Man, Two Guvnors. They left the Southbank institution in 2015 and set up the London Theatre Company. Two years ago, they opened the Bridge Theatre, near Tower Bridge.

The King’s Cross theatre will be housed in the new P2 building, designed by Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, which will also become home to Facebook.

Downton Abbey star Dame Maggie Smith is starring in one-woman show A German Life at the Bridge and Game Of Thrones actress Gwendoline Christie will be appearing there from June 3 in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. No details have yet been released about a potential programme for the new theatre, which is planned to open in 2021.

But a spokeswoman said the building would have “a flexible auditorium” that could host “a varied programme of new commissions and classics”.

The building, on Lewis Cubitt Square, will be close to Central St Martin’s art college. The area previously held a temporary venue that showed the David Bowie musical Lazarus and the Donmar Warehouse’s all-female Shakespeare trilogy.

James Edgerley, project director at King’s Cross Central Limited Partnership, said: “We’ve been busy working with the London Theatre Company on this joint proposal as the building’s design has evolved and we are excited to bring forward a high quality theatre at the heart of King’s Cross.

“This will help further our vision of N1C as London’s creative quarter, where there will be plenty more new openings in the years to come. We can’t wait for the first performance.”

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