Festival Theatre, Malvern

[2] The foundation stone of the assembly rooms of the theatre was laid down by the Earl Beauchamp on 6 July 1884, attended by Jenny Lind, Lady Emily Foley and Dr. W. T.

[3] Michael W. Pharand considers the friendship and artistic relationship between Bernard Shaw and Barry Vincent Jackson to have "probably had its greatest flowering with the Malvern Festival".

[2] The English première of The Apple Cart took place at this festival and was performed four times, and Shaw's Back to Methuselah,[5] Heartbreak House and Caesar and Cleopatra were also shown.

[6] Shaw's Geneva, a Fancied Page of History in Three Acts, a satire on European political ideologies,[7] was first performed at Malvern on 1 August 1938 by Roy Limbert, and after four runs, productions were put on at the Saville and St. James Theatres in London.

[20] In May of that year, fans of The Who, angered that the group's van had broken down before they were due to play a gig at the Winter Gardens in Malvern, smashed the windows of the theatre.

[21] The theatre closed in the early 1970s but reopened in 1977, seeking to "revive the festival idea by creating an intriguing dual focus on Shaw and Elgar".

[23] In 1998, a further £7.2 million major redesign and refurbishment took place with the help of contributions from the National Lottery Distribution Fund (NLDF), administered by the government Department for Culture, Media and Sport.