In 1964 the Piccadilly presented the British premiere of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, but by this time musicals had begun to outnumber non-musical plays at this theatre, with revivals of Oliver!

and Man of La Mancha, and later productions including Gypsy (1973), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1986), A Little Night Music (1989), The Rocky Horror Show (1990), Guys and Dolls (2005), Grease (2007), Jersey Boys (2014) and Moulin Rouge!

The theatre has been home to many productions of the classics, with plays by Shakespeare, Marlowe, Molière, Shaw and more modern authors including Samuel Beckett, Arthur Miller, Alan Bennett, Tom Stoppard and Willy Russell.

Among the actors appearing at the Piccadilly have been Henry Fonda, Frankie Howerd, Marcel Marceau, Ian McKellen, Simon Russell Beale, Paul Scofield and Timothy West; actresses have included Gladys Cooper, Edith Evans, Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies, Joyce Grenfell, Angela Lansbury, Evelyn Laye, Prunella Scales and Julie Walters.

A simple façade concealed an elaborate Art Deco interior designed by Marc-Henri Levy and Gaston Laverdet, with a 1,232-seat auditorium decorated in shades of pink;[1] it was claimed that if all the bricks used in the building were laid in a straight line, they would stretch from London to Paris.

The theatre reopened in November 1929, with a production of The Student Prince, which was followed in January 1931 by Folly to be Wise, a revue by Dion Titheradge and Vivian Ellis, starring Cicely Courtneidge with Nelson Keys and Mary Eaton; it ran for 257 performances.

[1] From the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 the Piccadilly was closed until Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit premiered there in July 1941, starring Fay Compton, Kay Hammond, Cecil Parker and Margaret Rutherford.

[6] After that came two musicals, both in 1943; the first was Oscar Hammerstein II and Sigmund Romberg's Sunny River, presented by Emile Littler, starring Laye, Dennis Noble, Edith Day and Bertram Wallis.

[20] Benn Levy's comedy The Rape of the Belt was a modern treatment of a classical legend, starring Hammond as Hippolyta, John Clements as Heracles, Constance Cummings as Antiope, Richard Attenborough as Theseus and Nicholas Hannen as Zeus; it ran for 298 performances from December 1957.

[21] André Roussin's comedy Hook, Line and Sinker, adapted by and starring Robert Morley, co-starred Joan Plowright and Bernard Cribbins;[22] it opened in November 1958 and ran until 28 March 1959.

The Golden Touch, a musical depicting a colony of beatniks on a Greek island, opened and closed in May 1960, and Bachelor Flat, described by The Stage as "yet another American play based on the well-worn theme of the teenage girl, half-baby, half-sophisticate"[25] ran for less than a week in June 1960.

[9] A revival of Shaw's Candida from the Oxford Playhouse starred Michael Denison and Dulcie Gray and ran for 160 performances at the Piccadilly and then at Wyndham's Theatre.

[33] A stage version of the popular television comedy series The Rag Trade, starring Peter Jones and Miriam Karlin, did not match the appeal of the small-screen original, and ran for 85 performances from 19 December 1962 to 23 February 1963.

For the first weeks of the run the leading roles were played by Uta Hagen and Arthur Hill, who had created them on Broadway; they were succeeded in May by Constance Cummings and Ray McAnally.

[9] Neil Simon's comedy Barefoot in the Park, starring Mildred Natwick, Daniel Massey and Marlo Thomas, ran for 243 performances between November 1965 and June 1966.

Ian McKellen played the title roles, and the company included Timothy West, James Laurenson, Robert Eddison and Peggy Thorpe-Bates.

by Robert Bolt transferred from the Chichester Festival with Eileen Atkins as Elizabeth I, Sarah Miles as Mary Queen of Scots and Richard Pearson as Cecil; The Guardian called it the best historical play in London for a decade; it ran for 442 performances.

[43] In February 1972 there was a further transfer from Chichester, a revival of Robert E. Sherwood's 1931 romantic comedy Reunion in Vienna, starring Nigel Patrick and Margaret Leighton.

[44] After that was a transfer from the Prince of Wales Theatre of The Threepenny Opera, with Joe Melia as Macheath,[45] and in July 1972 there was a new British musical "for kids of all ages", Pull Both Ends.

[48] In March 1974 Tennessee Williams's popular melodrama A Streetcar Named Desire was revived with Claire Bloom, Joss Ackland and Martin Shaw, and ran for 243 performances.

[57] Vieux Carré by Tennessee Williams opened in August 1978; it divided critical opinion, which ranged from The Observer's view that it was on the same level as A Streetcar Named Desire to The Guardian's that it was "a vortex of silliness ... dire bathos".

[72] Lady Day, a musical about Billie Holiday, then ran briefly,[73] followed by a three-month run of Tom Stoppard's comedy Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, from June to September.

[80] In March 1991 a musical, Moby Dick, described as "Sixth-form girls perform Herman Meville's novel in their school swimming-pool",[81] opened to poor notices, and closed in early July.

[93] The orchestra was reduced to thirty from the usual full symphonic forces, and the most remarked aspect of the production was the corps de ballet, consisting of bare-torsoed male dancers as the swans.

[94] Hall's company returned in March with Molière's The School for Wives, starring Peter Bowles and Eric Sykes,[95] which ran at the Piccadilly until the end of April, before transferring to the Comedy Theatre.

[105] After a brief run for Slava's Snowshow in March 1999,[106] Prunella Scales and Timothy West starred in Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party, which ran from 20 April to 3 July.

[110] After a short season of Shockheaded Peter between February and April 2001,[111][112] the National Theatre's revival of Michael Frayn's farce Noises Off played its first West End engagement from the 3rd May until 26 January 2002.

[114] The English language premiere of the French musical Romeo and Juliet by Gérard Presgurvic opened on 4 November, though bad reviews resulted in its closing three months later.

The first two were National Theatre productions in limited seasons, first The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (29 November 2018 – 27 April 2019);[131] and then The Lehman Trilogy (11 May 2019 – 31 August 2019), with Russell Beale, Adam Godley and Ben Miles;.

[133] Pretty Woman, starring Danny Mac and Aimie Atkinson previewed from 13 February and opened on 1 March 2020, but its run was curtailed within a fortnight, when West End theatres closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.