Owners cut their Soho lease short due to 'insurmountable' costs

Soho’s Underbelly Boulevard is to close in January – with its operators saying the costs involved in running such a venue have became insurmountable.

Edinburgh Fringe operators Underbelly took over the lease on the glitzy 200-capacity venue in October 2023 – but will be breaking its agreement with owners Soho Estates early.

In a statement, Ed Bartlam and Charlie Wood, Underbelly's directors, said they were ‘incredibly sad at having to make this difficult decision’.

They added: ‘We gave it our best shot… but ultimately, the costs associated with the venue versus its size, and the wider economic challenges facing the sector, have proved a challenge we can't quite surmount.  Sometimes you just have to hold your cow-shaped hands up and accept it.’

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Since opening, Underbelly Boulevard has hosted more than 1,700 performances, including appearances by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Michael McIntyre, John Bishop, John Cleese and James Acaster – as well as the Chortle Awards.

The venue first opened as the Elle Et Lui theatre as part of the Raymond Revuebar strip club in the late 1950s, before becoming a small theatre in its own right.

In the late 1970s, it was renamed the Boulevard Theatre,  famously becoming home to The Comic Strip – featuring Rik Mayall, Adrian Edmondson, Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, Nigel Planer and Peter Richardson – and later Eddie Izzard’s Raging Bull comedy club before closing its doors in the early 1990s. 

In 2010, Soho Estates regenerated the site, reopening the Boulevard Theatre in October 2019.

Bartlam and Wood added: ‘We're immensely proud of everything that our amazing Underbelly team have achieved and built together. We are very grateful to Soho Estates for the opportunity to be given the keys to such a wonderful venue and we wish them the very best in finding a new custodian for such an amazing theatre.’

‘This decision will allow us to focus on a number of other exciting, Underbelly-imbued, theatrical and venue projects in development alongside our existing range of productions, festivals and events. We still have six brilliant months ahead of us at Underbelly Boulevard and we're determined to go out with a bang.'

In September, Fringe Fix will feature a run of shows transferring from Edinburgh Fringe. In October, Heated Rivalry, an Off-Broadway musical parody, will get its London premiere. And from November until early January, the circus show Sophie's Surprise Christmas Party will return.

The latest accounts for Underbelly Ltd, filed at Companies House in May and covering the year to March 2026, show the firm £5.9million in the red – an improvement on the £6.9million deficit in shareholders’ funds 12 months earlier.

Soho Estates is run by late strip club owner Paul Raymond’s granddaughter Fawn James. It owns hundreds of offices, shops, bars and restaurants in the West End of London – a portfolio said to be worth about £1.1 billion.

Fawn and her sister, India Rose inherited the business following their grandfather’s death in 2008 and have a net worth of £750 million, according to the most recent Sunday Times Rich List.

Published: 31 Jul 2026