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40 free West End Musicals trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
London's West End has been the home of the long-running musical for half a century. Les Misérables has played without a break since 1985, The Phantom of the Opera since 1986, and the playhouses that hold them have stories of their own: converted picture houses, bombed-out foyers, names swapped to match the monarch or to honour a choreographer. These 40 questions roam across the district. They cover the blockbusters and the British originals, from Oliver! and Blood Brothers to Six and the newest Olivier winners; the producers and composers who built the industry; the record runs and the awards; and the odd corners, such as which venue was lit by electric light before any other public building and which show put its cast on skates. It suits a quiz night, a theatre-trip coach journey or a rainy afternoon with the cast album on. Play it on your phone with instant explanations, or print it and read it aloud. Every answer is cited to a reference page.
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Q 01Which playhouse, built for Gilbert and Sullivan in 1881, was the first public building lit entirely by electricity?
Savoy Theatre
The Savoy Theatre opened with Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience, lit by about 1,200 of Joseph Swan's incandescent lamps, and owner Richard D'Oyly Carte built the Savoy Hotel beside it in 1889.
Q 02Wicked's London home since 2006, the Apollo Victoria Theatre, opened in 1930 as what kind of building?
A cinema
A cinema and variety house called the New Victoria when it opened in 1930, the Apollo Victoria turned to musicals with The Sound of Music in 1981 and then housed Starlight Express from 1984 to 2002.
Q 03Which vehicle famously lands on stage during the American embassy evacuation in Miss Saigon, Drury Lane's 1989 hit?
A helicopter
A helicopter lifts the last Americans from the embassy roof while a crowd of abandoned Vietnamese screams in despair, one of the most famous set pieces in musical theatre.
Q 04The Phantom of the Opera's Haymarket home switched from Her Majesty's to His Majesty's in 2023 on whose accession?
Charles III
Charles III's accession the previous year triggered the change, under the custom of matching the theatre's name to the monarch's gender, and the Phantom has played there since 1986.
Q 05Billy Elliot, the Elton John musical, sets a boy's ballet lessons against which 1984–85 dispute in County Durham?
The miners' strike
The miners' strike of 1984–85 tore through the Durham coalfield where the story is set, and Lee Hall based his screenplay partly on A. J. Cronin's 1935 novel about a mining community.
Q 06In Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, the Pharaoh is traditionally played as a parody of which singer?
Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley is the model in most productions, with the Pharaoh crooning his dream of seven fat cows in 'Song of the King', one of the pop pastiches in a piece first written as a 15-minute school cantata.
Q 07The Book of Mormon, written with Avenue Q composer Robert Lopez, came from the creators of which animated TV series?
South Park
South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone worked with Lopez in London in 2006 while he was staging the West End Avenue Q, and their show became a long-running West End replica of the Broadway hit.
Q 08Everybody's Talking About Jamie, Sheffield's 2017 West End transfer, follows a schoolboy who wants to become what?
A drag queen
A drag queen is Jamie New's ambition, and the musical grew out of the 2011 television documentary Jamie: Drag Queen at 16 about the real Sheffield schoolboy Jamie Campbell.
Q 09Which Pussycat Dolls singer won the 2024 Olivier for Best Actress in a Musical as Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard?
Nicole Scherzinger
Nicole Scherzinger led Jamie Lloyd's minimalist revival, which won seven of its eleven 2024 Olivier nominations, the most of any show that season, and she then took Norma to Broadway.
Q 10Blood Brothers, the musical about twins separated at birth, is set in the slums of which northern English port?
Liverpool
Liverpool is where single mother Mrs Johnstone hands one twin to her wealthy employer Mrs Lyons, and the piece began as a schools play before its 1983 Playhouse premiere.
Q 11Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, the tale of Jacob's favoured son, comes from which book of the Bible?
Genesis
Genesis supplies the coat, the jealous brothers and the dream-reading in Egypt, and Decca recorded an expanded version in 1969, a year after the piece's 15-minute debut as a school 'pop cantata'.
Q 12Six, the Tudor-wives pop concert, was first performed at the 2017 Edinburgh Fringe by students from which university?
Cambridge
Cambridge University Musical Theatre Society picked Toby Marlow to write a new show for the Fringe in late 2016, and Marlow and Lucy Moss wrote it as students before a West End run and a Broadway transfer.
Q 13Which street from Piccadilly Circus has the Lyric, Apollo and Gielgud theatres clustered on one side of the road?
Q 21Which Disney musical reopened Theatre Royal Drury Lane in 2021 after Lloyd Webber's two-year restoration?
Frozen
Frozen made its West End debut at Drury Lane in September 2021 and closed there in September 2024, in a theatre where Miss Saigon remains the longest-running show.
Q 22The New London Theatre, the original home of Cats, was renamed in 2018 in honour of which choreographer?
Gillian Lynne
Gillian Lynne choreographed Cats and The Phantom of the Opera, and the venue that took her name on 1 May 2018 went on to host the world premiere of Lloyd Webber's Cinderella in 2021.
Q 23We Will Rock You, Ben Elton's Queen jukebox musical, ran from 2002 to 2014 at which Tottenham Court Road venue?
Dominion Theatre
Shaftesbury Avenue
Shaftesbury Avenue runs from Piccadilly Circus to New Oxford Street, crossing Charing Cross Road on the way, and is regarded as the heart of the West End theatre district.
Q 14London's district of about 40 theatres, bounded by the Strand, Regent Street and Kingsway, goes by what nickname?
Theatreland
Theatreland is traditionally defined by the Strand to the south, Oxford Street to the north, Regent Street to the west and Kingsway to the east, and the term 'West End theatre' refers specifically to commercial productions there.
Q 15The Olivier Awards moved in 2017 to which venue, after five years at Covent Garden's opera house?
Royal Albert Hall
Royal Albert Hall took over in 2017 after the ceremony's 2012–2016 run at the Royal Opera House, and the awards, established in 1976, have been televised by ITV since 2013.
Q 16Disney's The Lion King opened in 1999 at which venue off the Strand, a Mecca ballroom from 1951 to the 1980s?
Lyceum Theatre
The Lyceum Theatre, once Henry Irving's house, was restored to theatrical use in 1996, and The Lion King has passed 10,000 performances there since opening on 19 October 1999.
Q 17Which play moved into the Palace Theatre in 2016, the house that Les Misérables filled for 19 years from 1985?
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child moved into a red-brick theatre that Richard D'Oyly Carte commissioned in the late 1880s as an opera house, and Les Misérables had left it in 2004 for the smaller Queen's Theatre.
Q 18Which film-based musical, premiered at Manchester Opera House in 2020, won the 2022 Olivier for Best New Musical?
Back to the Future
Back to the Future: The Musical transferred to the West End in 2021, realising a plan that screenwriter Bob Gale had floated at a 2004 DeLorean convention.
Q 19Which playwright wrote the musical Blood Brothers as well as the plays Educating Rita and Shirley Valentine?
Willy Russell
Willy Russell wrote the score as well as the book, and he even stepped into the role of the Narrator for part of the show's 1980s national tour.
Q 20Miss Saigon relocates which Puccini opera to the Vietnam War, with a US Marine in place of the American naval officer?
Madama Butterfly
Madama Butterfly's geisha becomes Kim, a seventeen-year-old Saigon bar girl, and the Boublil and Schönberg show ran at Drury Lane for ten years, from September 1989 to October 1999.
The Dominion Theatre marked the show's tenth anniversary in 2012 by turning a Judy Garland memorabilia area into a Freddie Mercury Suite, and the musical ran for 12 years before closing on 31 May 2014.
Q 24The Strand Theatre was renamed in 2005 after which composer, once a tenant of the flat upstairs?
Ivor Novello
Ivor Novello lived in a flat above the theatre from 1913 to 1951, and owners Delfont Mackintosh Theatres made the change in 2005 after the building had carried the Strand name for 92 years.
Q 25Les Misérables' home from 2004, formerly the Queen's Theatre, was renamed in 2019 after which American composer?
Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Sondheim's name went up after a 20-week refurbishment and the theatre reopened on 18 December 2019; a German bomb had destroyed its facade and lobby in 1940 during a run of Rebecca.
Q 26Which Oscar-winning actor played the Emcee in the 2021 Kit Kat Club staging of Cabaret at the Playhouse Theatre?
Eddie Redmayne
Eddie Redmayne starred opposite Jessie Buckley's Sally Bowles in Rebecca Frecknall's in-the-round production, which cut the Playhouse to 550 seats with table seating to turn it into a nightclub.
Q 27& Juliet, where Anne Hathaway rewrites Shakespeare so Juliet survives, is scored with hits by which Swedish producer?
Max Martin
Max Martin's hits carry a book by David West Read, and the show premiered at Manchester Opera House in September 2019 before transferring to the West End that November, then earned nine Tony nominations on Broadway.
Q 28Which Second World War comedy about planting false papers on a corpse won the 2024 Olivier for Best New Musical?
Operation Mincemeat
Operation Mincemeat is the debut show of the comedy troupe SpitLip, who wrote and perform it, and Jak Malone took a second Olivier for his supporting role before the show crossed to Broadway.
Q 29Which award completed Lloyd Webber's Oscar-Grammy-Tony set in 2018, won by a live TV concert of his 1970 rock opera?
An Emmy
An Emmy for Outstanding Variety Special went to the 2018 broadcast, making Lloyd Webber the thirteenth person to win an Oscar, an Emmy, a Grammy and a Tony, a club Tim Rice joined the same night.
Q 30Julian Lloyd Webber, the composer Andrew's younger brother, became a world-renowned soloist on which instrument?
Cello
Cello is Julian Lloyd Webber's instrument; the brothers' father William Lloyd Webber was a composer and organist, and Andrew wrote his 1978 Variations on a Paganini caprice for Julian.