Havana – Gran Teatro de La Habana

Of all the grand buildings in central Havana, the Grand Theatre is perhaps the grandest of them all. It was originally built as a Galician Social Club, but a theatre was added on later. It holds the distinction of being the oldest running theatre in the Western Hemisphere, but there’s more to recommend it than that.

For a small fee, you can have a private tour of the building. This takes you through all the good bits of the theatre, as well as a few less interesting bits. The tours are run whenever someone turns up with the visitor’s fee, so I had the tour lady to myself.

The tour covered the main theatre, the auditorium, as well as the back stage area. All this was quite interesting. The theatre, unfortunately, is showing its age. The auditorium has some new chairs, but the walls and ceilings are all faded versions of their former glory. It’s a bit sad really.

Attached to the theatre, is the social club part. The main floor of the building used to be a casino. It’s a massive area, but apart from the long bar, little remains of the casino. Instead, the room has been subdivided into a series of very ugly offices. This is pretty typical of Havana. If a building does not conform to the socialist ideal, it’s discarded and left to rot. I can imagine that within six months of the counter revolution, this building will be back to being a casino and a whole lot better looked after!

The backstage part of the tour was probably the most fun. They showed me the wires used to move the set around and I got to stand centre stage and look out onto the audience, which is not something you get to do every day in a 1,500 seat theatre. I had fun. The tour was cheap and short, so no complaints here!