West End Musicals Trivia
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39 free West End Musicals trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 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 39 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.
30 of 39 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which playhouse, built for Gilbert and Sullivan in 1881, was the first public building lit entirely by electricity?
Savoy Theatre
The Savoy Theatre was lit by about 1,200 of Joseph Swan's incandescent lamps, and Richard D'Oyly Carte smashed a glowing bulb on stage to show the audience the new light was safe.
Q 02Which musical opened in 2006 at the Apollo Victoria, a London theatre built in 1930 as a cinema?
Wicked
Wicked moved into the former New Victoria cinema four years after Starlight Express left; that show's roller-skating cast had raced on tracks running out from the stage into the auditorium.
Q 03Which military vehicle is the famous stage effect of Miss Saigon, Drury Lane's 1989 hit?
A helicopter
A helicopter lifts the last Americans from the embassy roof while Kim is left in the crowd at the gates, the show's version of the 1975 fall of Saigon.
Q 04The Phantom of the Opera opened in 1986 at which theatre on London's Haymarket?
His Majesty's Theatre
His Majesty's Theatre changes its name with the sex of the monarch: Her Majesty's for Victoria, His for Edward VII, Her again for Elizabeth II, and His once more on Charles III's coronation day in 2023.
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 County Durham schoolboy Jamie Campbell; the stage version moves him to Sheffield.
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 11Six, 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 12Which street from Piccadilly Circus has the Lyric, Apollo and Gielgud theatres clustered on one side of the road?
Shaftesbury Avenue
Shaftesbury Avenue was cut through the crowded districts of St Giles and Soho between 1877 and 1886 as a new traffic artery, and named after the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury.
Q 13Les Misérables, which opened in London in 1985, is adapted from an 1862 novel by which French writer?
Q 21The 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 22We Will Rock You, Ben Elton's Queen jukebox musical, ran from 2002 to 2014 at which Tottenham Court Road venue?
Dominion Theatre
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 23The Strand Theatre was renamed in 2005 after which composer, once a tenant of the flat upstairs?
Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo's novel struck Alain Boublil as a musical while he watched Oliver! in London; it became a French concept album and a 1980 Palais des Sports staging before the English version opened five years later.
Q 14The 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, by which time the ceremony was back on television: from 2004 to 2010 it had gone out on radio alone.
Q 15Disney'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 was Henry Irving's house, where Bram Stoker worked as his business manager while writing Dracula; it closed in 1986 and was restored to theatrical use in 1996.
Q 16Which play opened in 2016 at the Palace Theatre, Les Misérables' home until 2004?
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child plays in a house Richard D'Oyly Carte opened in 1891 as a home for English grand opera; he sold it at a loss within a year and it became a variety theatre.
Q 17Which 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 18Which 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 19Miss 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 Saigon bar girl, and the idea came from a magazine photograph of a Vietnamese mother giving up her child at an airbase gate so the child could join its American father.
Q 20Which Disney musical reopened Theatre Royal Drury Lane in 2021 after Lloyd Webber's two-year restoration?
Frozen
Frozen had been announced for 2020, but the pandemic held back both the show and the restored theatre; it finally opened in September 2021 and ran for three years.
Ivor Novello
Ivor Novello moved into the flat above the theatre with his mother in 1913 and kept it as his London home for the rest of his life, until his death in 1951.
Q 24Les 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 25Which 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 26& 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; the show opened in Manchester in 2019, reached the West End that November, and on Broadway earned nine Tony nominations without a single win.
Q 27Which 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 performed it; it began at the small New Diorama Theatre in 2019 and reached Broadway in 2025.
Q 28Which 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 the 2018 live broadcast completed the set for Lloyd Webber, and lyricist Tim Rice and performer John Legend, who shared the same award, completed theirs on the same night.
Q 29Julian Lloyd Webber, the composer Andrew's younger brother, became a world-renowned soloist on which instrument?
Cello
Cello is Julian Lloyd Webber's instrument, and Andrew wrote his 1978 Variations for him to settle a bet on a Leyton Orient football match: if Orient avoided defeat, Julian got a cello piece.
Q 30Les Misérables marked its 25th anniversary on 3 October 2010 with a concert at which London venue?
The O2 Arena
The O2 Arena concert meant three versions of the show were playing London at once, beside the original production and an anniversary tour at the Barbican, where the musical had first opened in 1985.