KOKO (music venue)

KOKO is a concert venue and former theatre in Camden Town, London. The building was known as Camden Palace from 1982 until its 2004 purchase and extensive restoration led by Oliver Bengough and Mint Entertainment. Since, the club has been known as KOKO and serves as one of the premier live music venues in London.HistoryThe Camden Theatre opened on Boxing Day 1900. With a capacity of 2,434 it was one of the largest theatres in London outside the West End. The theatre was designed by the prolific theatre architect W. G. R. Sprague. The theatre was opened by Ellen Terry, then the most celebrated actress in England, who had lived in nearby Stanhope Street as a child.The St Pancras Gazette, a local newspaper, commented as follows in a review of the theatre's production of an opera called The Geisha in 1901: "It is a matter of special gratification that the opera was presented at our beautiful local theatre on a scale of magnificence and completeness which would do credit to a West End theatre, but this is nothing new at the Camden Theatre, being rather a continuation of the policy with which the proprietors started their enterprise, viz. to offer nothing to their patrons but standard work, which has received the unmistakable approval of critics and public." On 6 December 1909 it reopened as a variety theatre and became the Camden Hippodrome Theatre. By 1911 films were being presented as part of the programme and in January 1913 it became a cinema known as the Camden Hippodrome Picture Theatre. In January 1928, the theater was taken over by the Gaumont British cinema circuit.