It has lived many different lives during its 119 year history
An “unassuming” building that’s “got a place in people’s memory” has been welcoming the people of Liverpool for 119 years. Having opened in 1904, generations across Liverpool and beyond have visited the famous Liverpool Olympia on West Derby Road.
Designed by renowned theatre architect Frank Matcham, the Grade II* building has lived many lives, starting out as variety theatre and indoor circus venue and going on to become a cinema, dance hall and bingo hall. The Zorba family took over the building back in 1990 and brought the historic site back to life, hosting everything from live music gigs to boxing, MMA fights and more.
In its time, the Liverpool Olympia has welcomed artists from across the world to perform, as well as having doubled as a filming location for hugely successful TV shows. Much of the Olympia’s history and original features have been retained and it has now inspired a new documentary of the same name about its origins and life there today.
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As part of the Liverpool ECHO’s How It Used To Be series, we spoke to events manager Aoife Niblock, 36, and producer Chris Shaw, 48, about working with the Liverpool Olympia and its fascinating past. Aoife, who lives in Aigburth, worked on site for eight years and, with the team, delved into much of the history of the landmark building.
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She told the ECHO: “I’d been to some live music events there but I didn’t really know much about the history of the building. It was just within the first few weeks of walking in through the doors, I started thinking there’s something to this building, there’s something to know here, there’s something interesting about it.
“I started off with a little bit of Googling and chatting to the guys in the office and Chris, the owner. And then signed up to all these newspaper archive websites and all the rest. It opened as a venue on April 24, 1905, and it was a purpose-built sort of variety theatre and indoor circus venue. We found some really cool, old drawings that kind of show how the stage worked.
“The stage used to be able to move and it had a water tank underneath so they did a lot of aquatic performances. It was mainly used as a variety theatre until about the early twenties when they started doing a bit of cinema.
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“It was in 1925 that it became a dedicated cinema and kind of stopped doing the live performances. It was one of, I think, four cinemas outside London to be the first to show non-silent films.
“Then war came in 1939 and it closed down and was used as a Royal Navy storage unit and depot. Then it was closed for about 10 years before Mecca Bingo took it over and that’s when it then came known as the Locarno dance hall.
“They rebranded and some photos recently came from the Echo Archive and they were the first pictures we’d ever seen of it in use as the bingo hall.” Today, Chris Zorba owns the Liverpool Olympia after his family bought it from Mecca Leisure.
The Zorba family have brought the historic building back to life. The Liverpool Olympia now hosts anything from live music gigs to boxing and MMA shows and has doubled as a filming location for TV shows such as Tin Star, Peaky Blinders and, more recently, Sexy Beasts.
In its time, the site has seen Robert Plant, Bombay Bicycle Club, Elbow, Elvis Costello, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Beatles, Little Richard, Audley Harrison and Amir Khan pass through their doors -and more historically illusionist and stunt performer Harry Houdini in 1909. Much of the Olympia’s history and original features have been retained and today, what was the “elephant pit”, can still be found underneath the building
Aoife said: “I’ve worked all over the country, worked with venues across the country and in Liverpool in particular, I think people really like something with a story. It’s absolutely fantastic, to be honest.
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“It’s a really old, sort of art deco style and it’s a listed building, so most of the features are original and have been retained as as much as possible. The current owners have done a really good job of kind of taking it back to to what it was.
“They’ve looked into things like original décor when they refurbished it in the nineties, so it’s sort of as close as what they ever could have got it to how it looked a 100 years ago, which I think is amazing. There’s just something about it when a band comes on that stage and the lights come up and there’s an audience of 2,000 in front of them – 99% of the artists that walk out of there say I’ve never played a show like that.”
The Liverpool Olympia has since inspired a documentary of the same name which takes viewers behind the scenes of the iconic venue. Directed by Saul Murphy and produced by Shaw Shot Productions, the documentary “not only highlights the building’s architectural grandeur but also its role as a cultural beacon for over a century”.
Available to watch on YouTube, it features interviews from legendary singer-songwriter Elvis Costello, iconic guitarist of Echo & the Bunnymen Will Sergeant and owner Chris Zorba. Producer Chris Shaw, 48, said the self-funded project took around 18 months to complete.
Chris, who lives in Seaforth, told the ECHO: “I’ve worked at that venue and a lot of venues in Liverpool as a runner for when the gigs come into town. The Olympia’s always been my favourite venue to work in -there’s just something about that building when you walk into it.
“I’ve worked there on and off or about six years now, so I’ve become good friends with Chris, the owner. How the documentary came about was I became friends with Saul, who’s the director.
“We were both the driving force behind it because Saul was doing work on people in Liverpool and I suggested to him what about buildings. When I told him about the history of the Olympia it was all systems go then.” For Chris, today, the Liverpool Olympia is ” the best venue in Liverpool for live music” and, despite its history, is a place people are still discovering.
He said: “If you drive past it, you wouldn’t even know if you didn’t know. It’s quite unassuming. It’s just an incredible, incredible building. It’s got a place in people’s memory, but for different reasons.
“They’d had everyone there from Houdini to Robert Plant, so it’s definitely a go to venue for people. A lot of people, if there’s a gig on at the Olympia, they’ll go there because it’s at the Olympia and they know what they’re gonna get.”
The documentary is now available for viewing on YouTube. You can watch the full documentary here.
