West End Names Theatre After Living Legend Before Illness Forecloses the Moment

London's Shaftesbury Theatre becomes the Judi Dench Theatre in February 2027, honouring the 91-year-old dame's seven-decade career across theatre, film, and television. The timing is deliberate: Dench has disclosed that macular degeneration has impaired her vision and stage work. Naming a working theatre after a living practitioner remains rare in the West End. The renaming functions as institutional legacy-making while she can witness it—before circumstance makes such a gesture impossible.