Queen's Theatre, Long Acre
Encyclopedia
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
on the site of St Martin's Hall, a large concert room that opened in 1850. It stood on the corner of Long Acre
Long Acre
Long Acre is a street in central London, England. Starting from St. Martin's Lane it runs from west to east just north of Covent Garden piazza, one block north of Floral Street. The street was completed in the early 17th century. It was once known for its coach-makers, and later for its car dealers...
and Endell Street, with entrances in Wilson Street and Long Acre (formerly Charles Street). The theatre, one of the largest in London, closed in 1878, despite a comfortable house and a company consisting of many famous actors. The site is within the modern Camden
London Borough of Camden
In 1801, the civil parishes that form the modern borough were already developed and had a total population of 96,795. This continued to rise swiftly throughout the 19th century, as the district became built up; reaching 270,197 in the middle of the century...
part of Covent Garden
Covent Garden
Covent Garden is a district in London on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St. Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit and vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and the Royal Opera House, which is also known as...
St Martin's Hall
St Martin's Hall was built for John HullahJohn Pyke Hullah
John Pyke Hullah , English composer and teacher of music, was born at Worcester.He was a pupil of William Horsley from 1829, and entered the Royal Academy of Music in 1833...
, in 1847, by William Cubitt
William Cubitt
Sir William Cubitt was an eminent English civil engineer and millwright. Born in Norfolk, England, he was employed in many of the great engineering undertakings of his time. He invented a type of windmill sail and the prison treadwheel, and was employed as chief engineer, at Ransomes of Ipswich,...
, from a design by Richard Westmacott
Richard Westmacott (the younger)
Richard Westmacott - also sometimes described as Richard Westmacott III - was a prominent English sculptor of the early- and mid-19th century.Born in London, he was the son of Sir Richard Westmacott , and followed closely in his father's...
. The scheme was financed by subscription and it was built on a parallelogram of land, 149 feet (45.4 m) by 61 feet (18.6 m) wide, connected to a plot on Long Acre (44 feet (13.4 m) by 22 feet (6.7 m)); and consisted of a main hall with connected anterooms, galleries and a 500–seat lecture hall. It was built in the Elizabethan style, with a large domed iron roof. The music hall was capable of seating 3,000 persons and was opened in 1850 by Hullah, the founder of a new "school of choral harmony". In addition to his singing classes, Hullah directed oratorios and concerts, both instrumental and vocal, at the hall. The German Reed Entertainments were initially presented here in 1855 – known as "Miss P. Horton's Illustrative Gatherings" – before moving to the more intimate Gallery of Illustration and later St George's Hall.
Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
first appeared as a public lecturer, here in April, 1858, on behalf of the Hospital for Sick Children, in Great Ormond Street, and a week or two later on his own account. The hall was used for musical recitals, lectures and political meetings. On 26 August 1860, a fire broke out in a nearby coach factory and the hall was destroyed, together with its organ
The hall was rebuilt as a concert hall, opening in 1862. The final musical entertainment was given in 1867.
Queen's theatre
In 1867, a 4,000-seat theatre was built within the shell of the existing building by C. J. Phipps for Henry LabouchèreHenry Labouchere
Henry Du Pré Labouchère was an English politician, writer, publisher and theatre owner in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. He married the actress Henrietta Hodson....
and his partners, with interior decoration by Albert Moore
Albert Joseph Moore
Albert Joseph Moore was an English painter, known for his depictions of langorous female figures set against the luxury and decadence of the classical world....
and Telbin. A new company of players was formed, including Charles Wyndham
Charles Wyndham
Sir Charles Wyndham was an English actor-manager, born as Charles Culverwell in Liverpool, the son of a doctor. He was educated abroad, at King's College London and at the College of Surgeons and the Peter Street Anatomical School, Dublin...
, Henry Irving
Henry Irving
Sir Henry Irving , born John Henry Brodribb, was an English stage actor in the Victorian era, known as an actor-manager because he took complete responsibility for season after season at the Lyceum Theatre, establishing himself and his company as...
, J. L. Toole, Lionel Brough
Lionel Brough
Lionel Brough was a British actor and comedian. After beginning a journalistic career and performing as an amateur, he became a professional actor, performing mostly in Liverpool during the mid-1860s...
, Ellen Terry
Ellen Terry
Dame Ellen Terry, GBE was an English stage actress who became the leading Shakespearean actress in Britain. Among the members of her famous family is her great nephew, John Gielgud....
, and Henrietta Hodson
Henrietta Hodson
Henrietta Hodson was an English actress and theatre manager best known for her portrayal of comedy roles in the Victorian era. She had a long affair with the journalist-turned-politician Henry Labouchère, later marrying him....
. The theatre opened as the New Queen's Theatre, with a production of Charles Reade
Charles Reade
Charles Reade was an English novelist and dramatist, best known for The Cloister and the Hearth.-Life:Charles Reade was born at Ipsden, Oxfordshire to John Reade and Anne Marie Scott-Waring; William Winwood Reade the influential historian , was his nephew. He studied at Magdalen College, Oxford,...
's The Double Marriage on 24 October 1867. An early success was Dearer Than Life, by H. J. Byron, with Brough, Toole, Wyndham, Hodson and Irving, coupled with W. S. Gilbert
W. S. Gilbert
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his fourteen comic operas produced in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, of which the most famous include H.M.S...
's La Vivandière
La Vivandière (Gilbert)
La Vivandière; or, True to the Corps! is a burlesque by W. S. Gilbert, described by the author as "An Operatic Extravaganza Founded on Donizetti's Opera, La figlia del regimento." In the French or other continental armies a vivandière was a woman who supplied food and drink to troops in the...
, a burlesque of La fille du régiment
La fille du régiment
La fille du régiment is an opéra comique in two acts by Gaetano Donizetti. It was written while the composer was living in Paris, with a French libretto by Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges and Jean-François Bayard.La figlia del reggimento, a slightly different Italian-language version , was...
. The theatre continued with melodrama, adaptions and classic revivals, dropping the epithet 'new' the following year.
Initially, the management was run by the actor Alfred Wigan
Alfred Wigan
Alfred Sydney Wigan was an actor-manager who took part in the first Royal Command Performance before Queen Victoria on 28 December 1848....
, who also appeared in its productions. By 1868, Hodson and Labouchère were living together out of wedlock, as they could not marry until her first husband finally died in 1887. Labouchère bought out his partners and used the theatre to showcase Hodson's talents. The theatre hosted comedies, such as F. C. Burnand's The Turn of the Tide (1869, starring Hermann Vezin
Hermann Vezin
Hermann Vezin was an American actor, teacher of elocution and writer. He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and educated at the University of Pennsylvania.-Biography:...
and George Rignold
George Rignold
George Richard Rignold, born George Richard Rignall, was an English-born actor, active in Australia.-Early life:...
with Hodson), historical dramas, such as Tom Taylor
Tom Taylor
Tom Taylor was an English dramatist, critic, biographer, public servant, and editor of Punch magazine...
's Twixt Axe and Crown (1870), popular revivals of Shakespeare (starring such famous actors as Samuel Phelps
Samuel Phelps
Samuel Phelps was an English actor and theatre manager...
) and Tommaso Salvini
Tommaso Salvini
Tommaso Salvini was an Italian actor. His father and mother were both actors, and Tommaso first appeared when he was barely fourteen as Pasquino in Goldoni's Donne curiose. In 1847 he joined the company of Adelaide Ristori, who was then at the beginning of her brilliant career...
, dramatisations of Dickens novels, burlesques and extravaganza
Extravaganza
An extravaganza is a literary or musical work characterized by freedom of style and structure and usually containing elements of burlesque, pantomime, music hall and parody. It sometimes also has elements of cabaret, circus, revue, variety, vaudeville and mime...
s. Although the theatre was among the largest and best equipped in London, and featured some of London's most famous stars, it lacked the guidance of an actor-manager of the stature of Henry Irving
Henry Irving
Sir Henry Irving , born John Henry Brodribb, was an English stage actor in the Victorian era, known as an actor-manager because he took complete responsibility for season after season at the Lyceum Theatre, establishing himself and his company as...
or Herbert Tree.
In 1877, the theatre became the National Theatre and hosted a series of promenade concerts under Riviere and Alfred Cellier
Alfred Cellier
Alfred Cellier was an English composer, orchestrator and conductor.In addition to conducting and music directing the original productions of several of the most famous Gilbert and Sullivan works and writing the overtures to some of them, Cellier conducted at many theatres in London, New York and...
followed by an ambitious dramatisation of The Last Days of Pompeii
The Last Days of Pompeii
The Last Days of Pompeii is a novel written by the baron Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1834. Once a very widely read book and now relatively neglected, it culminates in the cataclysmic destruction of the city of Pompeii by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.The novel uses its characters to contrast...
(Lord Lytton
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton PC , was an English politician, poet, playwright, and novelist. He was immensely popular with the reading public and wrote a stream of bestselling dime-novels which earned him a considerable fortune...
's eponymous novel) that was meant to feature a staged eruption of Vesuvius, an earthquake and a sybriatic Roman feast. However, the earth did not quake, the volcano did not erupt, acrobats fell onto the cast below, and the production was an expensive flop. The same year, the theatre was joined by overhead wires to the Canterbury Music Hall
Canterbury Music Hall
The Canterbury Music Hall was established in 1852 by Charles Morton on the site of a former skittle alley adjacent to the Canterbury Tavern at 143 Westminster Bridge Road, Lambeth. It was the first purpose-built music hall in London, and Morton came to be dubbed the Father of the Halls as hundreds...
in Lambeth
Lambeth
Lambeth is a district of south London, England, and part of the London Borough of Lambeth. It is situated southeast of Charing Cross.-Toponymy:...
, and public demonstrations of the Cromwell Varley
C. F. Varley
Cromwell Fleetwood Varley was an English engineer, particularly associated with the development of the electric telegraph and the transatlantic telegraph cable.-Family:...
telephone were given. Several simple tunes were transmitted and emitted softly from a large drum-like apparatus suspended over the proscenium.
The theatre closed in April 1878. The interior was converted into a department store for the "Clerical Co-operative Society" and later occupied by the Odhams Press
Odhams Press
Odhams Press was a British publishing firm. Originally a newspaper group, founded in 1890, it took the name Odham's Press Ltd in 1920 when it merged with John Bull magazine. By 1937 it had founded the first colour weekly, Woman, for which it set up and operated a dedicated high-speed print works...
. The façade remained until redeveloped into a residential block in the 1970s.
The name Queen's Theatre has been used for a number of other theatres in central London, including the Queen's Theatre, Dorset Garden (from 1685 to 1705), Her Majesty's Theatre
Her Majesty's Theatre
Her Majesty's Theatre is a West End theatre, in Haymarket, City of Westminster, London. The present building was designed by Charles J. Phipps and was constructed in 1897 for actor-manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree, who established the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art at the theatre...
(from 1705 to 1714), Scala Theatre
Scala Theatre
The Scala Theatre was a theatre in London, sited on Charlotte Street, off Tottenham Court Road, in the London Borough of Camden. The first theatre on the site opened in 1772, and the theatre was demolished in 1969, after being destroyed by fire...
(during the period 1831–1865) and the modern Queen's Theatre
Queen's Theatre
The Queen's Theatre is a West End theatre located in Shaftesbury Avenue in the City of Westminster. It opened on 8 October 1907 as a twin to the neighbouring Gielgud Theatre which opened ten months earlier. Both theatres were designed by W.G.R...
in Shaftesbury Avenue
Shaftesbury Avenue
Shaftesbury Avenue is a major street in central London, England, named after Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, that runs in a north-easterly direction from Piccadilly Circus to New Oxford Street, crossing Charing Cross Road at Cambridge Circus....
(since 1907).