Royalty Theatre

The actress Frances Maria "Fanny" Kelly used the fortune saved from her highly popular career to establish a dramatic academy with a 200-seat theatre attached. The architect of the theatre was Samuel Beazley. The theatre and school were completed in 1837. Kelly's engineer friend, Rowland Macdonald Stephenson, persuaded her to build into the theatre new machinery that he had invented to move the stage and scenery; theoretically a significant step forward in theatre technology. It took more than two years to install the machinery in the theatre. The theatre was "obscurely sited [and] perilously combustible", but it had "a relatively spacious stage, and Beazley's work in the auditorium was thought pretty." It turned out that the machinery was too heavy to be worked by people, and Stephenson had to use a horse. On the opening night, 25 May 1840, three pieces were presented: Summer and Winter, by Morris Barnett; a melodrama, ''The Sergeant's Wife; and a farce, The Midnight Hour''. The opening was unsuccessful, and within a week the theatre was closed. Kelly's high admission charges of five or seven shillings did not help, but the main problem was that the tramping of the horse and the roar of the machinery drowned out the voices of the actors and caused the building to vibrate. The theatre had to be demolished to remove the machinery. After it was rebuilt, Kelly reopened the theatre in February 1841, at reduced prices, for a season of her own monologues, but then became ill. ==The Santley years==

In 1877, Kate Santley "seems to have acquired the head lease." She controlled the theatre for nearly 30 years. Again, for the Society, George Bernard Shaw premièred ''Widowers' Houses'', his first play, here the following year. When the theatre finally had a great success, with Brandon Thomas's play ''Charley's Aunt'' in 1892, its popularity led to its transference after only a month to the larger Globe Theatre. In 1895–96 the Royalty's manager was Arthur Bourchier, and the theatre underwent another renovation, by architect Walter Emden. Bourchier produced, among other plays, The Chili Widow, an adaptation of his own that ran for over 300 nights. In 1899, the first production of the Incorporated Stage Society took place with the first performance of Shaw's You Never Can Tell. In 1900–01 Mrs Patrick Campbell hired the theatre and staged a succession of contemporary plays in which she starred, and in 1903–04 Hans Andresen and Max Behrend presented a successful season of German theatre. Also in 1904, the newly founded Irish National Theatre Society gave plays by W. B. Yeats and, in 1905, it presented an early performance of Synge's first play, The Shadow of the Glen. In addition, Philip Carr's Mermaid Society produced Elizabethan and Jacobean plays. ==Later years==

Again, the theatre was threatened with closure by the authorities, but Santley had it rebuilt again in 1906 to meet safety requirements. After redecoration in French Regency style, which increased the capacity of the theatre to 657 seats, the Royalty reopened on 4 January 1906 with a season of Theatre Français directed by Gaston Mayer. Sarah Bernhardt led her own company in La Tosca, Phedre and La Dame aux Camelias in 1907. In 1911, J. E. Vedrenne and Dennis Eadie acquired the theatre, and in 1912, they staged Milestones, by Arnold Bennett and Edward Knoblauch (later Knoblock), which had over 600 performances. Owen Nares, Gladys Cooper and Lynn Fontanne appeared at the theatre early in their careers. The Man Who Stayed at Home was a hit at the Royalty in 1914, playing for 584 performances. Henry Daniell starred as Bobby Gilmour in The Man from Toronto at the theatre in May 1918. A post-war success was the concert-party entertainment, The Co-Optimists, first staged in 1921. The year 1924 saw the first West End production at the theatre of Noël Coward's The Vortex. Juno and the Paycock was mounted in 1925, and Ibsen's Pillars of Society played in 1926. Another hit for the Royalty was in 1932 with While Parents Sleep. By 1936 the danger of fire from celluloid stores and other adjacent properties overrided the argument made to the Lord Chamberlain that the theatre had been on the site before the development of the inflammatory trades nearby. J. B. Priestley's I Have Been Here Before was the theatre's last success. The last performance was given at a matinee on 25 November 1938, by the Southern Cross Players. Although several schemes were considered for its rebuilding, but with the growing threat of war, the theatre remained empty and soon became derelict. It was damaged in the World War II Blitz. The Royalty was demolished in 1953 and a block of offices, Royalty House, was erected on the site. A modern Royalty Theatre was opened in the basement of an office block at Portugal Street near Aldwych in 1960. This was bought by the London School of Economics and renamed the Peacock Theatre in 1996. It is a lecture hall by day and a venue for the Sadler's Wells Theatre company by night. File:London. Royalty Theatre. Advertising postcard. 1912.jpg| File:London. Royalty Theatre . Advertising postcard from 1912 (reverse).jpg| ==Notes==