Theater Royal (Dublin)

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Theater Royal
The Theater Royal from 1897
location
Address: Hawkins Street
City: Dublin
Coordinates: 53 ° 20 '48 "  N , 6 ° 15' 25"  W Coordinates: 53 ° 20 '48 "  N , 6 ° 15' 25"  W.
Architecture and history
Opened: 1662
Spectator: 4000 seats
Architects: Samuel Beazley (1820), Frank Matcham (1897), Leslie Norton (1935)
 
  • Information refers to the last three structures
  • Demolished after 1962
  • Only the last theater could hold 4000 spectators (before that it was only half)
The Smock Alley theater, Dublin, on the site of the first Theater Royal

Over the centuries there have been five theaters in Dublin called the Theater Royal .

In the theatrical history of Great Britain and Ireland , the name "Theater Royal" or "Royal Theater" was once used to describe theaters that were granted a royal patent , which made them the only theater in the country to be legally allowed to perform serious dramas .

The first Theater Royal

The first Theater Royal in Dublin was opened by John Ogilby on Smock Alley in 1662 . Ogilby was from 1638 on as Master of the Revels responsible for the issuing of licenses for mask games and theatrical performances in Ireland. He previously owned the New Theater on Werburgh Street. This opened in 1637, but was closed again by the Puritans in 1641. The restoration of the monarchy in Ireland in 1661 enabled Ogilby to regain his position as Master of the Revels and then open his new theater.

This house was completely under the control of the administration of Dublin Castle and only allowed plays that made the House of Stuart appear in a good light or that were among the classics of William Shakespeare .

In the 18th century the theater was run for a time by actor and manager Thomas Sheridan , father of the playwright and politician Richard Brinsley Sheridan . Thomas Sheridan has brought stars from the London stage to Dublin, including David Garrick and (from Dublin) Peg Woffington . Charlotte Melmoth , who later became the "grande dame of tragedy on the American stage", began her acting career in Smock Alley. The theater was demolished in 1735 for renovation and rebuilt, but then finally closed in 1787. The building then served as a warehouse for almost 25 years.

In 1811, much of the 18th century structure was demolished and what was left was rebuilt in the new St. Michael and St. Johns Church , which until 1989 was the most famous inner-city Catholic church building. In 2012, after six years of renovation, this 19th century church was rededicated as a theater. This new theater house is home to the Gaiety School of Acting , Ireland's national drama school. The circle closes.

The second Theater Royal

The so-called Crow Street Theater was opened in 1758 by the Irish actor Spranger Barry (1719–1777). The couple Mary Bulkley and James William Dodd played here in 1774. In 1782 actor Richard Daly became the new owner, and after receiving the Royal Patent from the Crown in 1786, he renovated the theater for £ 12,000 and reopened it in 1788 under the new name Theater Royal. It did quite well for a while, but the opening of a competing theater called Astley's Amphitheater weighed on audience numbers.

Frederick Edward Jones rented the Daly theater and invested £ 1,200 to renovate the house. The decoration was done by interior designers Marinari and Zaffarini . The house reopened in 1796, but closed again shortly afterwards when a state of emergency was declared on the occasion of the Irish Rebellion of 1798 . Jones received a new Royal Patent in 1798 and invested an additional £ 5,000 in the theater. But due to the political climate, it had to close again in 1803.

Short-term competition arose when, in January 1814, just a few streets away, a private theater was set up by amateur actors.

The Theater Royal was destroyed in 1814 due to an audience protest called the Dog Riots . The eponymous dog was the docile animal of a rope maker, who "appeared" regularly in the performance of the play The Dog of Aubry and was quite popular with the audience. When he did not appear on the stage at the performance of the play, which was scheduled for December 16, 1814, the rumor spread that the dog had not been adequately rewarded and was now failing. The audience took the beast's side and held Jones accountable. But he refused to explain publicly, thereupon the anger rose and discharged into the demolition of the theater. The protests, some of which were violent, were repeated three more times, but Jones could not be induced to testify. Only on December 26th did he announce that he would withdraw from all business and hand them over to other people. Jones attributed his unpopularity to his political involvement; In 1807 he had supported the election of a member of Parliament for Dublin who was critical of the government. His application for renewal of the patent was also denied in 1818 and this was instead later granted to Henry Harris , an owner of the Covent Garden Theater .

The third Theater Royal

This Henry Harris bought a lot on Hawkins Street in 1820 and built the Albany New Theater with 2,000 seats there at a cost of £ 50,000. The executive architect was Samuel Beazley. The construction work had not yet been completed at the time of the opening, and the hoped-for number of spectators later failed to materialize, so that a number of boxes were closed off with boards. The opening was in January of the following year. In August George IV attended a performance at the Albany and granted him a Royal Patent. The name of the house was changed to "Theater Royal". On December 14, 1822 the so-called Bottle Riot occurred when a bottle was thrown at the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland , Richard Colley-Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley , during a performance of She Stoops to Conquer . Previously, he was mocked by members of the Orange Order during the national anthem for being upset about his reconciliation among Catholics. After the bottle was thrown, a wild crowd broke out. However, Wellesley's later overreaction, which included charges of attempted murder against three rioters, undermined his future credibility.

In 1830 Harris retired from the theater business and John William Calcraft took over. A number of famous actors and singers took to the stage in the years that followed, including Niccolò Paganini , Jenny Lind , Tyrone Power , Sims Reeves and Barry Sullivan. From 1851 the theater ran into financial difficulties and briefly closed its doors. It reopened in December under the management of John Harris, who ran the competing Queen's Theater on Pearse Street. The first production was The Colleen Bawn , a play by Dion Boucicault . Boucicault and his wife, actress Agnes Kelly Robertson , appeared here themselves. It was also the first time that both were seen together on a stage in Dublin. The premiere of his piece Arrah-na-Pogue was given here in 1864. Also with Boucicault as actor, as well as the comedians Samuel Johnson, John Brougham and Samuel Anderson Emery.

The theater burned down completely on February 9, 1880. The reason was a gas line that was not closed by the fitter. The lighting of the stage led to a deflagration and the curtains to ignite. The fire spread unhindered due to the failure of the in-house extinguishing hose. Since the fire took place before a planned performance, no one of the audience was in the hall. However, the manager Henry Egerton was killed in the attempt to extinguish the fire.

The fourth Theater Royal

The Leinster Hall was built on the site of the burned down theater . However, this was dismantled after only a few years and the fourth Theater Royal was built with financial support from Dublin businessmen. It was then opened on December 13, 1897 by the manager Frederick Mouillot. It was designed by the theater architect Frank Matcham and had 2,011 seats.

The new theater found itself in competition with the other great Dublin drama, the Gaiety Theater , which led Mouillot to hire as many famous stars and ensembles as possible. In the beginning, the theater was known for its opera and musical comedy productions. On April 28, 1904, Edward VII attended a state performance at the theater.

Mouillot died in 1911 and one of his partners, David Tellford , took over the business. When musical comedies became less popular in the early 20th century, the Theater Royal began staging regular music hall events. For this purpose, the house was also renamed the “Theater Royal Hippodrome”. In one of these shows in 1906, the then 10-year-old Charlie Chaplin appeared in a troupe called The Eight Lancashire Lads , a group of Irish dancers with wooden shoes (known as clog dancing). In its final years the theater was used as a cinema. It closed on March 3, 1934 and was torn down a short time later.

Theater poster from 1916

The fifth Theater Royal

Image of the theater from the 1960s

The fifth Theater Royal opened on September 23, 1935 in the same square on Hawkins Street. It was a fairly large Art Deco building with a total audience of 4,000, including standing room for 300, and was intended to serve as both a theater and a cinema. Leslie Norton was chosen as the architect . It included the Regal Rooms Restaurant (incorporated into the Regal Rooms Cinema in 1938 ). The theater had a permanent 25-man orchestra under Jimmy Campbell and a troupe of singing dancers, the Royalettes . From the beginning, the gigantic size of the theater made it difficult to use it commercially. One concept to meet this and to fill the house was to hire big names from overseas. Including Gracie Fields , George Formby , Max Wall, Max Miller and Jimmy Durante . But even this concept hardly bore fruit.

In 1936 the Royal was taken over by Patrick Wall and the impresario Louis Elliman , who already owned the Gaiety. With the outbreak of World War II , Wall and Elliman could only run the theater with local forces. This resulted in a series of purely Irish pieces which formed the basis of the Royal's gaming program until the end of his days. These local actors were u. a. Jimmy O'Dea , Harry O'Donovan , Maureen Potter , Danny Cummins , Mike Nolan , Alice Dalgarno , Noel Purcell , Micheál Mac Liammóir , Cecil Sheridan , Jack Cruise , Paddy Crosbie and Patricia Cahill . In July 1951 Judy Garland appeared at the Theater Royal and gave a number of sold-out performances, which always received thunderous applause. The legendary singer sang out the window of her locker room to hundreds of people who were still outside because they could no longer get tickets, and the criticism ennobled her to "America's Colleen" (for example, "America's Irish girl"). It attracted the greatest amount of people never seen before. This was only surpassed by the visits of US President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and Pope John Paul II in 1979.

The fifth Theater Royal in Dublin closed its doors on June 30, 1962, under pressure from escalating entertainment costs and the increasing popularity of television. The building was then demolished and replaced by a twelve-story office building, Hawkins House , home of the Irish Ministry of Health. In 1972 the New Metropole opened on the corner of Hawkins Street and Townsend Street. It stood on the site of the Regal Rooms theater restaurant . Later renamed Screen Cinema , it ran from 1984 to 2016. The building was demolished in February 2019.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers & Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660–1800, by Philip H. Highfill, Kalman A. Burnim, Edward A. Langhans in the Google book search
  2. ↑ See http://smockalley.com/
  3. ↑ Stephen, Leslie, ed. (1885). "Barry, Spranger". Dictionary of National Biography. 3. London: Smith, Elder & Co. p. 327.
  4. ↑ Saunders's News-Letter , Monday May 30th 1774, page 1, col 3: Dublin, June 1st, New garden
  5. ↑ Lee, Sidney, ed. (1897). "Ryder, Thomas (1735-1790)". Dictionary of National Biography. 50. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 49-50.
  6. ↑ Stephen, Leslie, ed. (1888). "Daly, Richard". Dictionary of National Biography. 13. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 439-440.
  7. ↑ a b Lee, Sidney, ed. (1892). "Jones, Frederick Edward". Dictionary of National Biography. 30. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 101-102.
  8. ^ Theater in Dublin, 1745-1820: A Calendar of Performances, Volume 6, p. 3988
  9. ↑ "Jones, Frederick Edward". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093 / ref: odnb / 15002 .
  10. ↑ Earl, John & Sell, Michael: Guide to British Theaters 1750-1950 (Theaters Trust, 2000), pp. 268; ISBN 0-7136-5688-3
  11. ^ Riot and Great Anger: Stage Censorship in Twentieth-Century Ireland, by Joan Fitzpatrick Dean in the Google book search
  12. ↑ Era of Emancipation: British Government of Ireland, 1812-1830, Brian A. Jenkins in the Google book search
  13. ↑ Samuel Johnson c.1830-1900 A Life from the Grave, by Jennie Bisset . The Irving Society. November 2013. Archived from the original on December 13, 2013.
  14. ↑ Description of the fire on a website on the history of theater
  15. ↑ Ireland and the Americas…, Volume 2, by James Patrick Byrne, Philip Coleman and Jason Francis King in the Google Book Search
  16. ↑ https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/screen-cinema-in-dublin-to-close-after-35-years-1.2540348

literature

  • Ryan, Philip B .: The Lost Theaters of Dublin (Westbury, Wiltshire: The Badger Press, 1998), ISBN 0-9526076-1-1

Web links