Argyle Assembly Rooms

Theatre in assembly rooms at corner of Argyle and Liverpool Streets, Hobart. Opened as Theatre Royal, seating 500, on 29 May 1834. Renamed Albert Theatre 1842. Used until late 1840s.

The main theatrical venue in Hobart between the first season at the Freemason’s Tavern in 1834 and the opening of the New Theatre Royal in 1837, was the Argyle Assembly Rooms. John Mezger, a successful businessman, built the Argyle Rooms alongside his Bird in Hand Hotel. His first tenant was the entrepreneur and musician J. P. Deane; who began giving musical soirees in February 1834. These ended with short pantomime pieces, which proved successful, and Deane fitted up the assembly rooms as the Theatre Royal. It opened with Henry Melville's play The Bushrangers. The theatre had fine acoustics, a splendid chandalier and, a report said, 'abundant stage room and a division of the audience ... of all classes'.

The actor-manager Samson Cameron leased the theatre late in 1834 and altered the seating. Another actor-manager, John Meredith altered it again in 1836. 'Instead of a continuous line of seats, there are now stage boxes, pit, back pit and above these there are the boxes and private boxes', the Colonial Times reported on 5 April 1836. The theatre could not withstand the competition of the New Theatre Royal, which opened in March 1837, but it was an alternative during the 1840s.

Anne Clarke called it the Albert Theatre in 1842, when she launched her company from England. Luigi Dalle Case’s company performed in it in 1843. A newspaper called it 'a neat little theatre' in1848 but it was probably too small for the increasingly complex scenery and machinery required for new plays and the greater realism demanded by later playgoers