Queen's Theatre

Theatre in Gilles Arcade, Adelaide, opened 11 January 1841, seating c.1000. Closed 28 November 1842. Restored, enlarged and reopened as Royal Victoria Theatre 23 December 1850. Closed 10 November 1851. Reopened 1859. Closed 1868. Proclaimed heritage site 15 April 1994.

The remnants of the Queen’s Theatre, the first building to house continuous theatre in Adelaide, have yielded more architectural elements and artefacts than any other mid-19th century theatre-tavern site in Australia. The theatre held a pit for 700 persons, a dress circle of boxes and an upper circle. Its layout was advanced for the time, with the pit penetrating beneath the dress circle, in a similar way to the then recent Royal Victoria Theatre in Sydney. The brothers Vaiben and Emanuel Solomon spent £10 000 in 1841 to build the Queen’s Theatre, the Shakespeare Tavern – which opened into the auditorium – and five large houses. The theatre was run in a respectable manner by John Lazar but he was forced to close it in November 1842, during an economic depression in South Australia. In 1843 the theatre was converted to a courthouse.

When George Coppin arrived in Adelaide in 1846 he found no theatre available, so he arranged with Emanuel Solomon to convert a billiards saloon adjacent to the Shakespeare Tavern into a temporary two-level theatre to house some 900 persons. This New Queen’s Theatre operated until the end of 1850. Edward Snell visited it on 21 November 1850 and noted in his diary that it was ‘a wretched place, only pit and boxes in it and the stage illuminated by 5 foot lights and 2 side lights only. The actors were a set of dull dogs, the scenery was damnable, and the audience a mixture of prostitutes and pickpockets.’

While performing at the New Queen’s Theatre, Coppin and Lazar restored, enlarged and improved the old theatre, after the Supreme Court moved out. It reopened on 23 December 1850 as the Royal Victoria Theatre. It had a new, more imposing front, with applied columns, entablature and pediment, constructed almost 4.2 metres in front of the central portion of the older Georgian-style façade. Architectural fragments of the original Queen’s Theatre still exist – window openings of the first façade and structural timber members cut off at the wall surface, which indicate the dress-circle and gallery levels. Exits from the dress circle to the saloon and tavern bar respectively are discernible. In addition, excavations in 1989-90 revealed walls of the Queen’s Theatre stage and dressing room, the adjoining tavern and the stage and auditorium of the New Queen’s Theatre. Also found were two bases for posts that supported the dress circle and the gallery of the Queen’s, and some 200 artefacts related to the theatre and the tavern. Excavation of the dressing room, stage and orchestra pit revealed grease paint, sequins, military buttons, a Tudor jester’s shoe, candlestick holders, clay pipes, glass bottles and stoneware bottles and shards of crockery.

A plan of the Queen’s Theatre before it was converted to a courthouse shows the auditorium as 16.2 metres long, possibly including the orchestra pit, the stage as 9.1 metres deep, and the whole as 9.8 metres wide. It shows the pit and gallery entrances from Weymouth Street to the front of the auditorium, with rooms behind and along one side of the stage and the Shakespeare tavern along the other side. The press reported that up to 400 persons could pack into the gallery, making the total capacity about 1200.

The gold rush in Victoria in 1851 denuded Adelaide of men and whole families. Deprived of an audience, Coppin became bankrupt and the Royal Victoria Theatre closed in November. It was occasionally used by touring companies until Alex Henderson reopened it permanently in 1859 after minor alterations. It was closed in 1868, just before the new Theatre Royal opened in Hindley Street. The old theatre became successively an extension to the tavern, premises for the City Mission and a horse bazaar. Buyers sat in the dress circle and gallery to study horses paraded in the pit which was paved in bricks. In 1900 the circle and gallery and above-ground stage walls were removed, leaving the building as it is today. The South Australian government has undertaken to preserve it as a state and national heritage item.