Queen's Theatre Royal
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Text: Article | |
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| Title | Queen's Theatre Royal | |
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| Source | Philip Parsons, Victoria Chance, Companion To Theatre In Australia, Currency Press with Cambridge University Press, Sydney, NSW, 1995 | |
| Page | 472 | |
| Date Issued | 1995 | |
| Language | English | |
| Citation | John West, Queen's Theatre Royal, Companion To Theatre In Australia, 1995, 472 | |
| Data Set | AusStage | |
| Resource Identifier | 65067 | |
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Theatre in Queen and Little Bourke Streets, Melbourne, opened 21 April 1845, seating about 1000. Became carriage factory in 1860s.
Melbourne's second theatre, the Queen's Theatre Royal opened with a benefit performance in which the manager, Francis Nesbitt, was principal actor. The official first season, also starring Nesbitt, began on 1 May. John Thomas Smith, a town councillor who went on to be seven times mayor of Melbourne, built the theatre, which the Port Phillip Patriot said was 'a plain, substantial, brick, shingle roof building with no attempt at architectural ornamentation'. George Coppin brought his company from Van Diemen's Land into the new theatre in June 1845 and played there for a year off and on. The Queen's Theatre saw the first performance in Australia by G. V. Brooke - as Othello - on 26 February 1855, but its days were numbered with the advent of Coppin's Olympic Theatre and the Theatre Royal.