Theatre Royal Newcastle

About Theatre Royal Newcastle

The Theatre Royal is the anchor of Grey Street and one of the finest surviving theatre buildings in the country. Newcastle's first Theatre Royal opened on Mosley Street in 1788 but was demolished in 1834 to make way for Richard Grainger's redevelopment of the town centre. The replacement, designed by the local architects John and Benjamin Green, opened on 20 February 1837 with The Merchant of Venice, its Corinthian portico closing the view up the curve of Grey Street. A fire following a performance of Macbeth in 1899 gutted the interior, and Frank Matcham rebuilt it in lavish Edwardian style, reopening on 31 December 1901. The building has been Grade I listed since 1954.

A £4.75 million restoration in 2011 returned Matcham's auditorium to its original colour scheme while improving access, sightlines and comfort, and the theatre reopened that September with Alan Bennett's The Madness of George III. The auditorium now seats 1,249 across stalls, grand circle, upper circle and gallery. It stages roughly thirty to thirty-five visiting productions a year, spanning plays, musicals, opera, dance and a long-running annual pantomime, and has a particularly strong and long-standing relationship with the Royal Shakespeare Company. The box office, foyer bars and the Green Room kiosk on Market Street serve audiences drawn from across the North East.

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A Grainger Town Heritage Walk: Newcastle's Georgian Heart

Newcastle's classical core was laid out in the 1830s and 1840s by Richard Grainger, John Dobson and John Clayton. This walking route links Grey Street, the Grainger Market and the Theatre Royal with the medieval castle that gave the city its name.

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