Dates

• Existence: Established 1805

Biography

The Theatre Royal in Bath, England is an A Grade II* listed building, built in 1805 and one of the most important surviving examples of Georgian theatre architecture in the United Kingdom.

The Theatre Royal was built to replace the Old Orchard Street Theatre and soon established a good reputation and thrived under the management of William Wyatt Dimond. In addition to Shakespeare and other serious drama, the programme included opera, comedy and pantomime.

Between the early and the mid 1800s there were a series of changes in ownership and management of the theatre. This together with the Puritan revival movement that took off in Britain at the time and a fall in Bath's popularity as a tourist destination, sent the theatre into a period of decline. Although the following decades were hard for the business, it managed to survive through successive changes in management and the reinvention of the site.

In 1862 a devastating fire destroyed everything but the exterior walls. Upon reconstruction, the theatre reopened but struggled to attract an audience despite offering a high quality programme of drama and engaging some of the best acts in the country. Through the late 1880s the trend in constant change of management and programming continued and the theatre enjoyed fluctuating periods of success.

In 1914 the Theatre Royal changed management once again. Despite managing to survive the both World Wars the advent of television and popularity of cinema in the 1950s saw its audience dwindled again and the theatre went into decline once more.

In 1979 the theatre was bought by a trust and underwent refurbishment. In 1997 the Ustinov Studio, was opened and in 2005 The Egg, a children's theatre. In 2009, the '2010 Refurbishment Appeal' was launched by the Duchess of Cornwall, who is the Royal Patron of the theatre and the building re-opened on 8 September 2010.

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