Venue: Theatre Royal
Address: Theatre Square, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, England
Town: Nottingham, GB

The Theatre Royal in Nottingham, England, is a theatre venue in the heart of Nottingham City Centre and is owned by Nottingham City Council as part of a complex that also includes the city's Royal Concert Hall. The Theatre Royal attracts major touring dramas, opera, ballet, West End musicals and an annual pantomime. The Theatre Royal was completed in 1865, after six months of work and costing the clients of Nottingham Theatre Company, owned by lace manufacturers John and William Lambert, £15,000. The Classic façade and Corinthian columns designed by Charles J. Phipps are still a major Nottingham landmark. The Theatre Royal opened on Monday, 25 September 1865 with Sheridan’s The School for Scandal. Its managers staged the full range of productions. For some six years to early 1897 the manager was H. Cecil Beryl before he went off on his own account to operate and then buy theatres in Glasgow including its Royal Princess`s Theatre. The new lessee from 1897 was the newly formed limited company The Robert Arthur Theatres Ltd which had theatres in Scotland such as Her Majesty`s in Dundee and in England, such as the Theatre Royal, Newcastle. Robert Arthur, from Glasgow, now floated his company on the Stock Exchange. He presented the whole range of acclaimed plays, opera, revues and pantomimes until the company ran out of funds in 1912. At this point Michael Simons also of Glasgow, chairman and founder of Howard & Wyndham Ltd, became chairman of the Robert Arthur group with the Arthur theatres now operated under the same directors and managers of Howard & Wyndham. When the long lease ended in 1924 the theatre was bought outright by Moss Empires. Baroness Orczy’s The Scarlet Pimpernel (1903) was first produced at the Theatre Royal by Fred Terry and Julia Neilson before being published as a novel. Although initially the play was met with little success, the novel is credited with influencing the mystery genre and arguably creating the ‘masked hero’ genre. On October 6, 1952,