Scala Theatre

Scala Theatre, London, in Tottenham Street, Tottenham Court Road. This opened as the King's Concert Rooms in 1772 and in 1802, as the Cognoscenti Theatre, became the headquarters of a private theatrical club The Pic-nics, which was successful enough to attract the hostility of the Patent Theatres. Closed in 1808, it reopened as the Tottenham Street Theatre in 1810, and in 1814 was sold to the father of the scene painter William Beverley. He renamed it the Regency Theatre, but it had little success, and in 1820 was reopened by Brunton as the West London, his daughter Elizabeth, who later married the actor Frederick Yates, starring in many of his productions. It was constantly in trouble with the Patent Theatres and was closed for several years, reopening in 1831 as the Queen's or alternatively the Fitzroy, the names being interchangeable. It then became a home for lurid melodrama, and was nicknamed the ‘Dust Hole’. In 1865, taken over by Marie Wilton, it was completely redecorated, renamed (by royal permission) the Prince of Wales, and reopened in the presence of the future Edward VII with immediate success. Marie Wilton's leading man was Squire Bancroft, whom she later married, and together they built up an excellent company, including Ellen Terry, Mr and Mrs Kendal, and John Hare. Under their management the epoch-making ‘cup-and-saucer’ dramas of T. W. Robertson were first produced, beginning with Society in 1865. Caste, the only one to have been revived in recent times, was seen in 1867. Other important productions were Masks and Faces (1875) by Tom Taylor and Charles Reade and Sardou's Diplomacy (1878). By 1880, when the Bancrofts left to go to the Haymarket, the despised ‘Dust Hole’ had become a fashionable theatre, but in 1882 it was condemned as structurally unsound and closed for repairs. Owing to a long-drawn-out dispute it was not used again except as a Salvation Army hostel. In 1903 it was demolished, only the original portico remaining to serve as the stage-door entrance of a new theatre which seated 1,193 in a three-tier auditorium. Renamed the Scala, it opened in 1905 under the management of Forbes-Robertson, but the venture was not a success and the theatre often stood empty or was used for films, puppet-shows, and amateur productions. In 1926 Ralph Richardson made his first London appearance at the Scala for the Greek Play Society as the Stranger in Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus. Various touring companies used the theatre, among them Donald Wolfit's and the D'Oyly Carte in Gilbert and Sullivan, and from 1945 there was an annual Christmas revival of Barrie's Peter Pan, until in 1969 the theatre closed, being demolished in 1972.