York Guides

  Until 1821, the York Theatre was essentially of Georgian design. A guide book of the time described it:32

There are two tiers of side boxes, one front box, two front galleries, and two side galleries . . . The interior is coloured orange, green and white, and the seats covered with crimson cloth.

The first major reconstruction of the building since 1765 was carried out in 1821 and 1822 at a cost of £500. Another guide book published in 1823 described it as having been 'almost entirely rebuilt'.33 The auditorium was changed from the Georgian rectangular shape to 'semi-circular, and resembles Covent Garden Theatre', It was, in fact, being brought into line with modern theatre design. The auditorium had 'two tiers of side and front boxes, with several doors of entrance, and handsome lobbies; a large commodious pit; one front gallery, and two side galleries'. In 1824, the year after the York Gas Company was set up, the Theatre was still further modernised when gas lighting - first used in the London theatre in the Lyceum in 1817 - was installed. In 1835, the Theatre was renovated, both inside and out, 'for the purpose of rendering it worthy of the second city in England'.34 The previous side wall of the Theatre, facing the newly constructed St. Leonard's Place, now became the front, and an arcade was built 'in the Elizabethan style of Architecture'35 and 'stuccoed in imitation of stone'.36 This provided an exclusive entrance to the boxes; the entrances to the pit and galleries were in Blake Street, the former front of the building. The stage had been reported to be 'so much decayed as to be extremely dangerous to the Actors',37 and it was 'adapted, by a novel and ingenious mechanical process, to all the purposes of illusion upon the principle of the first London theatres'.38 It was trapped so that it could 'descend, if required, in one mass, to the extent of 20 feet by 14 feet, or a number of smaller traps can be used as circumstances may require'. The auditorium was improved by the installation of a new heating system and by re¬covering the box seats. A month later a new Act Drop was painted, and the proscenium repainted:39

The drapery, crimson and gold, has a good effect, which is heightened by the City of York Arms, which are introduced in the centre.

It was, the York Chronicle declared, 'as handsome and compact a little theatre as any in the provinces'.40

In 1865 the York Theatre was altered again when John Coleman took over the lease. He was already lessee of the Leeds, Oxford, Cambridge and Lincoln theatres and was eventually to establish the Great Northern Circuit, consisting of York, Leeds, Hull, Doncaster, Liverpool, Lincoln, Glasgow and the Isle of Man. The York Theatre Royal became part of a big business enterprise, with Coleman as entrepreneur. His management saw virtually the end of the stock company system, and the stock company hardly did more than fill in between London tours of operas, Shakespeare, pantomimes and popular contemporary plays.

Theatre audiences were changing in the 1860s, partly as a result of a deliberate attempt by managements to attract a more fashionable clientele by providing more refined accommodation. In 1865 Squire and Mrs Bancroft took over the Queen's Theatre in London, nick-named the 'Dust-Hole', and re-opened it on 15 April as the Prince of Wales Theatre. They changed its character: it was genteelly decorated with chintz in the circle and a carpet in the stalls, and they began coaxing back into the'theatre a polite audience who had been driven away partly by some of the excesses of audience behaviour in the theatres earlier in the century. The same process began in York, too. Before Coleman opened the York Theatre in 1865 the house was renovated and redecorated. It was changed to what the Yorkshire Gazette described as 'a comfortable, clean, happy looking bijou of a theatre'.41 The front of house decorations were praised for their decorum:

The simplicity and chasteness of the decorations - gold, white, light yellow, salmon, and crimson are the chief colours - being throughout slight and unobtrusive, gives a drawing room aspect to the house and a quiet air of elegance.

Coleman said he hoped that the York Theatre Royal would be 'the most charming drawing-room theatre in the kingdom'. This new emphasis on elegance and decorum was, hopefully, to extend to all sections of the audience, and Coleman's opening address included an appeal to the gallery to help him keep up 'the character of the establishment':

If anyone found an obnoxious or impudent fellow beside him, he hoped the audience would act as their own special constables and assist the fellow out of the theatre. There was another habit which he had no objection to in its proper place, but at the risk of appearing bumptious he would now state that if he ever found anyone so indulging in smoking inside the theatre he would have him out at once or give him in charge of the police.

In 1870 Coleman carried out further alterations to the Theatre: the stage was renewed and the pit enlarged. The proscenium doors, through which all entrances onto the stage in the Georgian theatre were made, were now redundant and were replaced with statues of the Tragic and Comic Muses. In November 1875 the Theatre closed for alterations that brought it still further into'line with Victorian theatre architecture. The place where the proscenium doors had been was now taken with two circular stage boxes and 'radiating from these on each side towards the centre of the circle are four "private family boxes".'42The dress circle was fitted with 'nearly a hundred most comfortable, admirably upholstered fauteuils' in three rows. A new upper circle was built and fitted with armchairs, and there was a promenade at the back. The gallery was rebuilt and made smaller. The pit was enlarged by being 'carried beneath the boxes'. The footlights were improved by 'a patent reflector . . . the lights being so adjusted that the audience are shielded from the glare of gas, whilst, at the same time, the full blaze of light is con¬centrated on the stage'. The proscenium arch was renewed and replaced by 'a massive and stately structure of the Corinthian Doric style' which formed 'a perfect frame to the stage'. Little of the Georgian Theatre remained visible.