Queen's Theatre, Royal Victoria Theatre and horse bazaar among lives of Gilles Arcade, Adelaide, site from 1840
The facade of the Royal Victoria Theatre in Gilles Arcade, off Currie Street, Adelaide city. It succeeded the Queen's Theatre (1840-42) and the site had other lives as court rooms and a horse and carriage bazaar.
Image courtesy Flickr
The Queen's in 1840 was Adelaide’s first serious attempt to have a theatre venue – not long after the first major theatres in Sydney and Hobart in the 1830s. The. Queen's Theatre in Gilles Arcade off Currie Street, Adelaide city, was built by the merchants Vaiben and Emanuel Solomon.
With Adelaide in a window of prosperity, the Solomons were prepared to spend £3,000 on the “new theatre and public rooms” with a prospectus raising another £7000. The Queen's Theatre opening in January 1841 had John Lazar in lead role of Othello. Lazar had starred at and managed the Theatre Royal and new Victoria Theatre in Sydney and took on the lease of the Queen’s in Adelaide. He was hit by the early 1840s economic depression and on the Queen's Theatre held its last performance in November 1842.
After 1842, the old Queen's Theatre building was briefly used as a commercial exchange and extension of the Shakespeare Tavern next door. In 1843, the South Australian government negotiated with Emanuel Solomon to adapt the theatre for use as the magistrates, supreme and police courts. Stephen’s Almanac of 1847 described the unusual court as “altogether grand and unique”.
In 1846, George Coppin arrived in South Australia recovering from the depression. He converted a large billiard hall, next to the old Queen's Theatre for his New Queen's Theatre, opened in 1846. In 1848, Lazar returned from Sydney to manage the New Queen's Theatre but it closed in April 1850. By then, the courts had been moved, allowing Coppin and Lazar to spend £20,000 remodelling and enlarging the old Queen's Theatre into the Royal Victoria Theatre, opened in December 1850.
The Royal Victoria Theatre, described as a "tout ensemble”, never yet equalled in the Australian colonies, had a new facade to Gilles Arcade, a pit built on the principle of the Princess Theatre in London, a dress circle with a ladies' retiring room and saloon, a gallery to seat 400, and an extensive stage department “for the production of gorgeous spectacles”. Six private boxes were attached to the dress circle, the entrance being from Gilles Arcade, while the entrance to the pit and gallery from Waymouth Street.
This new venture also was cut short by the exodus to the Victorian goldfields from 1851. A testimonial for its auction in 1852, listed the Royal Victoria Theatre and Temple Tavern as a “magnificent saloon, casino, house, saloon and buildings, together with all the scenery, machinery, “splendid wardrobe” and lamp, as forming overall “one of the most elegant places of amusement existent in this or any of the neighbouring colonies'”.
After more alternations, the theatre reopened for a final run between 1859 and 1868. From 1868 and 1872, publicans Johannes Schirmer and George Isaacs leased the property. From 1873, it was used by the City Mission until it moved to Light Square.
In 1877, Formby and Boase opened their horse and carriage bazaar in the former theatre and adjoining buildings. The structure was altered to place stalls, a ring and offices within the auditorium and stage areas. The tiered seating around the walls remained intact for buyers to see the livestock. The auctions became famous both for the quality and size of stock auctioned and for the comfort provided.
Formby and Boase held some of Australia's largest sales with buyers attending from all over the continient. The ring was described as one of the most capacious in Australia.
In about 1901, a large part of the theatre was demolished. The timber internal structure was sawn off at support points, and much of the stage area and rear structure removed. The principal elevation of the Royal Victoria remained, facing Gilles Arcade, and behind this the central portion of the earlier Queen's Theatre facade. The side walls of the auditorium also remained along with an adjacent arch and northern wall of Formby's stables with wall retaining typical slit ventilators and rings for tying the animals in the stalls.
