Coordinates: 33°52′05″S 151°12′32″E / 33.868°S 151.2088°E / -33.868; 151.2088
The Theatre Royal in Sydney is Australia's oldest theatrical institution. Sydney's original Theatre Royal was built in 1827 by Barnett Levey behind the Royal Hotel, but burned to the ground in 1840. The name was dormant for 35 years until 1875 when a new Theatre Royal was built in Castlereagh Street on the corner of Rowe Street, adjacent to the Hotel Australia. In the early 1970s the theatre along with much of the block on which it was situated, was demolished to construct the MLC Centre. Action by construction unions forced the developers and a reluctant architect to incorporate a replacement theatre into the design. The current Theatre Royal opened in 1976 in the MLC Centre at 108 King Street between Pitt Street and Castlereagh Street. It seats 1,180 and offers a broad range of entertainment including dramas, comedy, and musicals.
Famous quotes containing the words theatre and/or sydney:
“Compare ... the cinema with theatre. Both are dramatic arts. Theatre brings actors before a public and every night during the season they re-enact the same drama. Deep in the nature of theatre is a sense of ritual. The cinema, by contrast, transports its audience individually, singly, out of the theatre towards the unknown.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)
“You can’t appreciate home till you’ve left it, money till it’s spent, your wife till she’s joined a woman’s club, nor Old Glory till you see it hanging on a broomstick on the shanty of a consul in a foreign town.”
—O. Henry [William Sydney Porter] (1862–1910)