Limerick Athenaeum - The Theatre Royal

The Theatre Royal

The dereliction of the old Athenaeum continued until 1989 when it was purchased by a local businessman. In an interview with the Limerick Post, a director of the new Theatre Royal Company said, "We see it primarily as a theatre and would compare it to the Olympia or the Gaiety in Dublin..." During the renovation, many of the architectural features of the original hall were carefully restored, including the three ceiling domes.

According to the new management, the purpose of the new theatre was to provide live music concerts to young people and to provide them with an alternative venue. After a slow start, the venue began to gain in popularity, and for Mary Black's concert in December 1989, Limerick audiences queued in the streets outside the theatre for the first time since John McCormack's concert in 1905. In February 1990, classical music was reintrocduced to the theatre when the Tuckwell Wind Quartet gave a performance, and two weeks later the Irish Operatic Repertory Company from Cork revived opera at the Royal with a choir of 45 singers.

Disaster struck the Theatre Royal on 6 March 1990 when the newly restored theatre went on fire. The cause was an electrical fault. There were no personal injuries, but the damage to the theatre was severe. The theatre required major reconstruction once again and was re-opened on Sunday, 3 February 1991, by Mr Brendan Daly, T.D., Minister of State for Heritage Affairs, Department of the Taoiseach, in the presence of the Mayor, Mr. Madden and members of Limerick Corporation, to a musical performance by Mary Black.

In December 1991, a relatively unknown local band called The Cranberries played to a small audience in the theatre. Word spread quickly, and their second performance a few weeks later was a sell-out. The band went on to sell an estimated 43 million albums worldwide before disbanding in 2003. The band returned to play in the theatre a number of times up to 1994.

Channel 4 filmed a sequence of their award-winning comedy series, Father Ted, in the theatre in December 1995. Indeed, both Dermot Morgan and Ardal O'Hanlon were regular performers at the theatre during the 1990s. The Corrs (1994), Boyzone (1994, 1995) and The Prodigy (1995) all performed at the Theatre Royal before they achieved mainstream popularity. Other notable performers included Dolores Keane, Sharon Shannon, Don Baker, Paul Brady, Davy Spillane, Liam Ó Maonlaí, Julian Lloyd Webber and The Saw Doctors. Despite the relative success of the venue, the Theatre Royal closed for the last time in 1998.