Gaiety Theatre, Manchester

The Gaiety Theatre stood in Manchester’s city centre near the corner of Peter Street and Mount Street. Built in 1884 as the Comedy Theatre, it was designed by Alfred Darbyshire for United Theatres Co. Ltd. The building replaced an earlier theatre destroyed by fire on the same site. In 1908 Annie Horniman bought it for £25,000 and commissioned Frank Matcham to redesign it. The new Gaiety Theatre opened in 1912 with a smaller capacity of 1,300 seats. During Annie Horniman’s leadership the theatre became Britain’s first regional repertory theatre. It produced a wide variety of plays and encouraged local writers known as the Manchester School of playwrights. Among them were Harold Brighouse, author of Hobson’s Choice, and Stanley Houghton, who wrote Hindle Wakes. Early in their careers the Gaiety also hosted Sybil Thorndike and Basil Dean. The theatre closed in 1922 but briefly reopened between 1945 and 1947 before being demolished in 1959. In 2008 its centenary was marked by a revival of Stanley Houghton’s play Independent Means. The production was directed by Chris Honer, who had rediscovered the script in the British Library.