New Theatre Royal

The New Theatre Royal stands in the centre of Portsmouth, a Victorian playhouse built in 1854 on the site of an earlier theatre that Dickens described in Nicholas Nickleby. The present Grade II* building was remodelled by Charles J. Phipps in 1884 and enlarged by Frank Matcham in 1900. Its four-tier auditorium once seated two thousand, with standing room and bars on every level. The theatre is worth the journey for its links to Dickens and the giants of Victorian entertainment. Dickens visited in 1838 to research his novel and later gave public readings nearby. Paganini and Liszt performed on its stage, and Rutley’s company mounted two plays nightly in the 1860s. Matcham’s 1900 rebuild gave the stage a sixty-five-foot depth and improved sight-lines for every seat. Inside, the auditorium retains its original dress circle and upper circle, with ornate mouldings and a cast-iron conservatory at the front. The stage still uses Matcham’s ‘run-on’ roller, and the backstage areas echo the passages Dickens walked. Above the stalls, the gods preserve the intimate scale of a working theatre where every seat commands the view.