The Theatre Royal, Sydney is significant as the first continuously licensed permanent theatre in Australia.
In 1826 Barnett Levey built a warehouse on the east side of George Street between King and Market Streets, Sydney, New South Wales. In 1828 within the warehouse building he built a two tier theatre. Next door to the warehouse he built a house, part of which he opened as the Royal Hotel in 1829.
Opposition over Levey’s proposed theatre raged in government circles and in the Sydney press. Petitions both for and against the theatre were raised. On a restricted license, Levey performed dramatic sketches as ‘at homes’ and put on concerts in the theatre which was prudently named the Royal Assembly Rooms. The first ‘Vocal and Instrumental Concert’ was held on 20 August 1829. In December 1830 Levey’s buildings on George Street were sold to Daniel Cooper and Solomon Levey. Barnett Levey leased the saloon of the hotel and obtained a license to stage another series of ‘at homes’ in the saloon and finally the license to stage plays.
While agitating for the redesign of the theatre in the warehouse, now owned by Cooper, Levey refitted the saloon of the Royal Hotel as the Theatre Royal and with the play Black Eyed Susan by English dramatist, Douglas Jerrold, began regular performances from 26 December 1832. A new three tier theatre designed by John Verge in the original warehouse building opened on 5 October 1833. An advertisement in the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser on 5 October 1833 noted that the opening night performance began with ‘an original address written expressly for the occasion ... spoken by [Conrad] Knowles’ followed by the English plays The Miller and his Men by Isaac Pocock and a farce The Irishman in London by William Macready. Levey or Joseph Simmons or Conrad Knowles variously managed the theatre until Levey again became proprietor in April 1837 with Thomas Simes as manager. After Levey’s death in October 1837 his wife Sarah Levey took over as proprietor with John Lazar as manager.
The imminent opening of Joseph Wyatt’s new theatre, the Royal Victoria, and the threat of loss of audience and revenue seems to have brought to a premature end the Theatre Royal, Sydney's 1838 season. On the 22 March 1838 the Sydney Gazette admonished the management of the Theatre Royal for failing, when it was in their ’interest’ and ‘undoubtedly ... [their] duty’ to ‘attract and amuse the public so as to prevent ... the utter desertion of the old house as soon as the new one is open’. The Gazette concludes that if the proprietress (Sarah Levey) ‘cannot afford to enter the field with Mr. Wyatt, let her close the house at once'. Eric Irvin in Theatre Comes to Australia writes that Wyatt was also concerned. ‘There was not, and everyone knew it, room for two theatres in Sydney.’ (Irvine, 225)
On the 24 March 1838 the Sydney Gazette reported that ‘[s]peculation has been busy at work these two days back to discover what course Mrs Levey intended to adopt with reference to the old Theatre on the opening of the new house. It is now understood that some arrangement has been entered into with Mr. Wyatt, in consequence of which the old house will be closed after to-night’s performance’. Finally on the 27 March the Gazette noted that on ‘Saturday evening last [24 March 1838] the Theatre Royal was closed unexpectedly’ that many of the company had been ‘engaged to join the Royal Victoria Theatre’ and that ‘Mr. Wyatt intends converting the old house into a public room, where ball and dinner parties may be held.’
Joseph Wyatt took over the lease from Sarah Levey subsequently buying the Theatre Royal and the adjoining hotel in October 1838. The Theatre Royal was used as a storehouse before it and the hotel were destroyed by fire in the early hours of the morning of 18 March 1840.
Sources: Philip Parsons with Victoria Chance, Concise Companion to Theatre in Australia (1997); Eric Irvin, Theatre Comes to Australia (1971); Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (18 August 1829): 1, (5 October 1833): 1, (22 March 1838): 2, (24 March 1838): 2, (27 March 1838): 2, (20 March 1840): 2
