Scala Theatre

51°31′12.2″N 0°8′10.0″W / 51.520056°N 0.136111°W / 51.520056; -0.136111

The Scala Theatre was a theatre in Charlotte Street, London, off Tottenham Court Road. The first theatre on the site opened in 1772; the last was demolished in 1969, after a catastrophic fire. From 1865 to 1882, the theatre was known as the Prince of Wales's Theatre (not to be confused with Prince of Wales Theatre).

The theatre began on this site as The New Rooms where concerts were performed, in Charlotte Street, in 1772, under the management of Francis Pasquali. Popularity, and royal patronage led to the building's enlargement by James Wyatt, and its renaming as the King's Concert Rooms (1780–1786). It then became Rooms for Concerts of Ancient Music and Hyde's Rooms (1786–1802), managed by The Directors of Concerts and Ancient Music.

In 1802, a private theatre club managed by Captain Caulfield, the "Pic-Nics", occupied the building and named it the Cognoscenti Theatre (1802–1808). It became the New Theatre (1808–1815) and was extended and fitted out as a public theatre, with a portico entrance on Tottenham Street. It opened on 23 April 1810 with Love in a Village.

It continued under a succession of managers as the unsuccessful Regency Theatre (1815–1820), falling into decline. The theatre then reopened as the West London Theatre (1820–1831), Queen's Theatre (1831–1833, 1835–1837, and 1839–1865), and Fitzroy Theatre (1833–1835). The lessee of the theatre from 1839 to 1865 was a scenic artist, Charles James James, and the theatre became the home of lurid melodrama, being nicknamed The Dusthole.

In 1865, the theatre was renovated and named the Prince of Wales's Royal Theatre and this continued until it went dark in 1882. It was demolished in 1903. In 1865, in partnership with Henry Byron, Marie Wilton assumed the management of the theatre, having secured as a leading actor Squire Bancroft. He starred in J. P. Wooler's A Winning Hazard, among other works. Wilton provided the capital, and Byron wrote a number of plays. His first was a burlesque of La sonnambula. However, Wilton wanted to present more sophisticated pieces. She agreed to produce three more burlesques by Byron, while he agreed to write his first prose comedies, War to the Knife (a success in 1865) and A Hundred Thousand Pounds (1866). By 1867, Byron left the partnership.

The house soon became noted for the successful domestic drama-comedies by Thomas William Robertson, including his series of groundbreaking realist plays, Society (1865), Ours (1866), Caste (1867), Play (1868), School (1869), and M.P. (1870). In 1867, Wilton married Squire Bancroft and took his surname as Mrs. Effie Bancroft and regularly took the principal female parts in these pieces opposite her husband. Other plays were W. S. Gilbert's Allow Me To Explain (1867; this ran as a companion piece to Robertson's Caste) and Sweethearts (1874), as well as Tame Cats (1868), Lytton's Money (1872), The School for Scandal (1874), a revival of Boucicault's London Assurance (1877), and Diplomacy (Clement Scott's 1878 adaptation of Sardou's Dora). A number of prominent actors played at the theatre during this period, among them John Hare, Charles Coghlan, the Kendals, and Ellen Terry.

A big success in 1881 was F. C. Burnand's The Colonel, which went on to run for 550 performances, transferring to the Imperial Theatre. In 1882, the theatre went dark, and from 1886 the theatre buildings were used as a Salvation Army Hostel, until it was demolished in 1903. Another theatre near Leicester Square, London, began to use the name Prince of Wales Theatre in 1886.