http:\/\/www.risen.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/05-Its-From-The-Lord.m4a<\/a><\/audio>
\n“Its From the Lord” featuring Jassica Castillo- Burley and the Mustard Seed Soul\u00a0 Band from the album “Heart and Soul” recorded and produced by Ross Gill.<\/p>\nSo it is Mustard Seed Song\u2019s great privilege to be producing, Friday November 6th<\/sup> – Saturday November 7th<\/sup> Risen!- The Musical<\/em> in Portsmouth\u2019s\u00a0 New Theatre Royal. Here is a brief history of this iconic Theatre which next year will have been in its present Guildhall Walk location for 150 years.<\/p>\n\n- 1761 The original Theatre Royal was built by John Arthur of the Bath Company and is mentioned in Dickens\u2019 Nicholas Nickleby<\/em>, It was variously known as Portsmouth Theatre, Portsmouth and Portsea Theatre and finally as the Theatre Royal.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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\n- 1856 The Theatre moved to its new site under the management of Henry Rutley, the was licensee of the White Swan who leased \u00a0Landport Hall next door converting\u00a0 it\u00a0 into a theatre.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n- 1<\/strong>876\u00a0<\/strong>John Waters Boughton became Manager and owner of the Theatre.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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\n- 1884\u00a0<\/strong>Broughton realised the converted hall would never become a major theatrical venue and so commissioned C.J. Phipps to design it.\u00a0Ellen Terry, Sarah Bernhardt and Henry Irving were prominent performers at Phipps\u2019 \u2018new\u2019 theatre.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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\n- 1900\u00a0<\/strong>Boughton engaged the services of theatre architect Frank Matcham to redesign and enlarge the Theatre. Matcham also designed the Kings Theatre in Southsea and the London Palladium<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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\n- 1923\u00a0<\/strong>Herbert Ralph, acting manager of the Theatre Royal, committed suicide by shooting himself in the head after it was found that he was responsible for a \u00a3360 shortage in the insurance money.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n- 1932<\/strong> it was decided to convert the New Theatre Royal into a cinema and it operated as such until 1948 when it reopened as a live venue. Performers over the next ten years included legendary acts such as Laurel and Hardy and Morecombe & Wise.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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\n- 1950\u00a0<\/strong>Hughie Green presented Opportunity Knocks<\/em> (the forerunner of XFactor).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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\n- 1956 The Theatre closed but reopened a year later as a repertory theatre under Kim Peacock and Hector Ross. A number of well know performers performed including Sarah Churchill, Edward Woodward, Jill Gascoine and Dame Peggy Ashcroft who later became a patron of the Theatre.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n- 1960\u00a0<\/strong>The Theatre became the Portsmouth Royal Arena; a wrestling and boxing venue that regularly presented the leading British wrestlers of the early 1960\u2019s such as Giant Haystacks and Jackie Pallance. During these years, the theatre was also used for bingo.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
<\/p>\n
\n- 1966\u00a0onwards the Theatre hung under the threat of demolition although it was here, in 1971,\u00a0that Ken Russell filmed, The Boy Friend<\/em>, starring Twiggy, Glenda Jackson, and Barbara Windsor.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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\n- 1972\u00a0<\/strong>The theatre suffered huge damage, the result of fire and was then vandalized the following year<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n- 1975<\/strong>The Theatre Royal Society set up a Trust Company to protect the theatre and successfully opposed its \u00a0\u00a0destruction at a Government enquiry.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n- 1980 \u00a31,000,000 was spent on repairs; the auditorium and foyer made structurally sound and the plaster work restored.<\/li>\n
- <\/li>\n
- 1984\u00a0Renovations to fa\u00e7ade were completed and the caf\u00e9 opened for the very first time and two years later the first live performance for twenty years was held at the Theatre; a jazz concert as part of the Portsmouth Festival.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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\n- 2004The Theatre closed for 6 months for refurbishments to enabling an increase in audience size from 370 to 525.\u00a0.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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\n- 2015The Theatre is returned to its former glory with a brand new Full Fly tower built over a new 10 meters deep stage.\u00a0 The auditorium is increased in size from 500 to 700 seats. The re-emergence is in partnership with the University of Portsmouth who are re-locating their Performing Arts Department to the site.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“Its From the Lord” featuring Jassica Castillo- Burley and the Mustard Seed Soul\u00a0 Band from the album “Heart and Soul” recorded and produced by Ross Gill. So it is Mustard Seed Song\u2019s great privilege to be producing, Friday November 6th – Saturday November 7th Risen!- The Musical in Portsmouth\u2019s\u00a0 New Theatre Royal. Here is a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ken-shearsmiths-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=738"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":741,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738\/revisions\/741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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