Stage Machinery

The Tyne Theatre & Opera House stage machinery includes four bridges, a demon and a fairy trap, object traps, and many other features. It was originally built in 1867 for Victorian stage spectaculars. At any one time, over 30 people could have been working understage for a big transformation scene, with another 20 on stage and in the fly floor. No other theatre in Newcastle had machinery like this. From live Derby-winning horses running on elaborate treadmills to colossal ship-sinking scenes, this was the most thrilling entertainment of the time.

The Tyne Theatre & Opera House opened in 1867 and was designed by William B Parnell for Joseph Cowen Jr. (1829-1900), a radical free-thinker, industrialist and politician. Money for the construction and possibly materials for the theatre came from the Cowen family business, the Blaydon Brickworks, four miles west of Newcastle.

Cowen, Thomas Forster (solicitor) and George Stanley (an actor-manager that ran the Tyne Concert Hall on Neville Street) wanted to build a theatre for the working classes in Newcastle that would satisfy public taste for spectacle. When the city magistrates denied Stanley a license to stage drama, Cowen was incensed, went into partnership with Stanley and financed the building of the Tyne Theatre & Opera House.

Joseph Cowen Junior was born at Blaydon Burn House, Blaydon. After private education in Burnopfield, he attended Edinburgh University, where he became interested in European revolutionary political movements. On returning from Edinburgh, Joseph Junior took a very active role in the family business and workers’ conditions.

Cowen, a formidable political force in the North East, represented Newcastle upon Tyne as its Liberal MP from 1874–1886. On Tyneside particularly, Cowen helped to politicise the miners and to bring reformers from the middle and working classes together.

Cowen’s desire for an expanded franchise (right to vote) also manifested itself through the facilitation of cultural activities. Cowen believed in the necessity of an educated democracy and saw participation in cultural activities as pathways to full citizenship. 

The theatre opened on 23rd September 1867 with Dion Boucicault’s Arrah-Na-Pogue: a melodramatic tale set during the Irish rebellion of 1798. The play’s theme – the struggle for Irish independence – is aligned with Cowen’s support of Irish nationalists. It played to full houses. Some carpentry around the stage was not quite finished on the opening night and the sound of hammering and sawing interrupted the opening speech delivered by Stanley. You can read the speech here: Newcastle Chronicle 24 September 1867. Stanley managed the theatre with a stock company* until 1881. During this period, and in the decades to come, the theatre became a venue for staging bold, socially-motivated dramas, as well as functioning as a forum for controversial debates.

The second lessee of the Tyne Theatre & Opera House was Richard William Younge, who managed the theatre from 1881 to 1887. By the 1880s, improvements in railway communications made touring productions more available, and the theatre’s programme started to feature more visiting acts and fewer in-house productions.

*A Stock Company was a troupe of actors performing regularly in a particular theatre, presenting a different play nightly from its repertory of prepared productions. Stock companies were usually composed of players who specialized in dramatic types – stock characters – such as the tragedian, the heavy lead who played villains; the old woman; the juvenile lead or the low comedian.

The changing market for theatre during the First World War and the growing popularity of the movies brought about the closure of the theatre in 1917.

The theatre was leased by Sir Oswald Stoll and converted for cinema use by 1919 (following on from some experimentation in 1916 by Howard & Wyndham). There were already six cinemas in Newcastle. The Stoll Picture Theatre opened on 2nd June 1919 with a screening of ‘Tarzan of the Apes’ and was later the first cinema in Newcastle to show ‘talkies’.

The conversion work, unlike that of many other theatres around the country, was minimal. The theatre machinery was left in situ and the key changes at this time included the construction of a projector box at Upper Circle level, a cinema screen over the stage and alterations to the entrances of the building. The conversion was carried out by the office of Frank Matcham & Co., prominent theatre architects in London.

The theatre thrived as a cinema through four decades but due to a rise in the popularity of television, the number of people going to the cinema declined during the 1960s. The Stoll cinema attempted to counter this by cornering a select market showing ‘X’ rated films, but this did not help maintain the cinema and it closed on 23rd March 1974.

In August 1985, the Tyne Theatre & Opera House was upgraded to a Grade I listed building.

On 25th December 1985, there was a fire in the backstage area of the theatre, which destroyed the flytower. Following the fire, on the 14th January 1986, a strong wind caused the remaining standing wall of the flytower to fall through the stage, damaging the stage machinery and stage. Fortunately, work had been suspended on site that day due to the wind. Miraculously, the task of rebuilding began almost immediately under the direction of Mr Jack Dixon, who was responsible for organising the original restoration programme in 1977.

With the insurance money, the Company replaced the damaged structure and refurbished the auditorium to a higher standard than had previously been possible. Works included a new roof, further dressing rooms and rehearsal rooms. By November 1986, less than a year after the fire, the theatre was reopened and its stage machinery operational again, reusing as much as could be salvaged from the fire. This was only 11 months after the fire and work had been completed for a total cost of £1.5million.