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Theatre Royal, Dumfries - Scotland's oldest working theatre
The story of the Dumfries playhouse is unique in history, for these old walls, built in 1792, have seen the development from Georgian theatre to Victorian theatre into early movies and modern cinema accommodating, during its time, the greatest names in theatre history, such as Kean and Macready, the greatest names in Scottish literature, Burns and Barrie and the greatest names in cinema history with personal visits from such stars as Stan Laurel and Charlie Chaplin. It is all the more remarkable that the cycle has started again under the aegis of the Guild of Players and with the support of the people of Dumfries and District. Colin
Morton
Among those who appeared at the theatre in the early years were Mrs Kemble, Edmund Kean, William Charles Macready (whose father was the lessee for four years), Miss Jarman from Covent Garden, Samuel Phelps and Ellen Tree. Burns continued his association with the theatre until his death in 1796, writing the prologue "The Rights of Woman" for Miss Louise Fontanelle's Benefit Night and, in 1794, a tribute to Mrs Kemble as "Yarico" in the opera "lnkle and Yarico". The first reference to the theatre under its present name is to be found in an advertisement in the "Dumfries and Galloway Courier" in 1811.
Acquisition of the theatre by the Guild of Players in 1959, at a time when demolition seemed a likely prospect, was followed by an eighteen month period of reconstruction and a formal opening by Sir Compton Mackenzie, whose mother's company, "The Compton Comedy Company" had been the last of the touring troupes to perform there. The first Guild production mounted in the theatre in October 1960 was "What Every woman Knows" by J.M. Barrie. Under the ownership of the Guild of Players, the Theatre Royal has continued to play a leading part in the cultural life of south-west Scotland. In addition to the Guild's own annual programme of five plays and the unfailingly popular Christmas pantomime, it hosts productions by Dumfries Musical and Operatic Society and the Junior Guild as well as professional touring companies, among them Scottish Opera and Scottish Ballet. For two hundred years the Theatre Royal has experienced the mixed fortune which is the common lot of all theatrical endeavour. That rare spirit of imagination and enterprise which stimulated Sutherland and his colleagues echoes down the years to the present day, as Scotland's oldest surviving working theatre faces the challenges of it's third century .
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In
1790, actor manager George Stephen Sutherland, who had been playing
with a company at the Old Assembly Room in the George Hotel, at that
time the only venue for theatrical performance in Dumfries, approached
interested people in the area with the intention of raising subscriptions
for a purpose-built theatre. Among those involved was Robert Burns,
then resident at Ellisland Farm, just north of Dumfries.
The
town saw in the proposal the opportunity to provide an additional attraction
which would help bring the Caledonian Hunt to the town for a repeat
visit. The Hunt, with a restricted membership of sixty drawn from the
cream of Scottish society, had visited Dumfries for the first time in
1788. The town was conscious, therefore, not only of the social cachet
which such a visitation would confer - the prospect of the Hunt again
... "spending a considerable sum of money in the town," was a
pleasing one. Fortunate timing brought together, during a short period
in the autumn of 1792, the Rood Fair, the Circuit Court and the meetings
of the Dumfries and Galloway and Caledonian Hunts - anyone of which
on its own would have acted as a social and economic stimulus. 
Completed
in time to take advantage of this prosperous season, at a cost of some
£800, what was then known simply as The Theatre or the New
Theatre, opened on Saturday 29th September, under the management
of Sutherland's partner, John Brown Williamson, from the Theatre Royal
Haymarket. With a design by Thomas Boyd of Dumfries, based on that of
the Theatres Royal in Bristol and Edinburgh, it seated between five
and six hundred.
Improvement
of the stage in 1830 and a radical renovation in 1876 by Phipps, who
had worked on the Gaiety in London and the Theatre Royal, Edinburgh,
which increased the seating capacity to over a thousand, enhanced the
amenity of the theatre for players and patrons. A vivid description
of a benefit performance in the latter years of the nineteenth century
is to be found in "The Greenwood Hat" by J. M. Barrie, who
spent some years of his youth in Dumfries and was a keen member of the
Theatre Royal's audience. 
In
1902, early forms of moving pictures began following their introduction
at the Paris Exhibition. This combination of moving pictures, 'movies'
and music hall acts in a mixed programme, proved successful until 1909
when the theatre was purchased by P. Stobie & Son, who installed
a flat maple floor to take advantage of the late Victorian craze for
roller skating. It seems to have been too late in the day for a Roller
Skating Rink for County Ladies and Gentlemen, for the theatre took on
a new identity as 'The Electric Theatre' and continued to play an important
part in the development of cinema the 'Auld Hippie' or 'The Scratch'
as it was affectionately known succumbed to the competition of television
and closed in October 1954.
