At the close of the Theatre Royal in 1955, Mr. Wyatt, who lived at the little tobacconist shop which for 100 years had stood cheek by jowl against the Theatre, recalled the days back to last years of the 1900s. He had attended every week for the last 25 years:
' In those days, many of the patrons drove up to the Theatre in their carriage and pairs, and made their way to the stalls and circle by a special entrance opening on to the stable-yard of the Shakespeare Hotel next door. The Theatre was generally packed, but there were no queues. The Gallery patrons massed in a solid body across the roadway of Angel Street, and when the door was opened made a concerted rush. They always had to have a 'near giant' as a commissionaire for the gallery. Anything else would have been trampled underfoot.
The new stage put in after the fire of 1902 was advertised as being a small-scale reproduction of the stage at Drury Lane .... I remember getting on the stage to see a great perforated metal cylinder hoisted into the rafters. It is still there, and when some poor erring girl has to be turned out by an irate father, it still delivers paper snow at the turn of a handle.
