Town Hall Theatre

The five bay entrance façade faces Edward Street. Its red brickwork and rich terra cotta ornamentation is in the Dutch-Jacobean style. On each side of the central entrance door (with its canopy-balcony) there is a tall gabled block. Brick pilasters flank the entrance and extend upwards to parapet height where a curvilinear centre piece carries the words TOWN HALL. Apart from a small Citizens Advice Bureau and a Tourist Information Bureau in a new flat-roofed extension at one end of the building the original façade remains undisturbed.

Inside there is a double height entrance hall with a T-plan stairway serving the auditorium on the first floor and also the Minor Hall. Decoration is generally low-key and domestic in feeling with Arts and Crafts overdoors copied from the one that still survived.

The original plain hall and stage has been cleverly reshaped so that a system of removable raked seating rises up to the level of the original decorative cast-iron balcony front which has been retained along with the stepped balcony. There is a large scissors-operated forestage or orchestra pit and the proscenium opening, made up of curtains, is demountable. A subtle refinement is the front of house stage lighting concealed behind a rise and fall panel. Colours in the auditorium are pink and white with claret curtains and seating.

Craigavon Council’s move to the new Civic Centre has meant that the theatrical element, always present in the Old Town Hall, now reigns supreme. The theatre has its own identity, is particularly well-equipped and serves the people of Portadown and the county around with competence.