New Alexandra Theatre

Most of Owen & Ward’s Lyceum building was demolished and rebuilt in 1935, except for the plain brick dressing room wing flanking the auditorium and stage.

The entrance is now in a separate (1960s) block, some distance from the original, quite decent, black and cream faience façade, which is now somewhat drastically interfered with by a link bridge penetrating it at first floor level.

The auditorium, by contrast, has been stripped of later, dismal alterations and partly restored and partly sympathetically re-invented. It can now be seen as a handsome room of its period, with rippled plaster ornament over the ante-proscenium. Two balconies. Splendid, deep-coved, enriched proscenium arch in Art Deco style. The total effect is, in some ways, reminiscent of the much smaller London Whitehall. Metal clad fly tower.