Beacham Theatre
Following an effort to "bring back the aesthetics of the old Beacham Theatre," in 2000 owners restored the Beacham's ornate plaster ceiling moldings, facade, and marquee. In addition, the sloping theater floor was made level and the stage was elevated. The original Beacham Theatre sign is awaiting restoration and is being stored on the roof.
New Theatre Royal
The present site was built to replace a theatre located in the High Street (now designated "old Portsmouth". The theatre features in Charles Dickens' novel "Nicholas Nickleby". A popular music hall, it hosted performances by Niccolò Paganini and Franz Liszt and Mr Keane the leading actor manager of the early nineteenth century. It closed in 1854 and was demolished in 1856 with a number of other buildings to allow for the construction of a military establishment, the Cambridge Barracks. This building now houses Portsmouth Grammar School, a fee paying independent school. The three-arch entrance to the school occupies the location of the theatre. The city archives contain an 1824 poster/playbill of a performance of The Merchant of Venice starring Mr Keane and paintings of the exterior and interior of the theatre. These show the theatre to have been a low building with no windows and a door with a Grecian portico typical of larger houses of the era.The interior was rectangular with two tiers of boxes along each wall and standing in the pit. It would have had a smaller audience capacity than the theatre which replaced it. The illustration of the Portsmouth Theatre by Phiz in Nicholas Nickleby is true to reality though not to scale.