musical.today Cheltenham, United Kingdom
Everyman Theatre
718 seats
Frank Matcham's New Theatre and Opera House opened in October 1891 with Lillie Langtry on the stage and about 1,500 people on benches. It seats 718 now, which makes it the smallest room on this tour and the one where you can see faces from the back.
The building
It took a cinema licence in 1929 on the condition that it kept staging live performance, and it spent the Second World War as a garrison theatre for civilians and the American soldiers stationed at Pittville, with London actors escaping the Blitz on its stage.
It closed in 1959 and was nearly sold. An advertisement asking for £3,000 at once to reopen the opera house did the trick: the Everyman opened in May 1960 with the world premiere of N. C. Hunter's A Piece of Silver.
Opening dates, capacities and architects on this page come from the theatre's own history pages and from Wikipedia.