Along with three other Victorian theatres (Opera Comique, Globe and Gaiety),[1] the Olympic was eventually demolished in 1904 to make way for the development of the Aldwych.

Elliston had the theatre substantially rebuilt and reopened it with William Thomas Moncrieff's comedy Rochester – or, King Charles the Second's Merry Days.

Together with her business partner, Maria Foote, and later with her husband, the actor Charles James Mathews, who joined the company in 1835, Madame Vestris initiated several theatrical innovations, such as the use of historically correct costumes and more elaborate scenery, including a box set with ceiling, which she is said to have introduced in Britain.

[7] Many were written by J. R. Planché and Charles Dance, featuring Vestris in breeches roles, and the popular comedian of the day, John Liston.

The plays often burlesqued classical themes: My Great Aunt – or, Relations and Friends; The Loan of a Lover; The Court Beauties; The Garrick Fever; Faint Heart Never Won Fair Lady; Olympic Revels – or Prometheus and Pandora; Olympic Devils – or Orpheus and Eurydice; The Paphian Bower – or Venus and Adonis; Telemachus – or The Island of Calypso.

Madame Vestris gave her last performance in 1839 and left to join the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden,[6] and the house writers, E. L. Blanchard, John Courtney, Thomas Egerton Wilks, and I. P. Wooler, have not met with posthumous fame.

Dion Boucicault's Broken Vow was staged in 1851, Planché began writing for the Olympic again, and John Maddison Morton also wrote many plays for the house.

[9] A notable exception was Tom Taylor's celebrated 1863 social melodrama, The Ticket-of-Leave Man, based on a French dramatic tale, Le Retour de Melun.

Burnand's contributions in the 1860s included Fair Rosamond – The Maze, The Maid, and The Monarch; Deerfoot; Robin Hood – or, The Forrester's Fate!

[10] The 1870s saw the staging of Wilkie Collins's dramatisations of his own novels, The Woman in White and The Moonstone; and Charles Collette in his own one-act musical farce with the striking title, Cryptoconchoidsyphonostomata, or While it's to be Had!