Under the artistic and managerial leadership of Charles Calvert, "Manchester's most celebrated actor-manager", it soon became a great popular success.

The theatre's first production, Shakespeare's The Tempest, took place on 15 October 1864;[1] Calvert himself played Prospero and his wife took the role of Miranda.

The work included the addition of 300 seats,[1] and featured a frieze over the proscenium painted by Henry Stacy Marks showing Shakespeare flanked by muses and his principal characters.

The years after the First World War saw a decline in the theatre's fortunes, and by the 1930s the increasing competition from cinema was threatening its viability.

Although the theatre was demolished shortly afterwards, the intervention of the Second World War meant that the cinema was never built; the site is now occupied by Peter House, a large office complex completed in 1958.