Recent live performances have included Ryan Adams & the Cardinals, Cursive, Norah Jones, The Jonas Brothers, Joan Baez, and the John Butler Trio.

Designed for stage shows, vaudeville, opera, and motion pictures, the theater was only one of the highlights of the Hobbs Building, which also contained a basement café, basement bowling alley and billiards hall, the theater lobbies and ten storefronts on the ground floor, and the Hobbs Crystal Ballroom, a 700-person dance hall, on the second floor.

Future film director Busby Berkeley (famous for 42nd Street and other stylized musicals of the 1930s) directed many shows at the Somerville Theatre in the mid-1920s.

In those days, new films would open at the downtown theaters like the RKO Keiths (now the Boston Opera House), the Paramount, the Metropolitan (now the Citi Performing Arts Center) and the Loew's Orpheum (now a concert hall).

The Viano family leased the Somerville to Garen Daly in 1982, and he turned the theater into a repertory house, running double features and daily changes, offering independent and offbeat fare in the days before video and DVD made it easy to track down such titles.

During this period, the Hobbs Building was purchased by Chatham Light Realty, whose owners, the Fraiman family, had previously bought and operated the Capitol Theater in Arlington.

When Garen Daly's lease ended in 1989, the Fraimans decided to operate the Somerville themselves, closing the venue for a series of renovations.

The bowling alleys in the basement and a portion of the first floor retail space were gutted to create modern bathrooms and two new film rooms.

In 2006, further renovations restored the original auditorium interior to a more historically accurate theme and color scheme while upgrades to the stage like new curtains, rigging, and movie screen were also completed.

It also regularly hosts live music, dance and comedy performances, with entertainers including U2, Louis CK, Jonathan Richman, Thomas Dolby, and Arlo Guthrie on its stage.

The Somerville Theatre is in the minority in the movie theater industry for being locally owned and independent but also operating as a for profit company.

In the movie Ted, the scene featuring the premiere of Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace was filmed at the Somerville Theatre.