Among the authors who wrote for the theatre were John Maddison Morton, F. C. Burnand and Henry Pottinger Stephens; composers included George Grossmith and Edward Solomon.

Future stars who were members of the company as beginners included Kate Cutler, Florence Farr, Seymour Hicks, Irene and Violet Vanbrugh and Lewis Waller.

[3] After Blake departed, the building was used for religious purposes, first as the Roman Catholic Oratory of Saint Philip Neri from 1848 to 1852,[n 3] and then as a Protestant institute and working men's club under the presidency of Lord Shaftesbury.

[13] The building was sold to a partnership, E. W. Bradwell and W. R. Field, who acquired the adjoining houses and reconstructed the premises as a small playhouse called the Charing Cross Theatre.

[13] The Times reported that they converted the building "into a regular playhouse, of light and elegant appearance, with two tiers of boxes, abundant stalls, a limited pit and no gallery – altogether an edifice satisfactorily answering to the favourite word 'bijou', and well worth seeing".

[15] The theatre opened on 19 June 1869 with a triple bill consisting of an operetta, a three-act drama and a burlesque, the last being W. S. Gilbert's The Pretty Druidess, a parody of Bellini's opera Norma.

A triple bill of operettas by Hervé (Up the River), Lecocq (The Sea Nymphs) and Offenbach (The Creole) in 1877 featured Violet Cameron and Nelly Bromley, and was well received.

[4][24][n 7] Thompson returned in Farnie and Reece's Stars and Garters in 1878, and continued with a series of burlesques including Tantalus; or, There's Many a Slip Twixt Cup and Lip and Carmen; or, Sold for a Song, until March 1879, when she and Henderson relinquished the management of the theatre.

He opened with a triple bill of comedies: an early 19th-century "comedietta" called The Married Bachelor, H. J. Byron's three-act A Fool and His Money, and Ici on parle français, described by The Era as "the most successful farce of modern times", in which Toole played one of his most popular characters, Spriggins.

[2] After presenting a revival of Dion Boucicault's Dickens adaption, Dot, based on The Cricket on the Hearth, and Hester's Mystery, an early play by Arthur Wing Pinero, as well as what the theatre historians Mander and Mitchenson describe as "some now forgotten pieces", Toole went on tour.

[32] The paper also commented on the "startling metamorphosis" of the auditorium: "The consciousness that we were in an adapted lecture-room or Roman Catholic chapel has departed for ever, and we now behold a most commodious little theatre".

[37] Comic operas included Mr. Guffin's Elopement[38] and The Great Tay-Kin,[39] both by Arthur Law and George Grossmith (1885), Billee Taylor by Henry Pottinger Stephens and Edward Solomon (1886),[40] and Lecocq's Pepita (1888, from his original La princesse des Canaries).

Among them were Pinero's Girls and Boys (1882),[43] John Maddison Morton's final play, a three-act farcical comedy called Going It (1885),[44] Herman Charles Merivale's The Butler (1886)[45] and The Don (1888),[46] and Fred Horner's The Bungalow (1890), an English version of Eugène Medina's La Garçonnière.

[49] In Toole's absence on tour other managements took temporary charge at his theatre, including William Terriss,[37] Willie Edouin[37] Augustin Daly with his New York company in 1884,[50] and Violet Melnotte in 1890.

[50] Two weeks after the closure, The Era reported: No potential tenant willing to make the required outlay came forward, and a proposed plan for a redevelopment by the architect C. J. Phipps came to nothing.