The structure on the site was originally built as the Charlotte Chapel in 1766, by William Dodd with money from his wife Mary Perkins.

[2] It was altered and given a new frontage, by John Stanley Coombe Beard for use as a cinema, St James's Picture Theatre, opened in 1924.

[5] In the mid 1930s Kathleen Mary Robinson came from Australia to study theatre production and she helped the producer Osmund Daltry.

[8] Influential on the MRA productions was Peter Howard, as playwright and also in changing the running of the theatre, where he replaced amateurs of the early period in the 1940s by professional technicians, and brought in the director Henry Cass.

In May 2009, plans for a new 314-seat theatre and a smaller cabaret stage, flats and a restaurant, all situated on the site of the original building, were given approval by Westminster City Council.