Upstairs next to the glasshouse of the Coliseum Balcony bar, you find a new £1m education space, made in the base of Matcham's tower where there was once a kitchen, later an abandoned pigeon-roost. And thanks to a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, the crumbling terracotta ornamentation of the exterior and tower has been restored. It is all confidently done. One cost saving is a shame, though: the damaged original mosaic floor of the foyers, instead of being restored, is instead being covered with carpet. Still, it can always be done in the future.

At the Hackney Empire, it has been a matter of grafting new accommodation to the side and rear, as well as restoring the original building and putting in better bars on each level along with what the appeal chairman, millionaire comedian Griff Rhys-Jones, hyperbolically describes as "the best toilets this side of Claridges".

Not everything has gone according to plan. The Coliseum reopening was delayed several weeks to allow the building work - in particular, the highly complex new stage electrics, capable of being programmed for three productions simultaneously - to finish. Meanwhile the Empire is still unfinished. Matcham was able to build it from scratch in just 32 weeks in 1901, but the protracted rebuild has run into all sorts of problems - most seriously having its contractor go into receivership last July. This halted progress and added to the cost. The upshot is that while the theatre is now open again, an entire new section - the Marie Lloyd building, with bars, education and conference rooms - remains in limbo, needing more than a million pounds to finish. This addition is anyway a bit grim. Its blank pale brick walls rub uncomfortably up against one of Matcham's Moorish terracotta domes, like some unthinking 1960s extension. But left incomplete it looks forlorn as well. And the theatre needs the income it will provide.