Prince Charles and his wife Camilla visited Wilton's, the oldest surviving grand music hall in the world, which has undergone a £4.5m restoration.
The royal couple jumped up and down in their seats as comedian Barry Cryer and his son Bob Cryer sang a traditional music hall song.
Speaking afterwards Prince Charles got the crowd laughing when he said: "My grandmother would have loved the stand up, sit down bit, I was brought up in that school you know!"
Talking about why he became patron of the theatre after visiting the dilapidated building in 2006 he said: "I'm afraid I'm rather a sucker for these sorts of projects."
It was first opened in the 17th century as a pub, welcoming dock workers and sailors rather than royalty.
In the 1850s a grand hall was built into the back and it soon started to lead the way in cabaret entertainment.
Actor Simon Callow, who hosted the music hall showcase, told Sky News: "Variety was family entertainment, music hall really was not.
"It was quite louche, and very daring and it talked about the lives of people.
"You know songs like 'my old man said follow the van' is not just a sweet old ditty it's all about a woman who's been dispossessed and thrown out of her house, and there's a great deal in the music hall that deals with that sort of subject."
While the restoration project has made the building structurally safe and ready to run as a modern theatre, it retains a sense of faded grandeur and its rough past, with the walls unplastered and much of the woodwork exposed.
Impressionist Rory Bremner supported the campaign after an opera he was due to put on in the 1990s was cancelled because the building wasn't safe.
He said: "There are theatres up and down that country that are still putting on variety show bills.
"It's a deep part of our heritage and our tradition, but buildings like this are part of our history and they are more than buildings they are characters in the history of our lives."
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