This onetime nickelodeon reopened as a 292-seat live theater in 1996. After suffering a stroke in 2010, former owner Michael Cullen sold the Mercury to a group of investors led by former Porchlight Music Theatre artistic director L. Walter Stearns. Since 2012, the Mercury has produced a regular slate of musicals and straight plays and occasionally offering the theater out for rentals.
The former Cullen’s restaurant and bar space, adjacent to the theater’s lobby, is scheduled to reopen in March 2018 as Venus Cabaret Theater, serving up intimate productions of musicals like Company and Spamalot alongside cocktails and appetizers. Late nights could see cabaret-style programming in the space.