SUNDERLAND Empire might no longer be a building site, but you can still hear the sound of drilling and hammering.
The difference now is that the work is being carried out by Starlight Express technicians as they build sets for the spectacular show that will reopen the theatre on Thursday.
And the good news is that the sets do fit the Empire's big new stage.
As Empire general manager Dominic Stokes says: "The whole ethos of this building work was to make sure we can get the big productions on to the stage."
As he spoke, the reward for nine months' disruption was evident. The Starlight Express skating surface was being installed, and the gantries of stage lights were being swung into place.
Meanwhile, in the box office, there was a steady queue of customers, many of them city centre workers nipping in on their lunch breaks to get Starlight and Miss Saigon tickets.
There is, of course, a fair way to go yet before the place will be fit to receive those punters.
As the builders leave, and the scaffolding comes down from most of the theatre, the cleaners are arriving. There's a huge operation under way to remove the thick layer of dust that covers everything.
The Empire will need a show on stage and a couple of thousand customers packed into the tiers of seats before the place really begins to feel like a living, working theatre once more, but things are starting to take shape.
The seats are either new or renovated, there's a fancy hospitality suite in the old Empire Studio cinema and the auditorium has been repainted.
They've gone for the original 1907 colours of red and cream, with a rich mahogany for the proscenium arch, and gold for the plaster busts of rather well-endowed young ladies, and the bunches of apples and pineapples, that add a decorative flourish to the sides of the circles and stalls.
For the first time, the colour scheme extends to the gallery on the top tier.
Those brave souls who buy tickets for that upper ledge might have purchased them at a cheaper rate, but Mr Stokes doesn't want them to consider themselves as second-class citizens.
Their ascent will now be made more pleasureable by gaily coloured walls, where once there were bare bricks, and by the even more diverting attraction of theatre bills from yesteryear.
The bills, for the Empire and many theatrical predecessors and former competitors, used to be exhibits in the music hall museum in the 1970s.
There is also a poster advertising a demonstration of Edison's Phonograph at Wingate Literary Institute, an august institution which is, one assumes, no longer with us.
The still-flourishing Empire, however, has been fitted with machinery that Edison would doubtless have appreciated as he sweated over his primitive record-players – air conditioning.
No longer will punters watching South Pacific share the show's tropical climate, or shiver while empathising with characters in On The Piste.
The air conditioning is one of the extra bits of work management decided to fit in while stage rebuilding was going on. Ditto the improvements to the old dressing room block.
Workers can still be seen on this section, and their endeavours will not be completed until Miss Saigon arrives next month, but that was according to plan.
Contrary to what the gloom merchants have been saying, the building work has, in the end, followed the script, and come Thursday, everything, we're assured, will be all right on the night.