King's Theatre Melbourne

Theatre in Russell Street, opened 11 November 1908 (sic), seating 2200. Architect: William Pitt jnr. Reopened 11 March 1959 as Barclay cinema. Demolished for construction of multiplex cinema 1977.

The 'essentially Australian and patriotic' entrepreneur William Anderson staged melodrama at the King's Theatre in Melbourne. It was built for him in 1908, when he was operating two dramatic companies and had been unable to lease the large Theatre Royal. The King's had a fly-tower stage 19.2 metres wide by 15.2 metres deep and the first production, a revival of the melodrama Man to Man, demonstrated its capacity for spectacle by showing a prison escape and a railway collision with burning carriages and injured passengers. Anderson's repertoire largely comprised bush dramas. 

The King's Theatre, described by Table Talk of 16 July 1908 as the most beautifully decorated theatre in Melbourne, had a three-level auditorium in gold, cobalt blue and royal blue. To the western side of Russell Street it presented an imposing asymmetrical three-storey facade in Edwardian style with a French Renaissance flavour. It comprised a pavilion at the Bourke Street end and five equal bays. The three central bays opened into the usual small vestibule, in which there were stairs to the dress circle and entrances to the stalls. There was no vestibule for gallery patrons, who climbed stairs to their seats from lanes on each side of the building.

After Anderson other managements, including J. and N. Tait Ltd and J. C. Williamson's used the theatre for drama, pantomime and variety. When a Williamson lease expired the Gaiety Theatres company of Garnet H. Carroll and Benjamin Fuller leased the King's and in 1942 installed movie projection equipment. Warner Brothers screened films there until Carroll, in partnership with Aztec Services, reconverted the theatre to stage presentation in 1949 for the variety entrepreneur Harry Wren as sub-lessee. In 1951 the King's reverted permanently to films, and in 1959 it was renamed the Barclay cinema, after remodelling of the interior and facade for Norman B. Rydge, who now owned the freehold.