Resource | Text: Article | |
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Title | Theatre Royal Perth | |
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Source | Philip Parsons, Victoria Chance, Companion To Theatre In Australia, Currency Press with Cambridge University Press, Sydney, NSW, 1995 | |
Page | 585 | |
Date Issued | 1995 | |
Language | English | |
Citation | Bill Dunstone, Theatre Royal Perth, Companion To Theatre In Australia, 1995, 585 | |
Resource Identifier | 65271 |
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Theatre in Hay Street, opened 19 April 1897. Seated 1200. Architect: George R. Johnson. Converted to cinema 1936.
The first fully-equipped, purpose-built theatre in Western Australia, the Theatre Royal was the first of several theatres of advanced design built in Western Australia during the gold boom of the 1890s. It was modelled on the Bijou Theatre in Melbourne, with a proscenium stage and a three-tier auditorium. Like Melbourne's Princess Theatre, it had a sliding roof to ventilate the auditorium on hot nights. The Theatre Royal was built for Thomas Molloy and Alexander Forrest and managed by George Jones and George Lawrence, who were known as the Firm of Western Australia. They opened with The Silver King by Henry Arthur Jones and Henry Herman, with C. R. Stanford in the leading role. Jones and Lawrence lost heavily on The Silver King. George Darrell, on tour with The Sunny South and The Queen of Coolgardie (a version of The Duchess of Coolgardie), took over from Stanford and a partner named Barnes on 5 June 1897, in time to save the theatre from closure. Darrell's season was profitable, but by 1898 the management was bankrupt. By 1902 the theatre had housed the English Comedy Company, the Hannibal and Williams Company from New York and Maggie Moore in Struck Oil. The theatre functioned for short alternating periods as a cinema and variety hall from 1916 to 1936, when the auditorium was extended into the stage area. The building remains in use as a cinema, the former dress circle incorporated into an adjoining building.