Peter Goers: Gods are smiling on Adelaide’s new star of the stage – Her Majesty’s Theatre
The new Her Majesty’s Theatre is a miracle on Grote St. It’s a $66.2 million redevelopment worth every cent, writes Peter Goers.
Opinion
Don't miss out on the headlines from Opinion. Followed categories will be added to My News.
- Her Majesty’s Theatre lifts curtain on $66 million revamp
- Latest subscriber-exclusive giveaways, specials and prizes
The gods have returned to Her Majesty’s Theatre in Grote St. The completely new theatre within two heritage-listed walls (including the grand facade) is magnificent. It now returns to its original design of three tiers including “the gods”, or highest seats. Thank gods.
The great Phyl Skinner, the last Australian vaudevillian, is nearly 98 and planning a comeback and she is the performer who graced that stage more often than any other.
When it was the Tivloi and the Valhalla of vaudeville, Phyl especially recalls Friday nights. Working men would leave the Metropolitan Hotel next door, go across to the Central Market and buy a half a crayfish and sit in the gods – the cheap seats – and eat their crustacean so that when the curtain rose the performers were assailed by the smell of crayfish.
This is unlikely to happen at the “galah” reopening of this glorious new theatre – whenever that may be.
The new Her Majesty’s Theatre is a miracle on Grote St. It’s a $66.2 million redevelopment and worth every cent.
It’s a great credit to the inspiration and determination of SA’s arts visionary Douglas Gautier and his Adelaide Festival Centre Trust, the excellent Leigh Davis who has galvanised philanthropy, Liz Hawkins and Robyn Brown (of the AFCT) and the brilliant architect and interior designer Adam Hannon and Zoe King plus two successive state governments and every single worker on this site and you can see many of them in the time lapse video of the construction.
It has been a labour of love and it shows for shows.
Opened the year after the Titanic sank, the Tivoli was a palace of popular theatre. Later it became Her Majesty’s Theatre for J.C. Williamson which purveyed commercial theatre and cultural cringe.
BEHIND THE SCENES: Celebrity tales and ghosts of Her Majesty’s Theatre
Later still after an inept and damaging redevelopment it became the Opera Theatre and then Her Majesty’s again.
Over the years the capacity was halved to fewer than 1000 seats which made it commercially unviable for big touring shows.
Now it’s bigger, better and breathtakingly beautiful – all blonde wood and burgundy plush. The AFCT bought the building next door which has allowed space for more spacious foyers, bars and loos.
The theatre now features a roof garden and an exhibition space for the Performing Arts Collection of SA which has waited 40 years for this.
The stage is much bigger, the sight lines are much better and there’s plenty of leg room and easy ingress and egress to each and every seat. There’s not a bad seat in the house and there’s an airconditioning duct under every seat.
This brand new theatre is a triumph and a gift to all South Australians. It shows us what we can do.
It adds immeasurably to the vibrancy of its precinct and to the whole state. It will be home to the big touring musicals, which have often eschewed Adelaide for the lack of a theatre, and that frees the Festival Theatre for its home companies and concerts.
Because of its three tiers, performers will once again have to play up, play to the gallery. Our greatest performing artist, Barry Humphries know s how to do that and he loves this theatre, old and new and has championed its redevelopment.
My only quibble is that the theatre should have been named after him.
On opening night, September 5, 1913, a stage hand named William Fischer fell to his death on the stage. Shakespeare called a stage “the floor of heaven” and it rose up to meet him. William Fischer is memorialised on one of the many plaques celebrating those who have worked in this historic theatre. Fischer’s ghost is just part of the spirit of this great new people’s palace.
Bravo! BYO crayfish.
Peter Goers can be heard weeknights and Sundays on ABC Radio Adelaide
WHAT’S HOT / WHAT’S NOT
HOT
Op shop central at Kidman Park
At last we’ll get a bridge over the train lines at Ovingham.
Andrew Baines, artist at BMG
NOT
Salted caramel in Scotch Finger biscuits. Enough already with the salted caramel.
Why can’t Adelaide City Council meet more often?