Comedy Theatre, Historic theatre in Exhibition Street, Melbourne, Australia
The Comedy Theatre is a heritage-listed theatre on Exhibition Street in central Melbourne, with a Florentine-style facade and a Spanish-influenced interior. The building has two levels and seats close to 1,000 people, with a foyer featuring ornate ironwork and decorative detailing throughout.
The site at Lonsdale and Stephen streets held Rowe's American Circus from June 1842 to October 1854, then was licensed as the Royal Victoria Theatre in December 1854. George Coppin replaced it with a prefabricated iron building imported from Manchester, renamed Coppin's Olympic Theatre on 11 June 1855, with its first performance on 30 July. Known as the "Iron Pot", it was abandoned in 1894; the present theatre opened on 28 April 1928, built and run for fifty years by J. C. Williamson's.
The theatre's name comes from the light entertainment it was built for in 1928, and its programming still mixes plays, smaller-scale musicals and comedy. The 1003-seat auditorium and wrought-iron balconies are what audiences notice; the building is listed on the Victorian Heritage Register.
The theatre sits in central Melbourne and is easy to reach on foot from most of the city's main hotels and tram stops. Arriving a little early gives you time to look around the foyer, where the decorative details are worth a few minutes of attention.
Despite its name, the theatre was never dedicated solely to comedy and has hosted all kinds of productions since it opened. The name likely reflected the lighter tone of popular entertainment at the time it was built, rather than a strict programming policy.
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