Directly following, on 15 March, came English actor and playwright Wybert Reeve, in two of his own dramas, George Geith and The Woman in White, for the first of many seasons he would play at this theatre.
#Telephone number for bijou theatre series#
John L, Hall returned to the theatre on 8 February 1879 with his 'Byronic Comedy Company' in a series of burlesques by the then popular playwright. Lewis on a basis of a percentage of the takings, and according to Aarons, Lewis gave away too many complimentary tickets which affected his gross income.' Aarons applied legal restraint but lost his case and a lot of money on the deal which, together with an involved insurance case, eventually sent him bankrupt. To quote Lazarus Morris Goldman's The Jews in Victoria in the Nineteenth Century, Aarons had 'leased his Academy to G.B.W. Byron's comedy, Our Girls, on 1 June, he notched up an impressive 54-night run with this play and followed it with Our Dad, also by Byron, which ended on 17 August.įrom late August 1878 the theatre began to be advertised as 'Lewis's Academy of Music Bijou Theatre', but subsequent advertisements by Aarons highlighted managerial rifts and stressed Lewis's limited tenure of the theatre, which was due to terminate in November 1878. Hall, 'Australian star comedian' was the most notable attraction of 1878. Creswick, the most famous name to appear at the theatre in its first decade, enjoyed a very successful season which ran until 12 December. The Academy's fortunes revived when the notable English Shakespearean actor William Creswick made his Australian debut here in Virginius on 27 August 1877. Portrait of Joseph Aarons (1833-1886), Johnstone Shannessy & Co, Nield Album, SLV Pictures Collection The new theatre was evidently in poor financial shape and from mid July reduced prices, offering 'the best and cheapest entertainment in the Australian colonies', were advertised. Robertson, with Mrs Lewis and Edwin Adams the leading players.Įduardo and Giulia Tessero Majeroni, ex members of Adelaide Ristori's company, were notable attractions in a month long season from 12 March 1877 but by June, the stock company was supporting Corbyn's Original Georgia Minstrels -'Real Negroes from the American slave states'.
The first dramatic season followed on 18 November: Home, a comedy by T.W. In keeping with the theatre's name, however, the opening attraction was musical rather than dramatic: a series of six concerts featuring the beautiful Hungarian (Croatian) soprano, Ilma De Murska, from 6 to 17 November. Lewis installed as manageress and leading actress of its dramatic company. Lewis the theatre's first lessee and Mrs G.B.W. 'The house will comfortably hold 1600 to 2000 people, and is a neat, compact theatre in which everyone can hear and see, which cannot be said of every place of entertainment', the Herald reported on the day of opening. The second level above this was divided into upper circle and gallery seating areas. On the first level, only eight feet above the floor of the stalls, was the dress circle. The auditorium consisted of two levels of seating over a stalls area minus the then conventional pit. De Murska performing on opening night, The Australasian Sketcher p.141 Built as part of the Victoria Arcade, it lay upstairs at the rear of this, with the back wall of the stage abutting Little Collins Street, while the arcade itself was entered through the centre of the Bourke Street frontage. The completed theatre, opened less than six months later, was built by Joseph Aarons, a city council alderman and builder, for an estimated £60,000, to designs by Joseph Reed and Frederick Barnes. In the beginning, however, the Bijou (or Academy of Music, as it was first called) began life when its foundation stone was laid by the Governor of Victoria on. Just two years later, Boucicault's son, in partnership with Robert Brough, took over this theatre, transformed it into just such a playhouse as his father had suggested and, for a few short years, it became renowned as the Melbourne home of quality drama. 'I think a smaller theatre should be erected in Melbourne, where plays of the higher class, produced with much care and well scened, would maintain a higher standard of taste', wrote the famous Irish dramatist and actor, Dion Boucicault, at the end of his Australasian tour of 1885, apparently overlooking the fact that just such a theatre already existed literally a stone's throw from where he had recently performed. Ralph Marsden's story of one of Melbourne's most loved mid-sized theatres. 225 Bourke Street, Melbourne - site of former Commonwealth Bank building.
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