On Wednesday 22 August, 1956, a seven hundred-strong capacity audience gathered at 3 Pier Street in Perth to celebrate the transformation of the site of a former Church of England Deanery tennis court into the Playhouse Theatre – the first new live performance venue built in Western Australia in sixty years.
Designed by the local architectural firm of Sheldon & Krantz and constructed at a cost of £65,000, the Playhouse was a hard-won prize for its owner, the National Theatre Company, whose board and members had spent much of the preceding decade tirelessly raising funds to make their much longed for ‘theatre of dreams’ a reality.
Tracing its origins back to 1919, the National Theatre Company was a mainstay of the Perth live entertainment scene over many decades. Known, during its pre-Playhouse years, as the Perth Repertory Club (PRC), it developed from humble beginnings working out of a basement room at the Palace Hotel and, later, the old composing room of the Western Australian Newspaper Company, to become a fully professional theatre company presenting upwards of eleven productions annually at the Playhouse as well as throughout regional Western Australia via an extensive tour network auspiced by the State’s Adult Education Board.
The theatrical fare offered by the PRC/National Theatre Company was as impressive as its audience reach. Over time, works by Noel Coward, George Bernard Shaw, Henrik Ibsen, Terrence Rattigan, Cole Porter and the Gershwins as well as later playwrights as diverse as Thornton Wilder, Jean Cocteau, Arthur Miller, John Steinbeck, John Osborne, Tennessee Williams and Edward Albee were all produced by the PRC/National Theatre Company within one to two years of their European and/or American premieres, thus adding a dash of contemporary spice to such staples as Shakespeare, Wilde, Sheridan, Moliere, Chekhov and Feydeau. To this roll call of theatrical greats would also later be added the names of groundbreaking Australian playwrights such as Ray Lawler (Summer of the Seventeenth Doll), Coralie Condon (The Good Oil), Alan Seymour (One Day of the Year), Dorothy Hewitt (This Old Man Comes Rolling Home) and Jack Davis (The Dreamers), amongst others.
The opening of the Playhouse Theatre was both a dream realised and the start of over fifty years’ of production history unrivalled in Western Australia for its continuity, scope and variety. Beginning with the venue’s gala opening production of John Patrick’s 1953 Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Teahouse of the August Moon through until the National Theatre Company’s closure in 1984 and beyond (the venue has subsequently been home to The Playhouse Theatre Company [1984–85], Western Australian Theatre Company [1985–1991] and Perth Theatre Company [1995 – present]), the Playhouse continues to be hired by commercial producers, subsidised theatre and dance companies, festivals, music societies, corporate hirers and schools.
Today the Playhouse Theatre is managed by AEG Ogden (Perth) Pty Ltd on behalf of the Perth Theatre Trust. The Playhouse keeps the original vision of the Perth Repertory Club/National Theatre Company – namely, to be a professionally staffed theatre entertaining and culturally enriching Western Australian communities - alive to this day.
For information on current and previous productions at the Playhouse Theatre, visit AusStage, www.ausstage.edu.au
To access an extensive collection of archival production photographs, visit the Museum of Performing Arts website at www.mopa.com.au