Venue

The beginning of the end

In the early 1940s Australia was at war. From a population of around seven million, almost a million Australians were overseas fighting with the Allied forces. Japanese aircraft bombed towns in north-west Australia and their submarines attacked Sydney harbour. This uncertainty diminished the need for cinema entertainment in Middle Park. Screenings at the Hall had gradually diminished to Saturday nights only by 1943. In April of the same year a film delivered to the theatre was left on a seat in the hall and deliberately set alight. Only a few chairs were damaged in the fire but it was the straw that broke the camel's back. After 34 years, the Middle Park Picture Theatre officially became the past of the area, as much as the red brick facade on the Edwardian building fronting it.

(This currently beige Edwardian building initially had a red brick facade incorporating pillars proportionally striped with beige painted lines every four rows of bricks, similar to a couple of other buildings seen in the photo further down the street. Click on the image to see details. Image by the author.)

(Initial facade, c1920s. Image source: State Library of Victoria)

The new beginning.

It was only after the war in 1945 that the hall was to see patrons again, although not the local cinemagoers but theatre enthusiasts from all over Melbourne. The hall was extensively renovated, now including a stage and 210 upholstered tip-up seats. It was then known as the Melbourne Repertory Theatre, run by the amateur producer and engineer Sydney Turnbull and Melbourne actress Fiona Forbes. Despite many successful plays, it was the theatre’s later reincarnation as the Arrow Theatre (1951-1953) under the direction and management of Frank Thring junior that the building is most famous for. Known for the plays staged in an avant-garde fashion, decidedly radical and non-mainstream in their presentation, the Arrow became the countercultural hub during the conservative 1950s. So prominent was its role during those three years that a commemorative plaque on the wall of the building installed in 2010 does not even mention the Repertory Theatre nor the hall’s three and a half decades of earlier use as the local picture theatre. Since the Arrow the hall was used for many different purposes, most notably as a studio for Cambridge Film and TV Productions in the 1960s and a Greek community club since the early 1980s up until a few years ago when the hall took on its current role as a gym.

(The plaque installed by the City of Port Philip in 2010. Image by the author.)

(The Lemnian Greek Club signage still visible on the building. Image by the author.)