Victoria Theatre – The Palace of Dreams

Newcastle’s iconic and heritage-listed Victoria Theatre is about to embark on her glorious second act.

Novocastrian dreams of seeing the iconic ‘Mighty Vic’ again open to live performance are edging closer with work about to commence on repairs to the facade of the 134-year old building.

However, the heritage-listed Victoria Theatre that we see today is the second Vic on the Perkins Street site. 

The original Victoria Theatre was built in 1876 but completely rebuilt in 1890 with an audience capacity over three levels of around 2000 people and is now the oldest surviving theatre in NSW. 

When The Vic re-opened, she featured a first-class hotel at the front of the building on Perkins Street and the most advanced theatre technology of the time, offering a stage with a massive 40’ x 60’ floor – bigger than any Sydney theatre provided at the time and almost as large as Newcastle’s Civic Theatre – and the tallest surviving fly tower in Australia.

In the limelight

It’s believed The Victoria had no electricity supply until the 1920s when the Hunter Street trams were electrified. Theatre technicians would illuminate the stage with limelights – lamps containing chemical compounds lit from wicks on long poles igniting the chemicals that would glow with different colours according to the chemicals used. However, some of the systems in The Vic are still used in theatres today, including the huge fire curtain and the 36 lines in the fly tower to manipulate staging and backdrops. 

Victoria Theatre project manager, Daniel Ballantyne, acknowledges that over the past few years, many researchers from the University of Newcastle have done a lot of work to uncover more of the history of The Vic and what the theatre may have looked like in its heyday.

“We owe a great note of thanks to people like Associate Professor Gillian Arrighi and her cohort. Their detailed investigations and 3D modelling revealed not only what the theatre looked like when it opened in 1891 but the stage technology that was incorporated in the back of house area,” said Daniel.

“This work really showed what it might have been like to work in and operate the theatre at the time. Newcastle was a very international city and remains so, but in particular, in the 1890s the links to the United States were very close. Shipping was direct and a lot of the things that were incorporated in the Victoria were state of the art in the US.”

The nine lives of the Vic

Many Novocastrians remember the Victoria as being retail outlets – either Eastham’s Jeans or Supertoys but the fortunes of the Victoria began to change after liquor law changes meant the theatre and a hotel could no longer operate on the same site, and in 1921, renovations changed the theatre into both stage and screen use.

“The hotel at the front wasn’t particularly large, but it was also the era of terrible theatre fires across the US where the introduction of gas and arc lamps resulted in some enormous tragedies in very large auditoriums in the US and Europe,” Daniel explains. “That led to the principle that these buildings had to be single-use. So the theatre was revamped to make it safe, and you can see an aspect of that technology from that transformation which is still in the fly tower today – the steel and iron fire curtain which can be dropped on a counterweight system to close off the natural chimney that is formed by the fly tower.”

The Victoria Theatre became a cinema in the late 1920s after being taken over by the Hoyts corporation, finally closing in 1966 before re-opening as Eastham’s in 1967 – Easthams photos Newcastle On Hunter.

The rebirth of a beauty begins

In 2015, experienced venue operators Century Venues purchased The Victoria and established the non-profit Next Century Trust, which is responsible for securing funding and managing the return of the theatre to its original purpose of a full-capacity, live performance venue.

“Up until now, it’s been very much about fundraising and getting regulatory approval, about growing community support,” said Victoria Theatre project manager Daniel Ballantyne.

“Now it’s time to spill that into the building itself, so what you see on the theatre now is the erection of a hoarding and scaffold to start work on the facade. We wanted to start there first because it’s a signifier that we’re active on site and we’re very excited about that.”

The Century Venues team have significant experience in this sort of project, including the recent $10 million renovation of Sydney’s Enmore Theatre.

“The Enmore has had all of the kinds of systems that the Victoria Theatre will need,” explains Daniel Ballantyne.

“There’ll be upgrades to fire safety, audience and artist amenities, storage, access … but it’s not a construction project in the strict sense that we’re going onto a greenfield site and building up,”

“The bones of the Victoria have been assessed by a structural engineer as being very sound, and a design review last year includes innovations that will ensure the comfort and experience of both artists and audiences is top rate.”

The plans for the revitalised Victoria Theatre aim to produce around 900 seats or 1100 with seats and standing, which Greg Khoury, Century Venues Executive Director and Victoria Theatre Project Director, firmly believes will position Newcastle as an essential live performance destination, including nationally touring festivals and events. 

“It’s been an extraordinary blossoming of these activities in Newcastle over the last five years to deliver exclusive international content as well as finding ways for funding and supporting new and emerging artists,” added Mr Ballantyne.

“One of the nice things about the Victoria Theatre is that it will be one of those stepping stone venues between the smaller live music or theatre scene, onto a stage that while not the full-blown experience of the Civic Theatre is supportive and important of new and emerging artists,”

So what will the next life of the Mighty Vic look like?

Daniel Ballantyne says that a full restoration of the Victoria is not the plan because of the enormous cost that would be involved.

“I think it’s important to communicate that because what we want to do is peel back the layers, understand the retail intrusions because they’re important, but take it back to a place where we can arrest any further decay, find remnants of that to audiences and visitors, and then put a layer of contemporary technological overlays in which meet the needs of a 21st-century theatre.”

And importantly, when can we see a show?

Daniel Ballantyne admits that while much work has been done to get here, it’s been challenging.

“It’s been a constant campaign of fundraising, communication, government lobbying. We’ve had enormous regulatory challenges, but we have support from the NSW Government, and we’ll continue to work hard on the capital that will be needed,”

“We hope under our funding agreements and our capacities to have it done by the end of 2025, but I don’t want to say that that is a deadline. It doesn’t work like that. But by the same token, it is also surprising how quickly things can be done once you’ve got the resources you need.”

One thing we know for sure is that many thousands of Novocastrians will want to be there on opening night! 

Carol Duncan – Founder, Lost Newcastle

Daniel Ballantyne – Victoria Theatre Project Manager

Greg Khoury – Executive Director Century Venues and Victoria Theatre Project Director

Photos – Carol Duncan and Andrew Monger, Newcastle On Hunter, Hunter Living Histories

Originally published in Hunter Coastal and Lifestyle Magazine, May 2024.

For more information: https://www.victoriatheatre.com.au