Her Majesty's Theatre Melbourne

Melbourne's principal light musical theatre in the 20th century, as Her Majesty's or His Majesty's Theatre, was its principal melodrama house in the late 19th century as the Alexandra Theatre. Nahum Barnet designed it as an ambitious scheme for a building to cover a large site. On the long, three-storey elevation to Exhibition Street he used a late Victorian style with French Renaissance overtones, the main entrance being marked by a central pavilion surmounted by a steeply pitched roof.

This street frontage was highly decorative but the interior finish was austere because of lack of funds, which also caused delays in building. The three-tier auditorium was 26 metres wide by long 23 metres long, with a 10-metre-wide proscenium and a flat floor on the pit-stalls level. A forest of posts supported the tiers above the stalls. All this made for poor viewing for many of the 2500 or more persons it was designed to hold. The stage was adequate at 15 metres in depth, and had an early example of a fly tower – rising 16 metres to the grid. Within a year of the opening alterations were announced to 'suitably decorate' the walls of the dress-circle level and fit a new ceiling dome. Only four years later, in 1891, the building was in such disrepair that a writer in the Australian Builder and Contractor News said redecoration by the architect Philip Kennedy was required to bring about 'a nearer approach to a theatre than hitherto'. The theatre was used mainly for melodrama, particularly by Alfred Dampier and William Anderson. J.C. Williamson reopened it, principally for operetta, in May 1900. It was now Her Majesty's Theatre, after alterations directed by William Pitt. These included raking the stalls floor, lowering the stage, adding dressing rooms, installing a fire curtain in the proscenium opening, and general redecoration. The forest of posts remained until a fire gutted the auditorium in 1929.

His Majesty's lay semi-derelict during the early years of the Great Depression. F.W. Thring briefly used it as a film studio. When the Theatre Royal was demolished in 1934, J.C. Williamson’s employed Pitt's successors, Walkeley and Hollinshed, to rebuild the auditorium of His Majesty's Theatre and refit other damaged parts. The architects dispensed with theatrical tradition and redesigned the interior as the first live theatre in Art Deco style in Australia. They also worked with the pioneer acoustic consultant H. Vivian Taylor to evolve an acoustically functional decorative scheme for the auditorium. It retained the proscenium and traditional stalls, dress circle and gallery. The theatre continues to house long-run musicals.