by Stepping into the dungeon-like front room of Melbourne’s last remaining theater restaurant, Witches in Brits, feels akin to visiting a Melbourne Goth nightclub in Melbourne – complete with coffins, skulls, red leather cooks and even a tunnel of terror leading through a dusty hole in the entrance The wall is reached in the tunnel.
A collection of kitsch skulls, bats, dragons and pentacles are displayed in a glass cabinet, with a mournful soundtrack drilling through speakers that sounds like it could have been lifted from a forgotten Boris Karloff midnight matinee.
Courtney Lee, 22, who goes by the floor name Salem, greeted customers as she watched the comedy/burlesque show The Spy that rocked me on a recent Friday night. “I just love interacting with the customers and sometimes scaring them, it’s probably the highlight of my week,” says Salem, who has worked at the venue for three years.
“This is a place where everyone, including employees and customers, can feel free to be themselves. I identify with the alternative goth scene here in Melbourne, so I feel lucky to bring that into my workplace. “
After 35 years of operation, the venue’s days are now numbered. The building sold for $7.2 million in 2022 and the new owners have made it clear they intend to demolish it when the current lease expires at the end of 2028, says 62-year-old Sicilian Australian owner Maritzio Termine.
“I’m very proud to be the last theater restaurant standing in Melbourne – there’s a lot of history. We just survived a lot of sweat – but we must be doing something right.
“Our difference has always been that we try to do a storyline in our shows, but others only have sketches,” he says.
The venue was opened in 1990 by Termine’s uncle Joe Fodera, a businessman who had previously owned two other theater restaurants in Melbourne – Nero’s Fiddle and French Nuts. Terine initially came on board as a partner before taking over management in 2006.
“I had to mortgage my house to buy the business and during Covid I had to step in as a chef,” he says.
“I’m open to offers, but we have to leave this place – the demolition order is already in place.”
Terine says he is keenly aware of the history of theater restaurants in Melbourne – a tradition he is proud of that dates back to 1960, when George Miller opened the Bowl Music Hall beneath the Capitol Theater with classic melodramas such as East Lynne.
Five years later, Tikki Taylor and her husband John Newman founded Tikki and Johns on Exhibition Street – originally as a late-night coffeehouse that caught the theater crowd, but soon evolved into a hugely popular burlesque, contemporary music and comedy shows shows. The Newmans then opened Squizzies in 1975 as a speakeasy and gangster-inspired theater venue, before opening Dracula’s, which became the lifeblood of Melbourne’s theater restaurant tradition until it closed in 2017 (although Dracula’s Cabaret is still at the heart of the Gold Coast shopping strip) .
Other notable theater restaurants have come and gone in Melbourne, including the Flying Trapeze Cafe (opened by John Pender in a converted Fitzroy fish shop in 1974), The Last Laught Theater Restaurant and Zoo (in Smith Street, Collingwood in 1976), The Comedy Cafe (founded by Rod Quantock in Fitzroy in 1979) and Capers Dinner Theater in Hawthorn (which opened in 1997 as High-end cabaret venue opened).
More recently, Melbourne has flirted with themed restaurants such as Karen’s Diner (a short-lived venture that stumbles upon rude staff), the pop-up Fawlty Towers Dining Experience and the recently closed Titanic on Nelson in Williamstown, The Titanic at Dinner. But none have boasted about the longevity of British witches.
The current show was light on gothic or spooky content, but felt more like early BBC Sci-Fi Meets Benny Hill, with a few standout performances taking the stage. There was also a lot of audience participation as the MCS acknowledged all the birthdays and wedding anniversaries in the room – at least 8.
The audience of around 200, many of whom had traveled from Tasmania, Geelong and even New Zealand to be there, seemed to blot out the fun and frivolity of it.
According to lead performer and MC Joel Norman-Hade, the venue was a fantastic stepping stone for artists and performers in a highly competitive industry. He lists a number of former stage colleagues who have found much success in the industry, including Samantha Dodemaide, who currently plays Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz stage show, and Grace Williams, who is the swing for Beauty and the Beast.
“For me it’s a steady income working here and I love audience work and I work with so many young, creative people,” he says. “I think this place has survived because it no longer tries to be anything more than it is – it’s not pretentious. It’s not haute theater. It’s like a pantomime for adults. Most of our crowd are out-of-towners who just want to come to the city for fun. “
Norman-Hade has been at the venue for five and a half years as characters such as David Bowie, Frank-N-Fer, Meatloaf, Freddie Mercury and Austin Powers.
“It will be sad when the day comes that this tradition no longer exists in Melbourne,” he says. “Where do all these young performers go when they’re looking for that go-between before the big gig comes?”
