Regent Theatre

This guide to the Regent Theatre on Collins Street opens in the early hours of April 1945, when a nightwatchman smells smoke and Melbourne's grandest picture palace burns down to a shell. It traces architect Cedric Ballantyne's gilded 1929 design for entrepreneur Francis Thring, built to rival New York's Capitol Theatre, and the postwar decision to rebuild despite rationed materials and craftsmen working from the original moulds. Look up at the gilded plasterwork above the auditorium as you listen.