The stars twinkle on the inside – you find them on the vast domed ceilings as your eyes raise, your heartbeat keeping pace, as feet move in rhythm with the band on the stage and crowd around. The Forum, over-stuffed with alcoves and statues. All gauchely ornate, its curls and swirls covering just about every available surface, including those added just for the pleasure of cramming more joy in.
Ahh, The Forum. None of the clean elegance of the Chicago-Gothic style of the Capitol Theatre, and yet I love it dearly (to be clear, I love them both dearly, but this love letter is to The Forum).
It is many years since I first formed my crush on The Forum Theatre in Melbourne.
And now, the stars twinkle on the inside of my memory as much as they twinkle on its ceiling.
I remember seeing Catholic Boys there as a teenager. I can’t for the life of me figure out why I think I was in my school uniform, I was desperately straight-laced and the idea of wagging was beyond me. But we were up the back and it was still a single screen/stage theatre. The statues and the blue ceiling captured my imagination, perhaps even more lastingly than the cast – though I suspect between Catholic Boys, The Outsiders and St Elmo’s Fire I found my blueprint for Hollywood white boy cute.
And then….disaster. The Forum became the home of a charismatic, happy clapper Christian group. I guess a generation of them have the memories of Friday Night Revivals enlivened by the stars and statues, though I sometimes wondered how they co-existed with the statues – there’s a lot of naked in them.
Eventually, the theatre found its way back to the good people of Melbourne, via the care and attention of the Marriner Group, and their commitment to restoring it as a working venue. And so, more starry night memories are being made, albeit that they are a bit more misty now that we have to manage masks, the getting-older glasses, and the exuberant energy of punters making a return to live music.
Sunday last the Forum, with its MIFF hat on, screened The Lost City of Melbourne – an exploration of the loss and retention of the grand theatres and picture palaces of Melbourne. It was a treat to add this to the memory bank, and to steal a moment to linger as I descended to the the elegance of the downstairs gender neutral toilets – with the fittingly androgynous-figureheads on the decorative arch in the stairwell down. Progress comes even in the bowels of a building. There’s really nothing I don’t love about The Forum: even the toilets make me sigh in an “ahhhhh – even here there’s lush architecture – way.
Stardust Becoming 