Ed Mirvish Theatre
The Canon Theatre is one of Toronto's live entertainment venues. It was home to Phantom of the Opera from 1989 to 1999.
History
The Canon Theatre, in Toronto, is a 2200-seat legitimate theatre, fronting on Yonge Street, just below Dundas Street, with its main entrance at the rear of the building at 244 Victoria Street. The theatre is owned by Clear Channel Entertainment and is, at this writing (Sept. 2005), under the management of the Toronto company Mirvish Productions, which owns that city's Royal Alexandra Theatre and Princess of Wales Theatre.
Prior to its 1999 purchase by Clear Channel, the building was known as the Pantages Theatre (Toronto) and was the property of the Toronto-based company the Live Entertainment Corporation of Canada (also known as Livent). The building was purchased by Clear Channel subsidiary SFX along with other assets of Livent following that company's bankruptcy.
Prior to its acquisition and renovation as a legitimate theatre by Livent (originally a subsdiary of the motion picture exhibitor Cineplex-Odeon), the Canon was known as "the Imperial Six" and was a motion picture theatre.
The theatre was built in 1920 by the Canadian motion picture distributor Nathan L. Nathanson, founder of Famous Players Canadian Corporation, the Canadian motion picture distributing arm of Paramount Pictures, as a combination vaudeville and motion picture theatre. With its original 3373 seats, it was the largest cinema in Canada and, with its lavish interior - designed by the great theatre architect Thomas W. Lamb - the most elegant.
While Famous Players retained ownership, management and booking were turned over to the Pantages organisation, one of the largest vaudeville and motion picture theatre circuits in North America, and named "the Pantages".
With the banruptcy of the Pantages circuit in 1930, the Pantages name came off the marquee and Famous Players took direct control of the building, renaming it "The Imperial". It became exclusively a cinema - no more live vaudeville - for the next 50 years.
In 1973, the Imperial was divided into six small cinemas to become "the Imperial 6". It operated under that name until 1986, when Famous Players lost a vital lease on the Yonge Street entrance to the building to its rival, Cineplex Odeon. Cineplex was able to force Famous Players to sell the theatre, but the victory was a Pyrrhic one; in a bitter legal fight, Famous Players won an injunction forbidding Cineplex from ever again using the theatre for motion pictures.
Cineplex responded to the court order by gutting the Imperial 6 and rebuilding it as a live theatre, restoring the lobby areas to the original 1920 design and renaming the structure "the Pantages". The "new" Pantages reopened in 1989 with the first legitimate theatre production it had ever known, Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Phantom of the Opera.
The Pantages was operated by a division of Cineplex Odeon known as "Livent". After a battle for control of Cineplex between its founder, Garth Drabinsky, and its majority shareholder, MCA, Livent became an independent company, with no ties to the parent corporation. Livent continued to own and operate the Pantages until 1999, when that publicly held company collapsed and Mr. Drabinsky, his partner Myron Gottlieb, and other officers of the company were indicted in the U.S. on charges of securities fraud. The theatre was purchased - along with other assets of the bankrupt Livent - by SFX.
In July, 2001, naming rights for the theatre were purchased by the electronics company Canon Canada, Inc.
Theatre specifications:
- Total seats (1920): 3373; (2005): 2295
- Seating: mezzanine , orchestra and boxes
- Entrance: 244 Victoria Street, Yonge Street
- Owner: Clear Channel Communications
- Leased to: Mirvish Productions
See also
- Elgin & Winter Garden Theatre
- Princess of Wales Theatre
- Massey Hall
- Royal Alexandra Theatre
- Roy Thomson Hall
- Hummingbird Centre
- Bathurst Street Theatre
External links