Melbourne’s newest cabaret venue used to be toilet paper storage

Filled with boxes of toilet paper, Christmas decorations and filing cabinets, the room on the top floor of the Melbourne Recital Centre sat neglected for 17 years.

But philanthropists Peter and Ruth McMullin saw the potential in the hidden storage space, which has been transformed into a venue for cabaret, jazz, contemporary music and musical theatre.

“For the first 17 years of the centre it’s just been a fairly dormant junkyard,” Melbourne Recital Centre chief executive Sandra Willis says.

The McMullins donated $1 million, which was matched by the Victorian government’s $1 million to turn the storage space into an intimate performance venue.

The toilet paper is gone and, in its place is a bar, a grand piano positioned in front of geometric windows looking out over the city skyline and blue velvet fringed booths for seating.

The Peter and Ruth McMullin Beacon will host its first public performances on September 17, with international cabaret performer and “Melbourne gal” Meow Meow opening the venue across three nights.

Willis says at a time when small music venues are struggling across Melbourne the opening of the Beacon offers new opportunities for artists.

“We’ve seen so many small live music venues shut down, not reopen after COVID, or reopened and have struggled,” Willis says. “It’s been a theme that unfortunately has been going on with live music venues ever since pokies really.”

Willis says the closure of The Butterfly Club last year had a big impact on opportunities for artists in Melbourne as the venue used to host cabaret and indie performances.

“This is part of our answer at Melbourne Recital Centre that we can provide a space for that artist that perhaps wouldn’t necessarily always perform in the Elisabeth Murdoch Hall to 1000 people,” she says. “Instead a small space like this will be a really intimate performance.”

Willis says opening the Beacon also allows the Melbourne Recital Centre to attract a new type of audience.

“We want to reshape what the word recital means,” she says. “It’s often considered that it might be something that only a classical Western canon chamber music, and actually a recital can be all sorts of ways of storytelling, all sorts of different music forms. One unplugged artist performing on a guitar is a recital.”

Peter McMullin, the son of Spotless founder Ian McMullin and a former deputy mayor of Melbourne, is a prolific philanthropist alongside his wife Ruth.

The couple donated $4 million to the University of Melbourne’s science gallery and established the Centre for Statelessness within the Melbourne Law School.

McMullin says his motivation for backing the creation of the Beacon is quite personal.

“My first legal practice in Smith Street, Collingwood, used to be next to the Last Laugh, which was on the corner of Gertrude and Smith street, and we used to go there after work,” he says. “I probably spent too long there, but all the emerging artists – comedians, musicians – used to perform up there, and it was fantastic.”

He gazes around the completed venue with its reflective ceiling and large spectrogram artwork lining the walls with pride.

“I reckon it beats the Lincoln Centre in New York – but I would say that, wouldn’t I?”

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