The rise and fall of Australian theatre-restaurants

Beloved central Queensland theatre-restaurant sells up after 32 years in the biz Thu 18 Jun 2026 at 8:40am In short: One of Queensland's last theatre-restaurants is selling up, following a long running decline of 'dinner and a show' venues across the country. Footlights Theatre Restaurant in Yeppoon has entertained audiences since 1994 with its original stage shows, but owners Garyth and Kaye Walpole are now retiring. What's next? Industry leaders say evolving entertainment trends, high operating costs and the unique skillset required to run a theatre-restaurant have contributed to the reduced number of venues. Stage lights dim, the curtain draws and audience chatter hushes. Garyth and Kaye Walpole open their show with a slapstick skit featuring an operatic song about Italian food. With a painted-on moustache and a wig, Mr Walpole plays an incompetent waiter, belting out "cappuccino" with practiced vibrato. The duo has been running Footlights Theatre Restaurant for 32 years, but as they approach retirement they've decided it's now time to sell. "We are going to miss it — we love this place. It's just so beautiful. It will always be in our minds,"Mrs Walpole said. For more than three decades, the central Queensland institution in the coastal town of Yeppoon has not only entertained audiences with its original stage shows but also nurtured generations of actors with its weekly drama class. Azariah Beasley, one of its students for more than five years, said it had become a "second family". "I've grown out of my shell completely," the 12-year-old student said. "I used to be this quiet kid that would only read books but now I've got a good group of friends, I'm a lot louder and outgoing, and I speak up for myself too." Mr and Mrs Walpole hope that the venue will remain as a theatre restaurant, but believe it is unlikely with the high operating costs and niche skill set required for the unique venue style. "Once we've sold it, we've got no say in the matter of what it's turned into," Mr Walpole said. "We don't want to stay in this area because we don't want to see what happens to our baby." Dinner and a show Theatre restaurants began in Australia in the 1960s, with venues such as the Music Hall in Sydney and Tikki & John's in Melbourne among the first to open. The unique 'dinner and a show' experience struck a chord with audiences, with similar venues opening across the country offering varying forms of live entertainment such as vaudeville, comedy and burlesque. Loading...Theatre academic Sean Mee recalled the heyday of theatre-restaurants in the 1970s, '80s, and '90s. "Audiences loved them. There was no such thing as sitting there quietly and watching a play … it was a muck up," the former actor said. "They were extremely popular and extremely lucrative because they were getting the crowds." Actress and playwright Margery Forde, who worked across multiple theatre-restaurants in Brisbane in the 1980s, agreed. "The audience would be really raucous and the humour was pretty bawdy," she said. "You had to be putting on a good show otherwise they would tell you to get off in no uncertain terms." Paul Newman, the son of late Tikki Taylor and John Newman, reminisced about rubbing shoulders with Melbourne's bohemian crowds and his childhood home directly above the actors' dressing room at his parents' venue. "My mother was very worried about fire because everyone was smoking in those days, so my father cut a hole in the floor and put a trapdoor in our bedroom," he said. "We used to open the trapdoor up and look down at them getting dressed and running onto stage." A rare business Once a thriving cultural institution in Australian cities, traditional theatre-restaurants have drastically reduced in the 21st Century. Mr Mee said the decline was due to evolving entertainment trends and rising operating costs. "People changed, audiences changed and the costs changed," he said. "These things were commercial exercises — they weren't subsidised, they weren't not-for-profit, they were purely commercial ways of getting people into your restaurant and it ended up just being uneconomic." The grandson of the late Tikki and John heads the family business Newman Entertainment and runs a modernised version of his grandparents' operation with a Gold Coast cabaret show. Luke Newman said evolving with audiences' needs was crucial but the unique hospitality-entertainment style required a wide-ranging skill set that could be challenging for smaller operators. "Not only do you have the theatrical side of things with production and wardrobe, technical, script writing, casting we also have an entire restaurant … [and] cocktail bar. "It really is many businesses melted into one." With Footlights now on the market and Garyth and Kaye Walpole preparing to take their final bow, they are confident that the spirit of the performing arts will live on in those who have attended the shows and their thousands of students. "I always say that you can't really get bigger than Footlights," Mr Walpole said with a chuckle. "Once you've made Footlights, you've made it!"