Cirrus@Austlit

'At 2.15 a.m. on 7 February 1984, fire broke out in the Playbox Theatre on Exhibition Street in Melbourne, tearing through the downstairs theatre and damaging the smaller upstairs theatre and offices. That night there had been reports from the theatre's security staff of having chased away "a youth from the back of the building, soon before the fire began". The next day, Carrillo Gantner sifted through the wreckage of the building, estimated at the time to be around $300,000 worth of damages, and took interviews from the press to show that the company's spirits were still high. They were, after all, riding the crest of a particularly successful wave at the time. Harry Kippax had, in the Sydney Morning Herald, called them a company of "national importance" and they were playing in Melbourne in the downstairs theatre with "The Search for Andy Cadabra" and upstairs with "The Execution of Steele Rudd"; and on tour in Sydney with the Athol Fugard play Master Harold and the Boys at the Seymour Centre and Insignificance in the Drama Theatre of the Sydney Opera House, a production presented by the Sydney Theatre Company (STC).' Robert Reid.