Sydney: Comedy Store to shut doors?
From the SMH:
SYDNEY is about to become a lot less amusing following the closure of two of the city’s highest-profile comedy venues.The Comedy Store in Parramatta heard its last punchline last week and the future of The Comedy Store in The Entertainment Quarter at Moore Park is also under a cloud.
The closure of the Parramatta venue is confirmed by the owner Mick Roche, but no statement as yet about the future of the Moore Park venue. The website is down.
The article quotes talent manager Andrew Taylor, Darren Sanders from the Laugh Garage and Karen Laing from A List entertainment, all of whom seem to think that the Store is definitely dead, and that it’s likely due to purely business management considerations rather than any lack of audience appetite for comedy in Sydney.
There’s certainly no lack of other venues offering comedy in Sydney (check out our Venues-NSW page for details). But none of the other venues only offer comedy (although the Laugh Garage’s new venue opening in September in the heart of Sydney may remedy that lack very soon, its existing venue at Riverside Parramatta is a multi-purpose theatre, and its affiliated Ha-Ha-Harbour Comedy Club next to Luna Park only does comedy on Thursdays, while A-List Entertainment has a comedy show virtually every night of the week, but all of them at different venues).
The Comedy Store has been an institution since 1981 (I remember going there as a wet-behind-the-ears uni student in 1982), offering comedy shows most nights of the week every week, and the loss of a fully dedicated specialist comedy club venue will be felt hard.
P.S. More at Chortle - [link] - reports that the Store at Moore Park has laid off all staff and cancelled all this week’s acts.
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