ONSTAGE
What: Ghosts of the Plaza
Where: Odd Fellows Hall, 1315 Douglas St.
When: Friday, 7 p.m. and 9 p.m., Saturday 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.
Tickets: $15 advance(www.gotp13-erog.eventbrite.com)
Once home to a notorious strip club, the Victoria Plaza Hotel has a colourful past.
That past has now been transformed into theatre.
The Pandora Avenue hotel began life in 1911 as the upscale Westholme. It housed a swank restaurant boasting an orchestra and “a brigade of 50 waiters,” said Sarah Smith, co-creator of a new play exploring the hotel’s chequered history.
Over the years, the hotel boasted an Arabian Nights theme and a groovy beatnik hangout that, according to legend, attracted a young David Foster. There were rumours of ghosts, suicides, shady characters and ladies of the night.
Smith and her writing partner, Sadie Forbes, are the writers of Ghosts of the Plaza — a one-hour romp chronicling the Victoria Plaza Hotel in all its incarnations. Following sold-out shows in November, these first-time playwrights and the show’s producer, burlesque dancer Miss Rosie Bitts, have remounted Ghosts of the Plaza for a two-night run at Odd Fellows Hall.
“We’ve described it as a comical, musical, unofficial working-class women’s history,” Smith said.
The play was created last year with a $10,000 grant from the City of Victoria, then funding projects celebrating its 150th birthday.
For a decade, Smith — who holds a University of Victoria degree in women’s studies —waitressed at Monty’s Showroom Pub. The strip club, which shut down in January, achieved international infamy in 2005 thanks to a National Enquirer story headlined, Matt LeBlanc: My Wild Night with a Stripper. (Actor LeBlanc played Joey on the TV sitcom Friends.)
Smith always loved the low-rent dinginess of Monty’s. Eventually, that interest extended to the hotel itself. She explored its basement, stuffed with discarded beds, lamps and other detritus. Underneath, she saw the floor was richly decorated with mosaic tile, a legacy of more prosperous days.
Smith and Forbes — also a history buff — started researching the Victoria Plaza Hotel. In the city archives they found an old newspaper story detailing the Westholme Hotel’s glorious opening.
By the 1920s and ’30s, the hotel had lapsed into ill repute, its rooms favoured by prostitutes. A rebirth came in the 1960s with an Arabian Nights-themed revamp. Staff sported turbans and harem outfits. Central to the decor was a working model of the Centennial Square fountain.
Smith and Forbes interviewed a group of women who worked at the hotel back then. “They still hang out,” Smith said, “and they’re still fabulous.”
Also in the 1960s, the hotel established a basement music venue called The Secret. Smith says David Foster is believed to have played piano there as a 12-year-old.
Ghosts of the Plaza also touches on the tale of Melissa, the ghost of an exotic dancer who supposedly hanged herself at the hotel in the 1980s or ’90s.
The play opens on International Women’s Day. A donation from this weekend’s performances will go to PEERS, a support group for sex-trade workers.
Women engaging in sex work is a theme in Ghosts of the Plaza. Smith and Forbes say if their play carries a message, it’s to be wary of judging such people too quickly.
“Just open your mind, whether it’s a working girl or an exotic dancer or whatever. Just not to make any assumptions. Everyone has their own story, you know,” Smith said.