The last place in the GTA where you could get rare roast beef and well-done theatre at the same time is closing its doors after 27 years.

Muhammed Huq, general manager of Stage West Theatre Restaurant in Mississauga, confirmed Sunday that the operation would be closing after a truncated run of the just-opened Game Showand a limited engagement of the musical revue Shout, starting June 6, which is being mounted to honour the commitment to subscribers for a fifth show this season.

But after June 30 the theatre doors close permanently, although the attached hotel and its facilities will remain in operation.

The concept of eating a buffet dinner and then sitting back to enjoy a show in the same venue began in 1953 in Richmond, Va., and spread throughout America. Canadian businessman Howard Pechet started what was to become his Stage West empire in Edmonton, expanding to Calgary and Winnipeg and eventually the Toronto region, with the Mississauga theatre on Dixie Rd. opening in 1986.

The first Mississauga show set the tone. It was a small-scale comedy (SocialSecurity by Andrew Bergman) starring a couple of actors who had recently appeared in TV sitcoms (Beth Howland from Alice and Ray Buktenica from Rhoda).

Things bustled along successfully for years, with the alumni of M*A*S*H proving especially useful as visiting stars. Jamie Farr, Loretta Switt, Gary Burghoff and William Christopher all appeared locally at the popular venue.

Back in those days, there were two intermissions in every show — whether it was written that way or not — in order to increase bar sales at the venue: the average customer would spend $50 (at today’s prices) on liquor, over and above the price of the dinner and the show.

But times change, as do theatre-going habits, and the shows shrank to two acts, along with the bar tabs, which were now running about a third of what they used to.

In recent years, Pechet started to put on original shows, producing rock ’n’ roll revues like One Hit Wonders and Love Train using young Canadian talent.

In fact, things got so bullish that Pechet was, officially, the third largest employer of Canadian acting talent in the country and the Guinness Book of World Records cited him in 2008 as the world’s “Most Prolific Theatre Producer” for the 485 plays he presented across Canada over 33 years. At that point, Stage West had 18,000 season-ticket subscribers.

But the recent recession and prolonged slump hit the venue hard. The once-packed balcony remained closed for years and recently many shows have been cut back from eight performances a week to six, due to lack of demand. Even a recent renovation of the theatre and buffet failed to draw the necessary numbers.

To be candid, the quality of the shows varied enormously over the years. But the good ones (Motown Gold, for instance) were very good, and they provided a valuable place for young professionals to take their earliest professional steps.

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Jennifer Stewart, who is playing Tzeitel in Fiddler on theRoof at the Stratford Festival, sadly recalled that her first professional job was at Stage West. “I’m really going to miss it,” she told the Star.

Many other people on both sides of the footlights are likely to feel the same.

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