Playhouse Theatre

I have fond memories of this cinema circa 1958-9. Here I saw The Fly and The Vikings. I was eleven and certainly too young for one. But the principal joy was the cinema building itself: a Tudor exterior, which was announced from along the pavement by a kerbside hanging post sign (just like an English country pub). Inside the auditorium – a complete style switch to a Castilian castle courtyard open to the sky. And it almost really was – as there were, tiny stars set in the night sky, and just as you were marvelling at this, thin wispy clouds drifted across. It had a cloud machine. A complete change of ambience from the noise of chatter and crockery in Durban’s other really unique cinema, the Oxford Bio Café.