Ed Mirvish CAA Theatre
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The CAA Theatre
Honest Ed’s marquee, 581 Bloor St W., circa 1984-1990. Image courtesy of the City of Toronto Archives.
Soldiers in front of the Royal Alexandra Theatre, Royal Alexandra Theatre, 230 King St. W., 1930. Image courtesy of the City of Toronto Archives.
Facade of the CAA, CAA Theatre, 651 Yonge Street, 2023. Image by Thomas Sayers.
Honest Ed Buys a Theatre
The CAA Theatre has gone by many names, from the Astor to the New Yorker to the Panasonic Theatre, since it opened as the Victory Theatre movie house in 1919. Today, the CAA is owned and operated by Mirvish Productions.
Ed Mirvish, owner of landmark discount store Honest Ed’s, became an overnight patron of the arts when he saved the Royal Alexandra Theatre from becoming a parking lot. The Royal Alexandra, designed in the beaux-arts style, was Toronto’s preeminent playhouse for Broadway and West End touring productions from 1907 until the 1940s and 50s. By then, rising costs, combined with film industries poaching actors, made for weaker touring productions, and sales dropped.
When the run-down theatre was listed in 1963, Mirvish bought the historic theatre for $215,000, and promised to run the venue as a theatre for at least five years. He spent the next 35 years in the theatre industry.
The Royal Alex, Refurbished
The Royal Alexandra, often known as the Royal Alex, re-opened in 1963 after considerable restorations.
Mirvish owed a debt to Toronto’s local and alternative theatre companies, who nurtured the theatre scene during the Royal Alex’s slump years in the 1940s and 50s. By the 1960s and 70s, Toronto’s alternative theatre scene had grown significantly.
After Toronto-based Theatre Passe Muraille (TPM) faced an obscenity charge following their 1969 performance of Futz, the debt to alternative theatre was repaid in 1970 when the TPM producers appealed the obscenity charge and won. Their success in court was, in large part, thanks to a year-long Mirvish production of a scandalous Broadway musical, Hair, also in 1969. Even with its depictions of drug culture, onstage nudity, and anti-Vietnam War sentiment, Hair was a massive success. This proved to the courts that Toronto’s theatrical tastes and moral baseline were changing.
Alternative to What?
Built in 1911 as a private residence, the Second Empire-style building was gutted in 1919 to become a movie theatre. As a movie theatre, it was one of the early venues for the Toronto International Film Festival (then known as the Festival of Festivals). In 1993, the theatre was significantly renovated to accommodate live theatre productions. Mirvish Productions bought the building, then known as the Panasonic Theatre, in 2008 and renamed it the CAA Theatre. The venue now hosts Mirvish’s Off-Mirvish series of alternative theatre.
Unlike most alternative theatres, Mirvish was not reliant on make-work grants like the Opportunities for Youth and the Local Initiatives Programs that fuelled much of Toronto’s experimental theatre. Thanks to the success of Honest Ed’s and their other business ventures, the Mirvishes had enough cash to self-fund the theatre, with enough left over to buy the Old Vic Theatre in London in 1982 and build the Princess of Wales Theatre in Toronto in 1993.
Additional Resources:
Charlebois, Gaëtan, and Anne Nothof. ‘Mirvish, Edwin.’ Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia, Accessed 15 Aug. 2023.
Filewood, Alan. ‘Erasing Historical Difference: The Alternative Orthodoxy in Canadian Theatre.’ Theatre and Performance in Toronto, edited by Laura Levin, Canada Playwrights Press, 2011, pp. 55-64.
King, Betty Nygaard. ‘Hair.’ The Canadian Encyclopedia, 21 Aug. 2006,
Luscombe, George. ‘Excerpts from George Luscombe’s address upon receiving an honorary degree from University of Guelph, June 5th 1996.’ Conversations with George Luscombe, edited by Stephen Bush, Mosaic Press, pp. 208-211.
Scott, Robert B. ‘Professional Performers and Companies.’ Later Stages: Essays in Ontario Theatre from the First World War to the 1970s. Edited by Saddlemyer, Ann, and Richard Plant, University of Toronto Press, 1997, pp. 12-120.
Taylor, Doug. Toronto Theatres and the Golden Age of the Silver Screen. The History Press, 2014.
Lindsay, John C. The Royal Alex, The Old Vic. The Boston Mills Press, 1986.
Mirvish, Ed. There’s No Business Like Showbusiness: But I Wouldn’t Ditch My Day Job. Key Porter Books, 1997.
Wagner, Anton. ‘Royal Alexandra Theatre.’ The Canadian Encyclopedia, 7 Feb. 2006,