The Cremorne began as something unusual: a theatre with the sky for a roof. Built in 1911 by the variety entrepreneur Edward Branscombe, it was one of a national chain of open-air theatres he created for his Dandies costume comedy troupes. It opened on 5 August 1911 with light music and sketches under the title The Dandies, and seating for around 1,800. The name borrowed a Victorian tradition: the Cremorne Gardens of London, and the riverside pleasure gardens that had sprung up across the colonies. Brisbane's subtropical weather, though, had little patience for an open-air house. Rain interrupted shows so often that in 1917 the theatre closed temporarily so weatherproof awnings could be raised over the audience.

The theatre's fortunes ran through the McCallum family. John Neil McCallum managed and then owned the Cremorne, expanding it by 1919 to seat 3,000 and steering it through the variety era. His son, John McCallum, would become one of Australia's best-known actors and producers, a child of the footlights who grew up around this stage. The Cremorne was never quite a guaranteed success; it leaned heavily on vaudeville and variety, prospered and stumbled by turns, and by 1929 had fallen quiet, used mostly for meetings and amateur productions. In 1934 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer reinvented it as a cinema, fitting a new proscenium, screen and sound system, and shrinking the auditorium to 1,300 seats for the age of the moving picture.

The Second World War brought the Cremorne roaring back to life. As Brisbane filled with Australian and American servicemen, the theatre returned to vaudeville and became a favourite haunt for soldiers on leave. From 1943 the American entertainer Evie Hayes and her husband, the performer Will Mahoney, ran the house alongside the businessman Bob Geraghty, appearing on stage themselves between turns by the leading comedians and singers of the day. The bills carried famous names of Australian variety, comedians like Roy Rene and George Wallace, who could fill a hall on reputation alone. There was a resident dance troupe, the Cremorne Ballet, whose mildly risqué act drew a loyal following among the men in uniform. For a few crowded years the old theatre was exactly what a city at war needed: bright, loud, a little cheeky, and open late.

After the war the lights dimmed for good. Cinemas drew the crowds away, live entertainment faded, and in 1954 fire finished the story in a single spectacular night. For fifteen years the site sat in the city's memory rather than on its map. Then the loss of Her Majesty's Theatre in 1974 finally pushed Brisbane to build a proper performing arts complex, and the Queensland Performing Arts Centre opened in 1985, just around the corner. Inside it is a small theatre, 312 seats, that carries the old name forward: the Cremorne. The original site itself now lies beneath the Queensland Art Gallery. Walk the South Bank cultural precinct today and you tread the ground of a vanished open-air stage, its name the only ghost that remained.