Many of us in the Valley theater community mourned the demise of StageWest 10 years ago, and many deplored the new artistic direction taken by its replacement, CityStage. Where StageWest maintained a repertory company for many years, mounted original productions and sought to stretch its audience with a variety of theatrical fare, CityStage set its sights from the start on a middle-of-the-road crowd with a menu of easy-to-digest comedies and musicals.
But—and this is the "but" that makes all the difference these days—StageWest ricocheted through financial and leadership crises that finally sank it, while CityStage has built a solid bottom line and a dependable following.
Symphony Hall, Springfield's other downtown theater venue, operates under the same organizational umbrella as CityStage. Both theaters appeal to the same primary audience, with a difference more in scale than content. Symphony Hall's Broadway Series stages big musicals on tour—Footloose, Oliver! and Jesus Christ Superstar are on this season's roster. The more intimate and informal CityStage goes in for cheeky one-person comedies with titles like The Male Intellect: An Oxymoron? and I'm Black, But God Knows I'm Jewish and small-scale musicals and revues, many of them built around familiar songs. This season opened with The Rat Pack is Back, featuring Sinatra's hits, and last week the theater hosted (for the fourth time) Menopause, The Musical, a four-woman celebration of "the change" with parody lyrics to pop songs of the past.
"I don't call us quite the classic theater," says Cindy Anzalotti, who heads both venues. "We don't produce, and we don't do a lot of serious theater. I consider us more of an entertainment facility. Our audience likes to come in, sit down, have a cocktail or a beverage, relax and enjoy their evening, and not leave going 'Wow! That was bizarre!'"
This weekend, through the coincidence of booking schedules, both Symphony Hall and CityStage are presenting shows about con artists. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is the 2005 Broadway musical, derived from the 1998 movie, about two con men swindling rich ladies on the Riviera. Hoodwinked is a nightclub-style audience-participation entertainment in which four professional tricksters—a card sharp, a mind reader, a scam artist and a pickpocket—show off their underhanded skills.
Anzalotti reports that CityStage has developed its audience base over the years to the point where the shows average better than 80 percent capacity. "We have skewed a lot younger than when we first opened," she adds. "I can always tell how much of the house is younger on a given night by how many glasses of wine we sell."
While Menopause virtually sold out its recent two-week run (a departure from the usual one- to five-night stands), Symphony Hall's current season "is a little more of a challenge this year," says Anzalotti. "Is it because of the image of downtown? The economy? My show selection? I don't know." As of last week, advance ticket sales were slow for Scoundrels, a solid Broadway hit but not a blockbuster.
It seems the megahits of the past are the ones that really pull them in in Springfield. "I could do Annie or Lord of the Dance every day of the week," Anzalotti muses. "Tickets fly out the door. But if you do the classics over and over, then people ask, 'Don't you know how to do anything different?' It's a struggle."
A parallel struggle, in a theater the size of Symphony Hall and a market the size of Springfield, is the limits that puts on the shows Anzalotti can book there. "The Broadway Series gets more and more challenging every season," she explains. "There's very limited space and technical growth at Symphony Hall, and the Broadway shows get more and more expensive as they get bigger and more technically enhanced." She cites Mama Mia, the ABBA superhit. She wanted it for next season, but it was snatched up by the Bushnell in Hartford because they could run it for a week instead of a night.
Next season, Anzalotti plans to "go outside the box" with the Symphony Hall lineup. "More comedians, a cirque show, concerts—we'll try to shake it up a little." The disintegrating economy doesn't bode well for an uptick in attendance, "But people still go out. We're here to bring people downtown and have a good time."
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels: Symphony Hall; Hoodwinked, CityStage, both on Saturday, Nov. 22, (413) 788-7033 or www.symphonyhall.com.
Edgy Storytellers
What do Tony Kushner, Suzan-Lori Parks and David Simon have in common, besides that they are all award-winning American dramatists—Kushner and Parks writing primarily for the stage, Simon for TV? One unifying word that comes to mind is "edgy." Another is "audacious."
Kushner, author of the two-part epic Angels in America, is fond of blending fact and fiction, history and fantasy, politics and whimsy. Angels mingled real people with fictional characters and a prickly angel to explore issues of identity, loyalty and AIDS. Parks' work also mixes history and fiction. In two of her plays, for example, a central image is the figure—or at least the idea—of Abraham Lincoln.
Simon is the creator of HBO's The Wire, generally acknowledged as the all-time best TV crime show. His work, which also includes the '90s cop show Homicide: Life on the Street and his book-turned-miniseries The Corner, spins fiction out of ruthless real life. All three use clear-eyed visions of the American past and present to create stunningly original drama.
Here's another thing this trio has in common: on Friday, they'll share the stage of the Bushnell in Hartford for a freewheeling conversation titled "Storytellers and the Stories They Tell." It's part of a regular series mounted by the Connecticut Forum, a nonprofit dedicated to "the free and active exchange of ideas that inform, challenge, entertain, inspire and build bridges in our community." Previous Forum discussions have included guests ranging from Toni Morrison to Gene Wilder, Ann Coulter to Carlton Fisk. This one will be moderated by Bob Edwards of NPR. "Storytellers and the Stories They Tell": Nov. 21, 8 p.m., the Bushnell, Hartford, Conn., (860) 509-0909, www.ctforum.org.
