Fall Guide: The Year of Living Parsimoniously

The recent news of the Bang and the Clatter Theatre Company going belly up was only the latest in a continuing series of body blows delivered to local theaters by the depressed economy. It’s a melancholy trend that shows few signs of reversing.

Early last year, musical-comedy specialists Kalliope Stage succumbed
to insurmountable debt.  At the same time, Charenton Theater
Company — another small, but intriguing, living-on-the-edge
outfit —staged a disappearing act without any formal
announcement. For its oh-hell-and-farewell presentation, BNC will mount
in its Akron location Craig Wright’s Lady (Sept. 25-Oct. 17), a
rudely comic reunion of guys loaded with recriminations and guns. The
company’s phone number and website are both down, though, so we’re not
sure how you get tickets.

For several seasons, both large and small playhouses have
been increasingly instituting significant cutbacks in the number
and adventurousness of productions, cast sizes and administrative
staffs. This summer, for the first time in 70 years,
Cain Park did not offer a large-scale production in its outdoor
amphitheater. Likewise, in June, presumably to lop off a
chunk of payroll, Great Lakes Theater Festival abruptly dismissed
associate artistic director Andrew May, by far the troupe’s most
popular member and — one would have thought — an
untouchable asset.

The depth and comprehensiveness of the ongoing carnage is
most starkly demonstrated by a perusal of the area theater schedules
for the 2009-2010 season. It’s a rare organization that’s not resorting
to the standard prescription for tough times: cutting the
number of productions and mounting proven box-office warhorses
and feathery comedies.

Hardest hit appears to be Beck Center (17801 Detroit Ave., Lakewood,
216.521.2540, beckcenter.org). In
April, it made an emergency general fundraising appeal, apparently
aimed at just keeping its doors open. Only a few years back the
town’s leader in progressive fare, Beck’s season has been
slashed from nine (once 10) offerings to five (four musicals and a
comedy). It is eliminating its entire Studio Theatre program, the home
of its most daring productions. For the fall, Beck will present that
Seabiscuit of war ponies, Fiddler on the Roof (Sept. 18-Oct.
18), and a repeat of its Christmas favorite, Peter Pan (Dec.
4-Jan. 3).

The Cleveland Play House (8500 Euclid Ave., 216.795.7000, clevelandplayhouse.com) has made a
less severe but still considerable curtailment from a high of
eight subscription-series shows to six, beginning with another go-round
from solo pianist, raconteur and singalong meister Hershey
Felder in Beethoven, As I Knew Him (Sept. 15-Oct. 4). This time,
Felder does for (and to) Ludwig what he’s previously done for Gershwin
and Chopin. That’s followed by one of theater’s trustiest old
steeds, Inherit the Wind (Oct. 23-Nov. 15), the fictionalized
account of the Scopes Monkey Trial, and then a return of its holiday
staple, A Christmas Story (Nov. 27-Dec. 20).

Clinging to existence by chewed nails for what seems like ages,
Ensemble Theatre (performances at the Cleveland Play House, 8500 Euclid
Ave., 216.321.2930, ensemble-theatre.com) seemed sure to
expire under the double afflictions of the economy and the sad,
near simultaneous deaths earlier this year of artistic directors Lucia
and Licia Colombi. But, under new boss Bernie Canepari, the Little
Theater That Could is miraculously returning for a 30th anniversary
season, opening with The Man Who Came to Dinner (Oct. 2-25)
— in this case, less a nod to the box office than
to Ensemble’s venerable mission and tradition as a revival
haven.

For its parsimonious part, Great Lakes Theater Festival (2067 E.
14th St., 216.241.6000, greatlakestheater.org)
will coddle its audiences to participate in the
lightweight The Mystery of Edwin Drood (Sept. 24-Nov.
1) by voting on the ending. This much-performed adaptation of
Dickens’ unfinished final novel will run in repertory with
Shakespeare’s comedy, Twelfth Night (Oct. 8-31), before
giving way to the customary holiday breadwinner, A Christmas
Carol (Dec.4-23).

PlayhouseSquare (1501 Euclid Ave., 216.241.6000, playhousesquare.com) needs no
tutoring in the art of priming the commercial pump. The road version of
Mel Brook’s reworking of his filmYoung Frankenstein (Oct. 13-25)
will be followed by yet another month’s run of the
mega-popular blockbuster Wicked (Nov. 18-Dec.13).  Also,
PlayhouseSquare will try to install for a lengthy spell in the 14th St.
Theatre Dixie’s Tupperware Party (tentatively Sept. 30-Oct.
18), a one-man drag show where a cracked southern belle harangues
onlookers into partaking of her goods.

Bucking the trend after years of vagrancy, Dobama (2340 Lee Rd.,
Cleveland Heights, 216.932.3396, dobama.org) will debut its new home in
the former Cleveland Heights Y with Eric Coble’s Ten More Minutes
From Cleveland (Sept. 25-Oct. 18), a sequel to his similar
2005 compilation of vignettes about the vicissitudes
of local flora and fauna.  Gutenberg! The Musical (Dec. 4-Jan. 2) is next, a humorous two-man tale of a pair of
promoters trying to sell the unlikely title project to backers’
auditions.

Karamu (2355 E. 89th St., 216.795.7077, karamuhouse.org) and Cleveland Public
Theatre (6415 Detroit Ave., 216.631.2727, cptonline.org) also seem to be in
somewhat less perilous financial health. The former initiates
its schedule with Fabulation (Sept. 18-Oct. 11), described as a
satirical comedy about a pregnant and abandoned woman forced to return
to her childhood home. Yellowman (Oct. 30-Nov. 22) deals with
the issue of racism among blacks.  A surprise this year is the
replacement of Karamu’s holiday fixture, Black Nativity, with
God’s Trombones (Dec. 3-27), a musical adaptation of James
Weldon Johnson’s famous collection of folk sermons.

CPT is perhaps the theater most doing business as usual. It opens
with two graduates of its Big [BOX] development series. Michael
Sepesy’s Alice Seed (Oct. 8-24) is “part horror story, part
family drama,” which to some might seem a fine-line distinction.
Running simultaneously is No Child …, a one-woman account of
the experiences of a Bronx schoolteacher, featuring Nina Domingue.
Veteran playwright Christopher Durang’s Why Torture Is Wrong and the
People Who Love Them (Oct. 15-31) traces a black-comedy ride
through yellow, orange and red alerts, while local playwright Eric
Schmiedl’s Browns Rules (Nov. 19-Dec. 13) sends up and pampers
in cabaret form our obsession and frustration with our pigskin princes
and paupers. And how could the year satisfactorily end without a
visit from that irrepressible part-time Macy’s elf and
full-time kvetcher in The Santaland Diaries (Nov. 27-Dec.
19).

Clyde Simon and his convergence-continuum theater (at the Liminis,
2438 Scranton Rd., 216.687.0074, convergence-continuum.org)
continue to ply the murky seas of contemporary theater with Jordan
Harrison’s gothic tale of a family’s return to a house haunted by
murder and sexual deviance, Finn in the Underworld (through Oct.
17). That psycho-sexual drama is followed by Tom Jacobson’s
Ouroboros (Nov. 13-Dec. 19), a time-tricking mix of
déjà vu and The Twilight Zone that plays on the
spiritual quests of two American couples visiting Italy.

Perhaps the majority of our hunkered-down theaters have chosen the
best way to survive. But wouldn’t you like to see just one rise up and
collectively shout: “Screw it! If we’re going down,
let’s go challenging ourselves with a repertory of the
drama’s glories that we’ve always been too scared to try.” For them and
for us, the question might be: What have we actually got
to lose?

arts@clevescene.com

This article appears in Sep 16-22, 2009.