Great Lakes Festival needs to Build Audience or Find a Smaller Home

Friday, July 30, 2004
By Tony Brown, Plain Dealer Theater Critic

Great Lakes Theater Festival has built it, but we aren’t coming. The company is in no immediate danger of extinction, but it is not plowing forward as planned. So it may not be so premature to begin considering a "Plan B."

Great Lakes’ experiment of operating as a summer-fall repertory company began only two weeks ago with a knockdown, drag-out, postmodernist "The Taming of the Shrew."

It’s as good as any Shakespeare being produced on the planet.

The experiment continues tonight with "The Compleat Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)," a pell-mell compilation of all 37 of Shakespeare’s plays by three energetic actors. Both will continue in rotating rep through Sunday, Aug. 22. "The Importance of Being Earnest" and "Julius Caesar" will constitute the fall rep, Sept. 10-Oct. 16.

So there is still plenty of time for the people of Cleveland to demonstrate whether we want a first-class classical theater.

Ticket sales have picked up since "Shrew" opened, but the initial numbers do not look good. At last report, only 1,800 people had subscribed, down from 2,300 last year.

Great Lakes producing artistic director Charles Fee has committed to two years of trying the summer-fall repertory. There is no fallback plan.

But it’s hard to see how Great Lakes can make headway under the current conditions. The time may have come to consider a move in the next couple of years out of the Ohio Theatre, and possibly out of downtown.

Back in the late 1970s, when Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival performed in Lakewood Civic Auditorium, the company wanted to build a theater in Edgewater Park. But the local powers that be were focused on renovating a group of 1920s theaters on Euclid Avenue. They asked Great Lakes to move into the Ohio Theatre, to become the first resident company in what would become Playhouse Square.

Practically ever since its move in 1982, Great Lakes has been in a fight for its financial life. Preaching a gospel of synergistic cooperation, Fee has slimmed the company down and erased virtually all debt.

At the same time, Fee has established a regular group of theater artists who have created a series of extremely hip shows. In the first two seasons, despite Fee’s best efforts, the audience did not grow significantly (though more young people are showing up, a hopeful sign). Now the audience may be shrinking.

Even though Great Lakes pays no rent for the Ohio, thanks to a deal worked out between Playhouse Square and the Cleveland Foundation, the 1,000-seat theater has always been way too big. Great Lakes is lucky to draw 300 to 400 to a performance. That would be plenty at most of the country’s regional theaters, which have far smaller homes. The Cleveland Play House’s largest theater, for instance, has 612 seats; its next largest, 550. Under its contract with Actors’ Equity Association, Great Lakes has to pay its actors at a higher rate because of the Ohio’s size. More important, 300 to 400 people a night might be a great turnout for a Shakespeare play in Cleveland. But in a 1,000-seat house, it feels like failure.

So where could Great Lakes go? Over the years, Great Lakes has expressed an interest in Playhouse Square’s Hanna Theatre, which for $2 million to $5 million could be transformed into a nearly perfect 400-seat theater. Playhouse Square, however, seems intent on producing its own cabaret shows in the Hanna, despite the fact that it has another cabaret space, the 14th Street Theatre, now empty, practically next door.

Should Great Lakes just pitch a tent in Voinovich Park? Or move back to the suburbs, where many newer schools have state-of-the-art auditoriums? Or is a merger with another theater the answer? Merger talks with the Cleveland Play House ended acrimoniously a couple of years ago over issues of leadership. While the Play House board likes to say it is still open to the idea, the time to reconsider a merger was before the board hired a new artistic director, Michael Bloom, to replace the departing Peter Hackett.

Great Lakes might be better off talking with Cleveland Public Theatre, which has a cool space in the Gordon Square Theatre that is waiting for an impetus for further restoration. A joint company could continue to create synergy, with the Public producing contemporary work and Great Lakes classics. But would Great Lakes’ audience follow it to the near West Side? Perhaps Great Lakes should just carve out a new space in a warehouse. That would suit Fee’s youthful new aesthetic.

Great Lakes will not disappear. Fee and his staff and his board are all far too feisty and determined. But Great Lakes might have to reconfigure so much that it is no longer capable of being the superb company it is today.

Whatever happens, the decision is ultimately ours, one that we will make with our response to the amazing theater Great Lakes is currently producing. We need to figure out what we want from our most excellent classical company. Because that is what we are going to get.

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:
tbrown@plaind.com, 216-999-4181
© 2004 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission.