Dubious Debut
Director Peter Sellars’s nearly four-hour-long The Merchant of Venice at the Goodman Theatre may not be great theater, but it has certainly left its mark. On opening night, an evening when audience members–most attending for free–are usually the most respectful of what’s onstage, about a third of the crowd left early. Two of the first people to boldly head for the exit were Goodman’s honorary board chairman Stanley Freehling and his wife, Joan, who made their way from the center of a row during the first act. Afterward Freehling, one of the city’s preeminent arts patrons, remained optimistic that the Goodman would survive. “If they can make it through Lone Canoe, they can make it through anything,” he said, in reference to the David Mamet play staged in 1978 and considered one of the biggest artistic bombs detonated by Gregory Mosher, Robert Falls’s predecessor as Goodman artistic director. After the obviously negative response of many first-nighters, Goodman brass no doubt breathed a sigh of relief the next morning at the Tribune’s positive review. Richard Christiansen typically had it both ways, however, calling the production “fascinating” while also noting that it was frequently “nearly impossible to hear the language, an unforgivable aspect.”
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Last Thursday evening Sellars’s controversial production was assured national attention when New York Times chief drama critic David Richards showed up, escorted by Marriott’s Lincolnshire Theatre producer Kary Walker. The two are old friends from their D.C. days, when Richards was the Washington Post’s drama critic and Walker ran a dinner theater. For Walker, who likes the musicals he produces at Marriott’s Lincolnshire to run no longer than two hours and 20 minutes including an intermission, Sellars’s Merchant of Venice must have seemed endless. In his review Richards said, “Mr. Sellars puts such an idiosyncratic spin on scenes that he might as well be rewriting the script,” and concluded by entreating Sellars to think less and feel more if he wishes to work in the theater. When the show began last Thursday, there appeared to be more than 600 people in the 683-seat Goodman house. After the intermission, which comes after two hours and ten minutes, the crowd had dwindled to around 150.
Chicago Theatre Gets New Management
The twisted saga of the restored Chicago Theatre took another uncertain turn last week with the creation of the Civic Preservation Foundation, a new board of directors that will oversee operations at the bankrupt State Street venue. The five named to the new board are the city’s culture commissar Lois Weisberg, WLS TV president and general manager Joe Ahern, Marshall Field’s president Daniel Skoda, Stouffer-Riviere Hotel general manager John Bruns, and art dealer Isobel Neal. They will serve without pay and will assume the management responsibilities previously handled by attorney Marshall Holleb, consultant Margery al-Chalabi, and the investment firm of Rodman & Renshaw Inc.–all general partners in Chicago Theatre Restoration Associates (CTRA), an investor consortium that bought and restored the former movie theater and adjoining Page Brothers office building with the help of a multimillion-dollar city loan. That loan has yet to be repaid, but the former CTRA general partners will remain in the consortium as limited partners and co-owners of the property.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Bob Marshak.
