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By Harriet Howard Heithaus
Originally published — 3:59 p.m.,
April 21, 2007
Updated — 11:36 p.m., April 21, 2007
When the last curtain drops on “Show Boat” at
Naples Dinner Theatre on Sunday night, local culture also
will lose its Shakespearean motto to offer theater “As
You Like It.”
There still are three theater companies that call Naples
home and one stage, the Philharmonic Center for the Arts,
that presents occasional touring productions, but none offers
the triple threat of a meal, entertainment and a $50 price
tag that characterized the dinner theater on Immokalee Road
in North Naples.
Nor do the other companies see themselves as heavily invested
in big-name musicals, which constituted more than three-quarters
of the Naples Dinner Theatre repertoire.
From the shoestring Pelican Players to the Naples Players,
with its Fifth Avenue South, two-stage home, each of them
is courting a market that reaches extremities, but not the
heart of a dinner-theater mission: family-friendly, upbeat
musical productions that provide a single-location evening
with on-site dining.
Still, several local companies are trying to take up the
challenge of toque and theater.
Jim Rideoutte, executive director of
Naples Players, is talking with several restaurants about
the idea of offering a package — dinner and a play ticket — that
would allow people to walk about a block to the theater.
Nothing is set yet.
“I’d like to give it to one or two restaurants
and give them (ticket buyers) a choice, and it’s going
to have to be a reasonable price. If the price is going to
be beyond a moderate price, we won’t do it.”
Currently, Naples Players tickets alone are $30, or $35
for musicals.
The 53-year-old amateur organization
is the dinner theater’s
closest relative, sharing some patrons and even amateur actors,
who occasionally appeared in Naples Dinner Theatre’s
salaried productions. Only the administrative staff of Naples
Players is paid, however.
“What you got there for your dollar was a good deal,” Rideoutte
said of the dinner theater. “You got a good meal. It
wasn’t a gourmet meal, but they never represented it
as such. You got a good show. They had four musicians in
the pit for the musicals.”
Both appeal to general audiences with
fare such as “Mame” and “Music
Man,” although Naples Players has the Tobye Studio,
a “black box” for deeper works such as “The
Laramie Project” and “How I Learned to Drive.” It
occasionally schedules drama in its 350-seat Blackburn Hall.
One such play, in 2004, was “Art,” an acerbic
three-character debate over the artistic merits of an expensive
white canvas.
“Every once in a while we’re going to put on
something that’s going to make you think, whether you
want to or not,” Rideoutte quipped.
Naples Players even offers free valet parking at a Fourth
Avenue South drive behind its home at the Sugden Community
Theatre, an approximation of the dropoff portico at the Naples
Dinner Theatre building.
But, Rideoutte said, “I don’t
want to get into the restaurant business.”
TheatreZone, which calls the 250-seat
G-and-L Theatre at Community School off Livingston Road
its home, is also talking with the nearby Encore restaurant
for a $50 dinner-performance package for its summer music
revue, “Back to Bachrach
and David.” Tickets alone are $35.
The TheatreZone mission is musical, but less familiar, fare
than that of the Naples Dinner Theatre and Naples Players.
Founding Director Mark Danni said he
has a taste for “musicals
that should be performed more often but aren’t” — small-cast
gems such as “Baby,” a musical contrasting three
expectant couples, and the European pop-rock hit, “Chess.” Both
were part of the TheatreZone’s opening 2006-07 season.
Coming up is another work that doesn’t make the rounds
often — the generation-defining 1970s rock musical “Hair.”
“We also want to be a launching ground for premieres,
which we did with ‘Miracle in Rwanda,’” Danni
said.
He is the Community School of Naples director of performing
arts and the theater program supervisor. He came here with
the understanding he could develop an Equity theater-in-residence.
Only the cramped backstage and school
functions, which limit play runs, hamper TheatreZone, he
said. Danni’s worry,
ironically, is that a larger performing arts space the school
has on the drawing board will compromise one of its current
strengths.
“We’re hearing from the audience how much they
like the intimacy,” he said of the G&L Theatre,
where the terraced seats wrap around the front of the curved
stage. He’s delighted with the audience reception of
their fare: “Some of the audience thought ‘Chess’ was
a touring production. It was that professional.”
Pelican Players considers Norris Center
in Naples its home. Its community-centric amateur theater
has been there since 1989 when the center’s previous
version, a boxy park building, stood at Eighth Avenue and
Eighth Street South.
The company is in rehearsal for its May
5 opening of “Opal’s
Million-Dollar Duck,” about a junk-store dealer who
inadvertently picks up a major artwork for a birthday gift,
confounding art lovers who want to buy it from her.
Much of what Pelican Players do is comedy;
it’s selected
by founder John Lanham, a Social Security professional whose
evenings are often devoted to scouting out first- and second-choice
material. The latter comes into play if they can’t
find a cast for their first choices. In fact, “Opal” is
replacing “Impolite Comedy” for that reason.
“I’m like the football coach,” Lanham
joked. “I’ve always got a B list of plays in
my back pocket.”
Pelican Players is dedicated to giving
newcomers a chance. As the company’s casual Web site points out, “Remember,
Noah was an amateur when he built the ark. Professionals
built the Titanic.”
With $18 tickets — those who sign up for the mailing
list get a $3 discount — and audiences who are willing
to take a risk, Pelican Players will celebrate its 20th year
in 2008 with a season of shows that includes the one it never
got to the stage: “Who’s on First.”
Hurricane Charley closed down the Norris Center on its opening
weekend in 2004.
The Norris Center apparently isn’t
big enough for two companies, however.
Stage 88, an outgrowth of the defunct Actors Repertory Theatre
here, even took its name from the Eighth Street-Eighth Avenue
South location, but moved last year to Bonita Springs.
“Naples is a tough place for theaters to sprout because
there’s never been a lot of support for the new and
different,” artistic/technical director Mark McClellan
observed. “That’s not a knock on Naples. That’s
just the way it is.
“When we came to Bonita Springs, the floodgates opened.
The city of Bonita Springs has really embraced us. For our
first production, we told ourselves we’d be lucky if
we sold 40 tickets. We’ve actually sold out performances
for our first two shows.”
Stage 88’s eclectic season included a musical McClellan
wrote, “Four-Part Thunder,” as well as its current
production through May 5, “The Conner Girls,” a
probing look at family relationships. Stage 88 looks for
the new and underappreciated.
Its ticket prices are $15 for plays,
$25 for musicals, which McClellan gives as an example of
their niche: “We have
done shows like ‘Pump Boys and Dinettes,’ which
a lot of community theaters don’t do because all the
actors on the stage have to play in the band, too.”
McClellan calls Stage 88 a work-ethic
company: “A
lot of theater groups sprout up and come at you with an architectural
drawing in one hand and the other in your back pocket. Our
focus is on working. We’re in a much better position
in three seasons to start asking about grants.
“I’m a Midwesterner. I have the Midwestern work
ethic. Most of the people who are with us have the work ethic.
We’re doers, not dreamers.”
Yet he has a vision: “We’d
love, down the road, to be an anchor in Bonita Springs.”
Two gypsy companies playing in Naples
are still looking for homes. Steven Ditmyer is the artistic
director of the Neighborhood Theatre Company, which is
only now returning with an encore presentation of “The Syringa Tree,” its
2004 hit.
The company has the Sugden Community
Theatre for three performances of “The Syringa Tree” May 1, 7 and 8. Its last
three performances were in the Naples Park Area Association
Building, 654 104th Ave. N., including a production of “Art” an
a trio of bittersweet one-acts.
“People don’t know how tough it was to do that,” he
recalled of the season.
Because the building was home to classes and other events,
the company sometimes had to tear down its sets several times
a day. Property and construction prices are a major roadblock
here, he said.
Still, he sees Naples as the place to put down roots for
its thought-provoking, small-theater plays.
“It’s coming into its own,” he said. “The
next 10 years there’s going to be a lot of growth happening
in Naples. I don’t just mean people coming down. There’s
a lot of growth in the arts that’s going to happen
here, too.”
Gulfshore Playhouse already has property in Estero at U.S.
41 and Corkscrew Road on the edge of a development.
Kristen Coury, founder and producing artistic director,
also has plans: a regional 550-seat theater with a six-show
season in a 40,000-square-foot facility.
It doesn’t see itself as a musical theater; that’s
turf well covered by the touring companies at the Philharmonic
Center for the Arts in Naples and the Barbara B. Mann Performing
Arts Hall in Fort Myers, Coury said. Its oeuvre, she said,
is creative, professional theater at affordable prices.
Currently, Gulfshore is a playhouse in
title only. It just closed three performances of “Romeo and Juliet Redefined,” a
look at various forms the star-crossed lovers have come back
in, on the open-air stage of Cambier Park in Naples.
“We won’t get another space until October,” Coury
lamented.
She, like Ditmyer, sees a cultural opening
here, but it isn’t for dinner theater.
“When push came to shove and there
was a niche to fill, there was something between the presenting
house (which handles touring company productions) and the
producing theater, something in the vein of the Cleveland
(Ohio) Playhouse missing here.”
© 2007 Naples Daily News and NDN
Productions. Published in Naples, Florida, USA by the E.W.
Scripps Co.
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