STEAK ‘N’ STAGE HOUSES SEEK JUICIER PROFITS

Maynard Sloate suddenly looked glum. The president of the American Dinner Theatre Institute was sitting at his conference luncheon table in Anaheim, assessing the state of affairs of the nation’s dine-and-drama circuit.

Moments earlier, he had been trading inside jokes with other operators and producers in dinner theater--a field that many still regard as an entertainment industry oddity.

But such banter was just a respite from the seriousness of the agenda for the institute’s annual conference, held Monday and Tuesday at the Grand Hotel.

“We’re coming out of a very slow period for us. We’ve taken our fiscal lumps, like most everyone else. The better operators--the real established ones--are the only ones who are surviving,” said Sloate, who, as producer for the Union Plaza Hotel/Casino playhouse in Las Vegas, heads an organization that represents 32 of the estimated 115 full-fledged dinner theaters in the United States.

Then, just as suddenly, he laughed. “OK, there are still those theater devotees who are a bit snobbish about us. But overall, I think we’re being treated with a great deal more respect. We’re a legitimate form of entertainment, whether they like it or not.”

Sloate and 20 other conferees--who met to discuss mostly business matters, from staging and food costs to tax breaks and computer technology--were served some rather hard-to-digest facts about soaring costs, slipping attendance and high theater turnover.

“We’re hit with a double whammy because we’re really two businesses--restaurants and the theater,” said Marvin Poons, executive director of the institute, based in Sarasota, Fla.

“Working in just one is rough enough. But both , that’s crazy. It’s not exactly the kind of (investment) situation that draws very many takers these days.”

That wasn’t always so.

When the dinner theater movement started in the East in the late 1960s, operators saw an untapped market for mainstream entertainment. The trend peaked in the mid-1970s, when there were an estimated 175 full-fledged establishments, plus hundreds of other experimental or part-time operations. Their appeal was as a one-stop entertainment package for the over-45 audience at a relatively low price: dinner, drinks and show in the same room, with plenty of parking and in a location away from city congestion.

Nevertheless, detractors derided the movement, pointing to what they depicted as amateurish productions and makeshift facilities, along with the dependence on old-time musicals and farces in many dinner theaters. But the larger establishments (300 to 750 seats)--many of them built as dinner theaters--boasted of box-office success, thanks to their more posh surroundings and more polished productions, many featuring such vintage Hollywood stars as Mickey Rooney, Van Johnson, Kathryn Grayson and Martha Raye.

The trend caught on most strongly in Florida, which by 1981 had 10 large playhouses, including the plush 450-seat complex that actor Burt Reynolds built in Jupiter, Fla. Southern California has the next biggest concentration, with seven major establishments, including the Harlequin, the Grand and the Sebastians West in Orange County, and the Lawrence Welk in San Diego County.

But the trend lost its momentum in the late ‘70s, taking a battering from inflation and the recession. According to an institute estimate, production costs alone for the big musicals have soared from $4,000 to $20,000 a week over the last 10 years. The costs for salaries for theaters with Actors’ Equity Assn. pacts have risen about 25%, which has led many to switch to less costly non-union productions. Equity-contracted dinner theaters numbered 36 last year. (A recently signed three-year Equity agreement calls for cost-of-living increases in 1986 and 1987.)

And because the weekly salaries for celebrity headliners have become too burdensome for most theaters (salaries can range up to $7,000 a week), there is a trend away from using name actors. “The costs of carrying both a star and a lavish show are now enormous. Those days are gone for most of our theaters,” Poons said.

Such production costs, coupled with spiraling expenses for food and other restaurant overhead, are driving an increasing number of dinner theaters out of business, according to the institute. One of the best-known establishments, the Fiesta in San Antonio, Tex., which relied mostly on celebrity headliners, closed a year ago.

To underscore these woes, attendance--which Poons estimates is about 6 million nationwide--has been declining. Members argue that the decline is partly because of greater choosiness on the part of audiences who have come out of a recession and partly because of increased competition from other forms of entertainment.

Thus, the overriding themes at the conference were how to cut costs through more streamlined management and how to offer top-flight entertainment at prices that are still far lower than those charged at major commercial theaters. (Dinner theater ticket prices nationwide now average about $22. The average a decade ago was $8.)

The situation that operators face, explained Frank Wyka, producer at the Grand Playhouse in Anaheim, is that “you can’t stint on the food, the drinks, the setting, the show itself. Everything has to stay tip-top. You can’t offer schlock; if you do, you’re in real trouble.”

Conferees see no change in the mainstay of the dinner theater audience: the over-45 age group. That age bracket accounts for most of the group-ticket sales, which provide the biggest share of revenue. This means that most theaters will continue to rely on the traditional bread-and-butter productions--the mainstream musicals such as “The Sound of Music,” “My Fair Lady” and “Fiddler on the Roof” and lightweight comedies and melodramatic thrillers.

Coupled with the other rising costs, members say, is a demand for increasingly lavish productions to meet the competition from video and other theatrical entertainment. Further, there is a dearth of new mainstream musicals for the dinner theater repertoire.

“We have ‘Annie’ now, and that’s been a terrific addition, but there doesn’t seem to be very much more of the kind of big musicals that our audiences love to see,” said Maury Shinners, co-owner of the Showboat in Pinellas Park, Fla. “Sure, there’s ‘La Cage aux Folles.’ Let’s face it: That show (about a male homosexual couple) isn’t exactly what you’d call our kind of show.”

Even so, some dinner theater operators have been making attempts to depart from what some call the “old war horse repertoire” and to present shows that also will appeal to those under 45. Although the trend for a more varied show menu is still relatively new, some operators report middling to smash successes.

The Beef ‘n’ Boards in Indianapolis has started presenting pop and comedy concerts by such artists as Rick Nelson and Johnny Rivers. The Candlelight in Summit, Ill., has offered well-received productions of such dramatic musicals as “Evita” and “Nine.”

However, “you have to know your area and what sells, because what’s big in one spot can be a dud only 100 miles away,” noted Tony D’Angelo, co-owner of the Candlelight, which is near Chicago. “We still do the older shows, but we’re finding the more offbeat is working for us.” Robert Zehr, a co-owner of the Beef ‘n’ Boards, put it this way: “I think we’re going to have to take more (show) risks, to look for fresher product, if we’re going to stay on top of things. We can’t do Neil Simon and Rodgers & Hammerstein every season. We have to go after yuppies too.”