Gaslamp Curtain Falls With Many in Crowd Unaware of Problems

At 4:45 p.m. Sunday, the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company’s Hahn Cosmopolitan had ended its final performance of Noel Coward’s “Blithe Spirit.”

The financially troubled Gaslamp will now shut its operation for the first time in its 10-year history, renting out its two theaters while managing director Kit Goldman tries to raise the money she needs to reopen the Hahn with “Oil City Symphony” in September.

There was no fanfare and there were no speeches or even printed statements. It was almost as if no one wanted to admit it was happening.

The mood was so low-key about closing night that one elderly patron interviewed was certain that this was a preview night.

She fit right in with the largely white-haired crowd, which filled the 250-seat theater to 80% capacity. In random interviews, they all seemed oblivious to any trouble behind the scenes.

During the performance, they laughed often and applauded appreciatively and happily. The play, which had been negatively reviewed all around, was immensely better than it had on its disastrous opening night--faster, funnier and far more sure of itself.

Elsewhere theater critics might blame part of the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre’s troubles on its steady diet of British period pieces. Barbara Sproul, who gives her age coyly as “somewhere in the 70s,” explained why she keeps returning with her husband, John, and theater buddies Margaret McIrvin and Elaine Menzel, all in their 70s and 60s:

“We stopped going to the Globe because they started going too far out. I think they wanted to go for a younger crowd,” Barbara Sproul said. “To put on ‘Suds’ in a cardboard set was too much. And we’re not alone.”

But neither are they in the majority. “Suds” was a major hit that was extended at the Globe. And the Gaslamp has been limping along with shows like “Blithe Spirit,” which had its run cut short by a week after performances in which the audience went down to about 50, according to actors Navarre Perry and Mary Boersma.

“Papering” the audience, the practice of giving away tickets free or for half-price, helped build the word of mouth they needed to bring the last week’s audience up to a near-capacity paying crowd.

The small audiences were demoralizing for the actors and the crisis in the theater itself, which included the recent firing of artistic director Will Simpson, set designer Robert Earl and managing director James Strait, dogged them in innumerable ways.

Perry and Boersma blamed the bad reviews on the fact that that the show, which Simpson directed, was cast late, some actors were late in learning their lines, and the production opened at least a week before it was ready.

“I don’t think they really appreciated how far behind we were,” Perry said. “It only started playing three weeks ago.”

Boersma also pointed to the ways that stress at the top gets filtered down to the stage at the bottom.

“We were not getting the support we needed. The real sorrow was that we knew the potential was here for the show to be good. There were too many pressures brought to bear. . . . Everyone working here is doing 10 jobs. I feel let down by the whole thing.”

Boersma, who has worked at the Gaslamp since a year after it opened its small space now called the Elizabeth North, in 1981, also agrees with critics that the Gaslamp was in need of changes that didn’t happen soon enough.

“They needed new blood, new ideas, new directors,” Boersma said. “It was all too vanilla ice cream. Willie (Will Simpson) and Bobby (Robert Earl) and Kit (Goldman were so tight. They couldn’t talk to each other and get outside directors. I think this year they were trying to do that, but it was too late.”

Perry and Boersma say they still believe in the theater, which always employed local talent and showed that it valued its artists by paying them right from the beginning, years before it went Equity. They agreed that it would be a great personal loss if the Gaslamp closed its doors for good.

Perry is working as a volunteer to help prepare statements about how critical arts funding is to the survival of the Gaslamp and other arts organizations.

One inside staff member says that, if the city cuts TOT (Transient Occupancy Tax) funding to the arts organizations as City Manager John Lockwood has proposed, the Gaslamp can pretty much forget about the September reopening date.

Goldman has not said how much the theater needs to reopen, but Ted Considine, finance committee chairman on the board of directors, has said it needed $350,000 “yesterday.” The theater will settle for the end of July.

But, although the staffer doubts that the Gaslamp will ever reopen, given the size of its debt--Considine has acknowledged that $800,000 may be a ballpark figure--Perry believes just as strongly that it will be back in business this fall.

“I wouldn’t be working as a volunteer if I thought this was going to be a cemetery,” Perry said.