‘Fiddler’ Sales Go to Theater

When Tevye belts out “If I Were a Rich Man,” he is singing both to entertain and to restore Barnum Hall Theater at Santa Monica High School.

Ticket sales from “Fiddler on the Roof,” being staged by the Santa Monica Civic Light Opera at the Art Deco hall, go toward its continuing repairs.

“We’re trying to fix as we go,” said Frank X. Ford, artistic director of the 2-year-old opera company. With about $25,000 raised from the opera’s production of “Annie” last year and from individual and a few corporate donors, some of the sound system, lighting and electrical wiring have been repaired and the “termite-eaten orchestra pit” has been fixed, Ford said.

Still to do are the “bigger projects” to restore the historic hall to its original splendor, such as carpeting, reupholstering the seats and a paint job, which will take $250,000 to $500,000, Ford estimated. “It needs the Deco colors to match (the theater’s architecture). Now, it’s painted institutional beige.”

The restoration, he noted, is all cosmetic. The theater, built in 1937 as part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s Work Projects Administration, is “poured concrete--kind of like Hoover Dam,” Ford said.

The 1,500-seat hall, intended to be a community theater, was called “the Civic” by local residents, Ford said. The site of plays, lectures and concerts, it was the “cultural hub” of the city and the Westside, he said. It was later named after a longtime principal of Santa Monica High School.

But then Santa Monica Civic Auditorium was built and Barnum Hall was pushed aside. Art Deco became passe, and Barnum got its beige coat of paint. “People stopped thinking of it as the civic center, but as a high school auditorium,” said Ford, who is also a drama teacher at the school.

The hall is rented out occasionally to orchestras and theater groups and has been used as an emergency courtroom by the Superior Court. Ford maintains that for drama it is preferable to the Civic Auditorium, which he described as “a good convention hall, and for big spectacles . . . (but) not a good theater for theater.”

Starring as Tevye is Peter Kevoian, who had roles in the Los Angeles productions of “Les Miserables” and “Cats.” He understudied and performed the lead of Jean Valjean in Les Miserables, Ford said.

“Fiddler on the Roof” will be performed tonight through Saturday at 8 p.m. For more information, call (213) 458-5939.