Touring Musical No Hit With Union : Theater: ‘Meet Me in St. Louis,’ opening in San Diego, draws fire for use of non-Actors Equity talent.

The advertisements for Nederlander’s San Diego Playgoers presentation of “Meet Me in St. Louis,” opening Wednesday at the San Diego Civic Theatre, bill it as a “new Broadway production.”

Not quite. In fact, it’s a real stretch.

There was a “Meet Me in St. Louis,” based on the 1944 MGM Judy Garland movie, that opened on Broadway in 1989. But Nederlander’s production neither emanated from Broadway nor is heading toward it.

It comes from the Troika Organization, a 10-year-old company based in Rockville, Md., that specializes in what its brochures call “quality at an affordable price.”

Troika is a hot, up-and-coming producer of touring musicals--but an increasingly controversial one. That’s because “Meet Me in St. Louis” and many of its other touring shows, such as the upcoming “Ziegfeld: A Night at the Follies,” are non-union.

There was not much of a fuss about that when Troika used to stick to cities where the union touring companies didn’t want to go anyway.

But now, the Nederlander Organization is bringing Troika into San Diego and Los Angeles.

“Meet Me in St. Louis” will be followed by “Ziegfeld: A Night at the Follies,” opening July 21 at the San Diego Civic Theatre. “Ziegfeld” will also be part of Nederlander’s Los Angeles Civic Light Opera series at the Pantages Theatre on July 27. And Actors Equity is hopping mad.

Already, its members have picketed Troika’s production of “Meet Me in St. Louis” in Cleveland, Ohio, in November 1991, in Orlando, Fla., in January 1992 and in Seattle, Wash., in May. No one would comment on whether a picket is planned for San Diego.

“I think it’s shocking,” said George Ives, the guild’s Western regional director. “This kind of thing has started in the last two or three years where presenters are looking around and finding these inexpensive packages they can throw in the subscription series.

“If I were in the supermarket business, I would call it false labeling. People buying tickets to a subscription package don’t expect to have that kind of ringer thrown in.”

But Stan Seiden, president of Nederlander Cos. (West), insists it’s not a question of cost--although Troika estimates that his non-union shows cost roughly $100,000 less than the same union show would. Seiden said it’s a question of quality.

San Diego Playgoers had a union production of “Meet Me in St. Louis” on the season brochure last year. It was a production designed by director Paul Blake that played at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in May, 1991--to disastrous reviews.

Seiden saw the Blake version and didn’t like it any more than the critics had. His people saw the Troika production, and they liked it.

“I don’t know that that makes a great deal of difference--union or non-union,” Seiden said. “The reason we bought the show is that it’s doing business. We saw the reviews, and we sent our people to see it, and they came back glowing. We will deal with anybody who has got quality product.”

Last December, Alvin Klein of the New York Times dismissed the musical itself as “useless” but praised Troika’s New Haven production as one that “works more graciously than in the cumbersome 1989 Broadway version, which highlighted the tyranny of sets, rather than the triumph of material or the talent of performers.”

The show charmed other critics throughout the country more thoroughly, including raves from papers from San Antonio, Tex., Scranton, Pa., Shreveport, La., Tulsa and Grand Rapids, Mich.

The story about a happy Midwestern family from St. Louis, Mo., that gets thrown into a tizzy when the father decides to pack up and move to New York City was generally dismissed as fluff. But those who loved it were enchanted by the nostalgic story and the sweet classic Hugh Martin/Ralph Blane score, particularly the “Trolley Song,” “The Boy Next Door” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”

The name Troika refers to three co-founders: President and Producer Nicholas Howey, Vice President and Managing Director Kenneth H. Gentry and Vice President and Artistic Director Dallett Norris.

Howey, who has a doctorate in theater, worked at a dinner theater that went bankrupt before founding the Music Theater Group, which later evolved into Troika.

Howey, speaking on the phone from his Rockville office, expressed exasperation with the questions about the union/non-union controversy.

“It’s almost as if we should change our name to non-union,” he said, complaining of the focus on this matter. “I am NOT anti-union. I don’t want to make war. I want to make good shows on a cost-effective basis, and I can’t always do that in a union situation.”

Troika aims to meet Broadway standards of production and performance by using its own scene and costume shop and working with artists who, although not union, have been working with the organization for several years, he said.

“I’m very proud of what we’re doing. I think our talent stacks up with any talent I’ve seen in the union. An awful lot of people work with us because they work every single year. Maybe we don’t pay as much on a weekly basis, but we produce five shows in a year’s time, and I like the idea of employing the same people and letting them stretch.”

In a way, the Troika controversy has been exacerbated by the company’s success.

“Ziegfeld: A Night at the Follies,” an original show by Troika, was a breakthrough for a company that had previously been best known for staging revivals of such shows as “South Pacific,” “Camelot,” “The Sound of Music” and “Brigadoon.”

The success of “Ziegfeld” came as a complete surprise to everyone concerned with the project. This was not the result of a carefully considered long-term master plan to develop new shows. The show that was supposed to do that job was “Grovers Corners,” a new musical based on Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town.” But “Grovers Corners” fell through at the last minute, and a rapidly thrown together “Ziegfeld” was pushed onstage--like the chorus girl in “42nd Street”--only to find itself a star.

Of course it helped that, to do “Ziegfeld,” Troika bought the elaborate costumes that Broadway designer Theoni V. Aldredge created for the expensive West End flop “Ziegfeld,” and that it already had its own original script on hand, “Dear Mr. Ziegfeld,” that it could adapt and expand to fit its new fancy duds.

“Ziegfeld: A Night at the Follies” opened at New Haven’s Shubert Theater Jan. 16, 1991, the night the U.S. went to war with Iraq. And, although tickets sales at theaters across the country plummeted in the wake of the war, “Ziegfeld” took off. The average weekly gross in the first half of the year was $380,000, according to an executive close to the production. It remains one of the most visible non-union productions ever mounted.

It has also helped fuel Troika’s ambitions.

Troika is now venturing into more contemporary Broadway musicals, with upcoming tours of “Grand Hotel” and “City of Angels” in the works.

Troika will also continue to present some union shows as it has always done. Troika tends to go union if it has a star as it did with “Gigi,” starring Louis Jourdan, “Can-Can” with Chita Rivera and “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” with Nipsey Russell.

But, so far, it’s the non-union shows that are putting Troika on the map--even as they put the company in the line of fire.

“A star package is a very expensive proposition, and it’s got to do really well, which means run more than a season,” Howey said.

“We try to keep our costs down, our quality up and do shows year after year after year. We’re trying to do a good job with good stuff, and we’re not going for the megahit. Common sense is our motto, and we think it’s paying off.”