A bittersweet farewell from those who made Canon Theatre ‘sing’

A theater usually clears out quickly after a performance, but Sunday night at the Canon Theatre, the crowd lingered, reluctant to leave.

For 90 minutes, the Beverly Hills theater had been filled with the sound of five voices twined in the sad, shimmering harmonies of William Finn’s song cycle “Elegies.” Then a joyful cacophony took over as performers and audience members called out to one another, grasping hands or falling into one another’s arms.

Many in the crowd had performed in or worked on shows at the soon-to-be-demolished theater, which, with 382 seats, was one of the area’s precious few mid-size theaters. Though only sporadically utilized in recent years, it had, since the early 1980s, housed such popular productions as “Cloud 9,” “Isn’t It Romantic,” “Love Letters,” “Forever Plaid” and “The Vagina Monologues.” Sunday night witnessed the final performance before the theater comes down to make way for a hotel.

Producer Susan Dietz gave the theater an emotional send-off with five performances of Finn’s songs about people and places loved and lost.

Though deeply personal, these pieces by the composer-lyricist of the “Falsetto” musicals also touched the universal as they expressed a commingled sense of optimism, determination and thanks.

Presented at New York’s Lincoln Center a year ago with a cast that included Betty Buckley, Michael Rupert and Keith Byron Kirk, “Eulogies” received its brief Los Angeles premiere with Kirk, Maureen McGovern, Stephen Bogardus, Brian Beacock and Celia Keenan-Bolger.

Individually, each singer was lustrous, but when knitted together in harmony -- as they often were -- their voices became something more than the sum of their parts.

This gently amplified Finn’s underlying theme, stated most directly in the song “14 Dwight Ave., Natick, Massachusetts,” when Finn’s dying mother, paying one last visit to her old address, recalls the neighbors who had “made each other’s lives feel more complete.”

Under the direction of Philip Himberg, the songs unfolded simply yet artfully on a stage set with chairs and a flowering tree, all painted with autumnal light by Tony Mulanix. Chords pulsed with gentle urgency from a shiny black baby grand played by Carmel Dean.

Time and again, the lyrics to Finn’s sometimes jumpy, sometimes wistful songs matched the mood in the room -- as in a song about a man who, while looking through the window of an abandoned local grocery store, remembers the family who ran it and sees “their reflections in my face.”

The cycle ended with the singers chiming the word “goodbye,” at which time the stage’s back wall became visible, revealing the Canon’s name inscribed above a lonely, closed stage door.

Afterward, Dietz invited everyone who’d ever worked at the Canon to join her onstage. “These are the people who made the Canon Theatre sing,” she said, shoulder to shoulder with dozens of actors, directors, technicians and ushers. “And you came and watched us.”

Asked later whether she had any plans for “Elegies,” Dietz replied: “There’s no building here for it. Where am I going to do it?”

Outside, the marquee was already dark.