NEWS UPDATES

A BABY BROADWAY: With 6 established theaters and 2 more to open, Detroit's theater district is blossoming in the shadow of Ford Field and Comerica Park

March 31, 2005

BY MARTIN F. KOHN
FREE PRESS THEATER WRITER

When they play Major League Baseball's All-Star Game on July 12 at Comerica Park, a capacity crowd of more than 40,000 people will be on hand. When they play the Super Bowl on Feb. 5, 2006, at Ford Field, a capacity crowd of at least 70,000 is all but guaranteed. 

Meanwhile, at the cozy Gem Theatre down the street from the stadiums, a little show called "Menopause the Musical" has been running for a year and has played to 150,000 people, a number more than sufficient to pack both ballparks and have enough left over to nearly fill Tiger Stadium.

Everyone thinks of downtown Detroit as a place for sports, concerts and opera. But, gradually and unobtrusively, the area is asserting itself as a theater district with six theaters in easy walking distance of the stadiums -- the Gem, Century, Music Hall, Fox, City Theatre and 1515 Broadway.

Although not everything has been a success -- and few theater officials would provide attendance figures -- there is no doubt the vibe is much more upbeat than it used to be on the downtown theater scene.

More proof that the district is attracting patrons comes later this year, when two new theaters will open, one at an expanded Detroit Opera House, the other at the new YMCA. Although each will be used primarily for educational programs, both will be made available to theatrical groups. Detroit-based African Renaissance Theater is already committed to move to the Y's theater in February.

Fittingly, both theaters are on a street called Broadway.

The trend downtown has been for theatergoers to turn out in force for plays they know or plays that quickly establish their appeal.

Familiar titles like "Beauty and the Beast" and "Riverdance" are selling briskly at the Fox, says Ned Collett, executive producer and vice president for business operations. And the previously unknown "Menopause," a collection of song parodies by Jeanie Linders about women growing older, has broken records at the Gem.

On the other hand, the 192-seat Century Theatre, in the same building as the 450-seat Gem, hasn't had a regular show on its stage since New Year's Eve.

"It's all about titles," says Collett. Like the Gem and Century, the 5,000-seat Fox and its 460-seat sister, the City Theatre, are commercial houses. When it comes to the business of show business, familiarity breeds contentment, Collett suggests.

Take the Fox's current occupant, playwright-director-actor-producer Tyler Perry's "Madea Goes to Jail." Perry's comedies about the grandmotherly Madea (played by Perry in drag) are wildly popular with African-American audiences, which accounts for the runaway success of Perry's current movie, "Diary of a Mad Black Woman," featuring Madea.

The play, Collett says, accounts for "the fastest sales I've seen. It is doing unbelievably well." He expects the eight performances (it ends Sunday) to sell out, or at least come close, bringing in 40,000 patrons.

Overall, the downtown theater district is much livelier than a decade ago, when new theaters, including Purple Rose in Chelsea and Jewish Ensemble Theatre in West Bloomfield, were growing in the suburbs.

In Detroit, the Fox and Second City (now the City Theatre) were downtown, as were Music Hall and the tiny 1515 Broadway. But the Detroit Opera House didn't open until 1996 and the Gem and Century were closed. (To make room for Comerica Park, the buildings were moved five blocks to their current location.)

Things are different now. "We're kind of like a theater motor mall," says Michael Vigilant, chief operating officer at Music Hall.

The sheer number of people out for entertainment -- whether they're hitting the ballparks or attending a show elsewhere -- helps attract patrons. Once they're in the neighborhood, people might notice Music Hall's marquee and the posters in its display windows, says Vigilant. "In many ways, we're finding ourselves being rediscovered."

Or discovered for the first time. Jim Forbes, whose family owns and operates the Gem Theatre, says 80 percent of ticket buyers for "Menopause" haven't been to the Gem before.

That base augurs well for the future, but it all depends on whether the right show is available.

That's not a problem for the next few months at the Gem, where "Menopause" is selling tickets into July and might still be running next year when the Super Bowl is played across the street. In mid-June, "Menopause" will become Detroit's longest-running show ever, beating the current record of 66 weeks held by Jeff Daniels' "Escanaba in da Moonlight," also at the Gem.

"Menopause" has already attracted a larger audience. "Escanaba" pulled in 130,000 patrons during its 1999-2000 run.

It's a different story, though, at the Century Theatre, in the same building as the Gem. It has been dark since the yearly run of the Broadway and Hollywood holiday spoof "Forbidden Christmas" ended on New Years' Eve.

And although the Fox keeps humming with plays, concerts and family shows, the City Theatre, formerly home to Second City Detroit, is less busy. Collett isn't worried. "We're looking at stuff as early as May," he says.

Second City moved out a year ago, going to Novi; the rechristened City Theatre opened in October with Robert Dubac's touring one-man play, "The Male Intellect: An Oxymoron." The theater's biggest success was its next (and so far, only other) offering, "Duck Hunter Shoots Angel," which ran for 14 weeks.

Commercial success is not the goal of the theater at the new downtown YMCA, a nonprofit organization. A flexible, black box with space for about 200, the theater will be geared to small but established groups looking for a downtown location where they can work. The new Y and the theater there are scheduled to open Dec. 5.

Plans are less firm for the new DaimlerChrysler Theatre at the Detroit Opera House. A flexible black box, it will probably hold 140-150 patrons, says David DiChiera, general director of Michigan Opera Theatre, which owns the opera house. "We just don't know what kind of availability we'll have on any regular basis because we have so many educational programs," DiChiera says.

Music Hall is also nonprofit, but it needs to fill seats to stay viable. Lately it has been difficult. Chief operating officer Vigilant cites no show more recent than "It Ain't Nothin' But the Blues," a coproduction with Plowshares Theatre in December 2001, as a significant success.

He remains upbeat, though. "I think most of us down here are finding various identities, and we are consciously working on this identity. I think we look at ourselves as more of an off-Broadway house," he says, despite Music Hall's Broadway-size 1,700-seat theater.

Music Hall can make a go of it without having to fill all its seats, Vigilant says, and "next year, we have a prospective list of smaller, off-Broadway shows."

For small, though, it's hard to beat 1515 Broadway, the original black box theater on Detroit's Broadway, which can squeeze in a little more than 100 playgoers. Owner Chris Jaszczak opened his venue in the summer of 1987. For a long time, Jaszczak was a voice in the wilderness, albeit a happy one, opening his place to artists who create the provocative theater he loves. Last Thursday night, looking out on an otherwise dark street and contemplating what's to come, Jaszczak said he'd be happy to have the company.

Contact MARTIN F. KOHN at 313-222-6517 or kohn@freepress.com.