Culture Drought on the Charles

Without a cashflow, Boston's shows can't go on

Boston used to call itself the Athens of America. At the turn of the century, the city boasted 50 theaters for drama and vaudeville, despite a population of 507,000. Today just four of those buildings remain as legitimate theaters, and they are right next to the notorious "combat zone," where neon signs for porno joints light up more often than the theater marquees. Although the venerable Boston Symphony Orchestra continues to flourish, it is the city's only established performing arts institution. Even the major touring companies bypass Boston: world-famous dance troupes like the Bolshoi, Stuttgart and American Ballet Theater no longer visit because Hynes Auditorium, the only large facility, has the acoustics of a cow barn. There is virtually no other place for the shows to go.

A principal cause of this cultural drought is a severe deprivation of funds. Boston's performing groups, like the nation's, continue to proliferate at a time when public and foundation grants are drying up. In Massachusetts last year, close to 350 recipients got a share of the state art council's $2.5 million budget, with the highest gift, a mere $45,000, going to the B.S.O. This year there are 264 requests for money from the same fund, but Governor Edward King, a Proposition 13 adherent, wants to trim the council's already inadequate budget by 15%. The private sector is unlikely to fill the gap. Whereas New York City's Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall get essential support from the rich corporations headquartered in the city, Boston has only a few home-town companies of any size, notably Gillette, Raytheon and Polaroid.

A typical victim of the squeeze is Impresario Sarah Caldwell. Her Opera Company of Boston has led a homeless and precarious existence for its 22 years. The Boston Opera House was torn down the year after the company was born, and the troupe has been forced to perform in high school gyms and even to share the Orpheum theater with rock groups. When Caldwell managed to purchase the mortgage on the Savoy theater last fall, she found that her problems were only beginning. A once elegant vaudeville house, the Savoy had been divided into twin movie theaters by a concrete wall. Caldwell knocked down the wall and made the hall presentable enough for a spring season, but she will need about $5 million to renovate the theater. The stage, only 26 ft. deep, is not large enough for grand opera. Since the stage was originally built 6 ft. below street level, expansion to 65 ft. will require excavating the alley behind it.

Caldwell is not the only Bostonian with a backbreaking challenge. Henry Sears Lodge, son of Henry Cabot Lodge, is battling over the Boston Music Hall, another grand old theater complete with marble doorways, gold-plated chandeliers and four tiers of promenades. Leased to Sack Theatres in 1962, the 4,200-seat Music Hall has been doubling as a movie palace and as a home for the Boston Ballet. Last summer, when a touring company of Broadway's Man of La Mancha unexpectedly sold out for twelve weeks, Sack President A. Alan Friedberg stepped up his efforts to renew his lease. This was bad news to Lodge, who had been raising money since 1976 to turn the Music Hall into the Metropolitan Center, a nonprofit performing hall for the dance, opera and orchestral groups that had forsaken Boston. Lodge beat out Friedberg, coming up with the $1.75 million to purchase the 40-year lease, and he claims to have 150 nights booked for a season beginning in November 1980. But $3.5 million worth of expansion and renovations lie ahead, and there may be a scramble to get them done in time. Reason: a bitter Friedberg has so far refused to let Lodge's architects into the theater until July 1980, when Sack's lease expires. "For a simple project," says Lodge, "it's been an amazing mess."

One group, at least, has no housing problems. Harvard's handsome Loeb Center, built in 1960, has been a Rolls-Royce without a chauffeur. The university has no drama department, and the student-run productions have been of varying quality. This fall, however, Robert Brustein, the former dean of the Yale drama school and founder of the Yale Repertory Theater, will become the Loeb's director. According to Boston. Theater Critic Elliot Norton, Brustein is the best thing that has happened to the town since Ted Williams. Brustein is bringing with him at least 30 Yale Rep veterans. He will need them. Harvard contributes $200,000 annually to the Loeb's operation, but Brustein needs almost $1.3 million more to launch his four-play spring season in 1980, as well as an additional $1.15 million for the following fall. Over half the budget will come from ticket sales. The rest? When a student asked Brustein where he might raise the money, he answered dryly: "I was hoping you'd tell me."

Good theater is not cheap, and Boston may not be willing to pay. Broadway shows have started bypassing Boston on their tryouts because of insufficient audience support. In the past few years, moderately priced suburban dinner theaters have lured many patrons away from the $25 tickets and distasteful proximity to the combat zone. Observes Friedberg: "Boston is a city with champagne tastes and beer pocketbooks." It is also a city where social climbing is just not done in Symphony Hall. Unlike younger cities, Boston has class that is bred on Beacon Hill, not bought with hefty contributions to the arts. Says Walter Pierce, director of the Boston University Celebrity Series: "If this were Tulsa, the Metropolitan Center would have happened overnight." For that matter, such other cities as Houston, Milwaukee, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Washington, D.C., and Atlanta all surpass Boston as arts centers.

In the effort to catch up, Mayor Kevin White has hired Benjamin Thompson, the architect who renovated Quincy Market, to devise a plan for the theater district. So far, at least four major buildings --offices and part of the Tufts-New England Medical Center--are scheduled to rise near the combat zone. Boston once pulled off a revolution; it may yet find the means to manage a renaissance. qed

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