The Straw Hat Circuit

Today's Times focused on outdoor theater in the arts section. One article recalled going to see productions of well-known musicals in the summer at theaters that were either outdoors or in less auspicious settings. The writer, one of the paper's theater critics, remembered when he was young, seeing shows like Gypsy with Angela Lansbury at the Valley Forge Music Fair in Devon, Pa.

That's a venue I recall well because I went there with my parents years and years ago in the 50's. It was where I first saw a production of South Pacific with good, second-level leads. My father was in that area checking out a film production located in Chester Springs, Pa., which is not much farther out near the Main Line. A director named Frank Perry was filming there--he had been well know for a time after he made David and Lisa. A rundown "resort" called the Allenberry was there and now I see ads for it, after it has apparently been renovated and is somewhat posh.

There were circuits of these summer musical theaters in those days. The Valley Forge one was one of the classier ones, run by some Philadelphia people and later expanded to theaters further up the East Coast. I think they originally started the Westbury Music Fair on Long Island. All are gone now, although Westbury still hosts trendy pop bands.

An operator named St. John Terrell ran theaters in Lambertville, N.J., and Rye, N.Y. His shows were not quite as well cast as the Philly outfit's.  Once when we were watching a production of Carousel at his Rye venue, they cut the Soliloquy from the end of the first act. Why? They needed more time at intermission for a fashion show.

Going to these and other summer theaters--the Times used to call them "the straw-hat circuit"-- was a great way to see a lot of classic musicals. Perhaps the last time I went to one was north of Boston near Route 128 where a theater-in-the-round, outdoors, presented Marlene Dietrich in what had to have been one of her last appearances, in the 1970s. She looked a little shaky but her voice and style were still pretty distinctive and worth hearing. She always kept her eyes totally focused on her conductor -- I'm sure he probably travelled with her, as was the case with Luciano Pavarotti when he made appearances on tour. I figured that she was afraid of losing track of everything if she lost that eye contact with her maestro.

When I was travelling through Vermont around 1974 and later in the 1970's, there was a chain of summer theaters where we caught plays. I remember that one playhouse was in Dorset, Vt. Usually they didn't have musicals, although those were popular, because it cost more to stage them. I recall seeing old chestnuts like George Kelly's The Show-off and George M. Cohan's Seven Keys to Baldpate. The latter was at the Hopkins Center at Dartmouth.

The piece brought back lots of memories and made me feel we've lost something even before what we're enduring now. As the writer said, you could see a lot of shows for tickets that were priced under $9.