8-31-07
Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire
The Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire has a big year ahead. The 900-seat arena-style theatre is often the regional launching point for big Broadway musicals, such as Sunset Boulevard and Miss Saigon. The coming months are no exception, as this fall they will tackle The Producers and in 2008, Les Miserables.
The Marriott Theatre opened in 1975 and started out as a general performance space for the resort, booking comedians along with producing shows. In 1979 the theatre switched over to its all-musicals format, which has proven to be a huge success. Terry James, executive producer, says “A lot of times we’re criticized for our mission statement of doing only musicals. Not that there’s anything wrong with any other genre, but there is definitely an audience for what we do.”
Clearly there is, with 40,000 subscribers and an annual attendance of more than 400,000 adults and children, the Marriott is doing something right not only for their audiences, but also to great critical acclaim. According to the Marriott Theatre’s press information, they hold a record 370 Joseph Jefferson Award nominations for their efforts.
The theatre is the only one in Marriott’s 3,000 properties, and it never goes dark. With such a grueling tech schedule it would be easy to stick with the tired chestnuts and decades-old scenery. However, the Marriott Theatre’s artistic team is not one to shy away from a challenge, which is why the big Broadway hits find a home there.
Their key to success lies in distilling these big spectacles down to the core story and focusing on the people instead of the pageantry. James notes, for example, that the story of Miss Saigon is actually quite small, “…only five or so principals, set against a large backdrop of the Vietnam war.” So when the helicopter moment came, instead of cutting a hole in the ceiling, the audience’s attention was focused (thanks to lighting and sound effects) on the faces of the actors.
Although many directors will say that casting is 90 percent of the success of any show, it is especially true in a venue as intimate as the Marriott, a theatre-in-the-round, where no seat is more than nine rows away from the stage.
James’ own career at the Marriot started out on the stage in 1982, when he was hired from New York for productions of Fiddler on the Roof and Kismet. “After going back and forth for six years I ended up staying,” he said. “I loved the standard of living and sense of community in Chicago.”
Eventually James was invited to join the staff at the Marriott. “I was invited to the other side of the table and thought I’d try it out for a year. I decided to stay as I got fatter,” he laughs.
James became a music director, then associate producer and finally producer. “More and more of the business aspect comes into play along with the artistic…especially being owned by a Fortune 500 company. When you’re owned by corporate America it’s very different.”
That’s not to say that the Marriott corporation ever interferes in the artistic operations of the theatre. Instead, James was quick to point out, they are very supportive, especially since the theatre has “earned our own way since we started doing musicals in 1979.” He laughed, “They just say great, three percent more please.”
Co-artistic director Andy Hite has a shorter, though no less passionate history with the theatre. He and Aaron Thielen alternate overseeing different projects, since “we’re a theatre that never closes.” Hite started as an actor at the Marriott in 2000, and in 2002 he heard that then artistic director Rick Boynton was looking for an assistant. “I knocked on his door and said, ‘You’ve gotta hire me,’” said Hite. He went to work as Boynton’s assistant, then became associate artistic director a couple of years later. When Boynton left for Chicago Shakespeare in 2005, Hite was given the artistic director job to share with Thielen.
The arrangement evolved so that more attention could be paid to each of their five mainstage and three TYA (Theatre for Young Audiences) productions. When it comes to planning for the future, Hite noted, “We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel.” They want to continue getting the big, fresh-from-Broadway productions and continue what the Marriott does best, which according to Hite is “good honest storytelling accessible to families.”
Hite’s next project is Les Miz, an admittedly iconic modern musical. So how does one even begin to re-imagine it for the Marriott stage? “You go, ‘Oh my God, here we go,’ take a step back and see what are the elements of storytelling. What is necessary and what are we capable of in our space?” said Hite. He noted that the greatest key to their success will lie in casting—“finding the right storytellers”—to convey the themes that are in the play.
“Anytime you’re taking something that is that iconic, it is smart to be a little nervous about everything,” he laughed. “There is lots of expectation. It is 99 percent of the world’s favorite musical. In fact, I’m always nervous if we’re not nervous, because then you’ve become too comfortable.”
He plans to approach it by being “reverent to what that piece is and taking it one step at a time.”
Resident lighting designer Diane Williams noted that when producing a big show such as Miss Saigon or Sunset Boulevard in a space like the Marriott’s, it is easy to see just how good the script is versus how much the Broadway production had to rely on spectacle. “If the story is good, it will persevere without all the tricks,” she said.
For example, she continued, “Miss Saigon isn’t about the helicopter at all. It’s about the people trying to escape.” So in their production, the focus of the sound and lights was on the “pathos of those faces” rather than on a would-be air show.
The technical requirements of the theatre are belied by the intimacy of the space, and it is James’ trust in his design team that keeps things humming along so smoothly. “I can not say enough about Terry James being the most supportive producer and collaborator,” Williams effused. The amount of expensive lighting equipment is “representative of hundreds of thousands of dollars of trust in the way lights can define a space sometimes better than scenery,” she noted, adding that it is a constant battle for real estate on the grid because wherever scenery is hung is one less spot for a piece of lighting equipment.
However, it is the play of lights and scenery that can sometimes create the best effect in that space. When designing Sunset Boulevard, Williams joked, “Nobody is gonna believe this mansion is on this 26 foot square.” Instead they created the illusion of a massive mansion with light and shadow. “You saw the edge of something big, and then it went into shadow.” The audience’s imagination fills in the rest
“We’ve learned what kind of scenery pays off and what just doesn’t work,” she said, noting that there are no traps in the floor and no flyspace up above. Although for their production of Houdini, they did end up drilling a hole in the floor. She said that after 10 weeks of Houdini landing on someone’s desk in engineering, “they weren’t all that pleased.” Thus ended the great trap door experiment.
Another thing that Williams has found does not work well in the space is follow spots because they tend to bleed over into the audience. They did try something called an Autopilot for All Night Strut. It’s a device that the actor wears, similar to a body mic pack, and the designer programs a Varilight to follow the device. However, at the Marriott it is literally a degree of inches between lighting the actor and lighting the audience, and when the audience is lit, it pulls them out of the storytelling.
“We have a running joke that we hate summer because they all come in and sit in the front row wearing white,” joked Williams.
However, they are now exploring uses for the space up and behind the audience for design elements and additional performance space. But as Williams noted, “It’s all about priorities. You close on a Sunday night and have an audience again on Wednesday. There’s not a lot of time to decide if something is going to work. It either has to deliver or out it goes.”
The Marriott Theatre will have plenty to deliver this coming season. It will be interesting to see which of the big Broadway spectacles hold up under the more elemental storytelling of this suburban arena theatre.