Tucked among the big musicals in Riverside Theatre’s season are what to some may seem like second thoughts: one or two straight plays staged in the Black Box theater.
To the south of us, on what may well be the most talked-about stage in South Florida, Palm Beach Dramaworks gives its patrons the exact inverse: a season of mostly dramas – a list that reads like a college-level lit class, from Inge to O’Neill to Ionesco – with a plucky musical typically in summer “just to keep the theater from going dark,” says producing artistic director William Hayes.
The current play, Alan Bennett’s “The History Boys,” is an outstanding example of the theater’s motto: “Theater to think about.” Brilliantly acted and directed, the comic drama about tolerance and teaching methods in an English classroom left many in the audience last week awed by the production.
That motto has turned out to be a winning formula for the urbane demographic on the island of Palm Beach as well as on the West Palm mainland. More than 20,000 people see plays each year at Dramaworks, a feat considering the intimate theater seats only 218.
Wall Street Journal theater critic Terry Teachout included Palm Beach Dramaworks in a list of seven “first-rank” regional theaters in the country. He has repeatedly praised what he calls Dramaworks’ “brainy approach” to great plays, noting the meticulous attention to detail in its sets, costumes and even foreign accents.
Teachout has visited so often – seven plays in six years – Hayes jokes he can’t review them anymore. “I told him, you’re my friend, it’s a conflict.”
Teachout will make his directorial debut at Dramaworks in May with his own play, “Satchmo at the Waldorf.”
“To those benighted folk who still persist in doubting the high quality and cultural significance of American regional theater,” he wrote in a glowing review of last season’s “My Old Lady” by Israel Horovitz, “I can only reply that to have seen such plays as Eugène Ionesco’s ‘The Chairs,’ Michael Frayn’s ‘Copenhagen,’ Paul Zindel’s ‘The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds’ and Mr. Horovitz’s ‘My Old Lady’ in West Palm Beach is to know better.”
And at the end of an equally positive review of 2011’s “Freud’s Last Session,” slated for Riverside this spring and developed in readings at Dramaworks, Teachout quipped: “Anyone who supposes that Palm Beach is the exclusive property of rich airheads with great tans would appear to be all wet.”
Hayes remembers Teachout’s false presumption. “He thought Florida was the land of leisure, tennis, golf and an occasional “Fiddler on the Roof,” says Hayes.
“When I first moved to West Palm Beach I quickly learned not to judge a book by its cover,” says Hayes, citing an early staging of Edward Albee’s “The Zoo Story.” Albee is “a personal favorite” of Hayes’: he directed six Albee plays in six years.
“Don’t underestimate people’s ability to think and to feel. When I first started I had all these little old ladies from Century Village coming in on walkers, and I thought, they’re not going to like this. But they did; they were the ones who participated in the talk-backs.”
Hayes proudly explores “dialogue, themes, technique” in his play selection. “Every time I pushed the envelope, there were a few people who decided it wasn’t for them. But I had bigger gains. I wasn’t bringing in the masses, but I started building this really strong foundation. The community started to define us. They said, ‘Finally, somebody’s doing this intellectual stuff.’”
Equally false assumptions might be made of local talent. Hayes estimates that fully half of the actors he hires are from this area, many appearing over the years in multiple productions.
“I do local auditions first, then I do statewide auditions, then I go to New York and work with a casting director.”
The decision to stage few musicals is also an economic one. With only 218 seats. “It’s hard to be profitable. The royalties are higher, then I have musicians, a musical director and a choreographer. It’s often hard to recoup the money.”
Non-musical theater attendance by adult Americans dropped by a third in the decade that ended in 2012, from 12.3 percent to 8.3 percent. Though the number of musical theater-goers also shrank, that genre only lost an eighth of its audience – down from 17.1 percent to 15.2.
Yet Hayes retains his confidence that great plays will draw good crowds. So far he has been absolutely right.
Hayes and his wife, Sue Ellen Beryl, who is Palm Beach Dramaworks’ managing director, have been with the theater since its inception in 2000. Along with Nanique Gueridian, company manager, the couple’s dedication to top-drawer drama saw them doubling and tripling up in actor-director-stagehand roles from the company’s beginnings. They started in 2000 in a 45-seat storefront, expanding to a stage twice that size on nearby Banyan Boulevard. Close quarters were key to the theater’s success, he says.
“When you do ‘Virginia Wolff’ in a 90-seat theater, you feel like you’re in the living room with these people. By the time we closed that theater, we were standing room only. People were waiting to see if somebody didn’t show up so they could buy their ticket.”
When the issue of space was compounded by an uncooperative landlord, Hayes reached his limit. “Frankly I was panicked,” he says. “We had to move.”
Three times they negotiated a deal with the owner of the theater on Clematis, and three times it fell through. Then Hayes bumped into then-Mayor Lois Frankel on the street. Six months later, the city bought the theater on Dramaworks’ behalf. Before paying the city back though, Hayes insisted on a renovation. “Prove to me you can raise a million dollars,” Frankel told him. “You have a week.”
He did. After nearly a year of renovation, the theater opened in November 2011 at the Intracoastal end of Clematis Street.
“The History Boys” plays through January 3. Tickets are $64. Wednesday matinees and Sunday evening performances include a talk-back with the actors.