Parting Words

The curtain comes down for the final time at the Naples Dinner Theatre this month. After 32 years of entertaining Neapolitans with Broadway shows and delicious meals, the owners sold the building. It will be torn down and replaced by a self-storage facility. We sat down with the managerial trio of the theater, who took over eight years ago: director Stuart Glazer, artistic director Michael Wainstein and associate artistic director Barry Marcus.

Stuart: It’s a wonderful hobby business that has made no money whatsoever. That was the surprise.

Michael: When we were doing Chicago. We picked the show a year before the movie came out. We didn’t know anything about the movie. Then the movie opened and [then] won the Academy Award [for Best Picture of 2002] five days before we opened. For seven weeks, every single performance, there were 50 people in the lobby begging for tickets and waiting for cancellations.

Barry: Here’s another. Opening night [of the theater]. The guy didn’t hang the plexiglass set properly, and it fell and broke into a thousand pieces. Michael said don’t worry, we have the big pieces at the side of the stage. And so, the day of opening, he had them put the piece on the wall and it slides down and crashes. We got a phone call from the house saying there’s no set, so we opened with no set.

Michael: It didn’t matter; it was the kind of show where it worked—Forever Plaid.

Michael: We were surprised. We did not expect the Gulf Shore Boulevard crowd to be in our audience, but they’re all here. Last night, a lady pulled up in her Rolls-Royce. We get everyone. We get [people from] the bus tours, the rest homes, all the way up to the wealthy people in downtown.

Barry: They’re a much different audience here than they are at the Phil. They’re the same people, but they’re much more relaxed.

Michael: The only thing that’s going to change is if there’s a bigger year-round community of people who support theater.

Stuart: But this does not translate to Fort Myers. The Broadway Palm does tremendous, and we’ve done everything in our power to do that.

Barry: If the people in the community really wanted to make this succeed, you make it possible for the thing to survive. The point is that we add to the community. It’s for the town to support. It’s the arts.

The theater’s final production, Showboat, is onstage until April 22.
For tickets, call 514-7827.