By Regina Benedict Reynolds
(with the staff of the Playhouse)
David M. Baldwin
334 pages, n.p.
ISBN: 0-9673792-0-2
Until April 2009, I had not known very much of the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, New Jersey, but thanks to a writer colleague of mine from Los Angeles, I got to see it first-hand with a rousing production of 1776, the patriotic musical by Peter Stone (music and lyrics by Sherman Edwards), that featured outstanding performances by Robert Cuccioli and James Barbour, and a generally very competent cast. A brief walk from the train station, and set charmingly near a brook, the playhouse has a history that is even more colourful than its setting—and that setting is nothing to be sneered at, with a lovely four-sided clock on a column that dominates the entrance from the street, the F.M. Kirby Carriage House adjacent to the theatre, a water garden, brick promenade with an arch at the far end decorated with silhouettes of animals from famous fables. The theatre itself has very comfortable, plush seats, and the stage is wide enough for detailed sets and lavish productions. Production photographs of past shows embellish the walls, and looking at them makes you gawk in wonder at the wealth of talent that has graced the Playhouse through its seven-decade history. I mean real showbiz talent of the likes of Eva Le Gallienne, Dorothy and Lillian Gish, Gloria Swanson, Claudette Colbert, Chita Rivera, Basil Rathbone, Carol Channing, Bernadette Peters, Jack Gilford, Geraldine Page, Julie Harris, Rip Torn, Elaine Stritch, Christine Ebersole, Lynn Redgrave, et cetera. Enough to fill a whopping reference book.
Roughly ten years ago, the Playhouse released a hefty but glamorous coffee-table book commemorating the Playhouse’s dramatic history. Lavishly illustrated with photographs (most in full colour, though some are blurry or muddy), it is the sort of souvenir that any major theatre would love to afford but usually cannot. Most theatre coffee table books are merely vanity productions: funded privately by an organization and meant to be its self-serving, self-aggrandizing propaganda, blissfully free of any genuine critical sense. These books are invariably in love with their subjects (which is quite understandable) and themselves (which is far less). However, they do offer abundant joy to souvenir-hunters on the look for photographic memorabilia and information dressed up handsomely. This one, created by Regina Benedict Reynolds (with the assistance of the Playhouse’s staff), is unapologetically a celebration of one of America’s most celebrated regional theatres.
As a historical document, it offers an interesting account of the origin of the Playhouse, beginning with a brief survey of the town’s genesis and evolution from the early 17th century when the Minnisink tribe set up camp in the area that came under the control of the Dutch West India Company who surrendered it to the English. By 1764 there were forty landowners. Washington watched his troops defeat the Continental Army in the Battle of Springfield in 1780. The mills in the area at first produced lumber, grist, and “cider,” before moving into cotton and paper. With the coming of the railroad, access to adjoining communities and to the New York metropolis was made easier, and the paper mill thrived. The theatre, as we know it, came into being in 1934 after Antoinette Scudder, a New Jersey socialite, purchased the mill, and with the help of her architect cousin, Henry Scudder, turned it into a theatre, with the added help of Frank Carrington, actor, director, and designer. That took 1.5 million dollars and four years to build. The theatre opened its doors in 1938 at a time when New York’s theatres were declining in number. Over five thousand Broadway actors were out of work, the Shuberts had fallen into bankruptcy, and Flo Ziegfeld, Will Rogers, and George Gershwin were all dead. So there was a real need for a strong regional theatre. The first production was The Kingdom of God, long since forgotten, but that had made its Broadway debut in 1928 with Ethel Barrymore. For the first two years, only plays were in the offing, but no musicals or operettas. The operetta trend (highlighting Gilbert and Sullivan, Sigmund Romberg, Franz Lehar, and Rudolph Friml) came in the 40s and continued into the early 50s. By the mid-fifties, the Paper Mill Playhouse had a solid reputation, having boasted Billie Burke, the Gish sisters, Myrna Loy, Shirley Booth, Shelley Winters, Cyril Ritchard, Tallulah Bankhead, Estelle Winwood, Gene Wilder, Dom DeLuise, Pat Hingle, and Piper Laurie as some of its leading stars.
Everything seemed to be going along beautifully, especially with the 25th anniversary production of Guys and Dolls, in which Sam Levene and Vivian Blaine teamed up to recreate their Broadway roles as Nathan Detroit and Adelaide. However, in June 1980 a fire (an act of arson) destroyed most of the historic building, except for a three-storey addition. However, true to the American spirit of generous community support, the theatre was rebuilt and reopened its doors in October 1982, taking up Broadway’s slack when the Great White Way seemed to be in the doldrums with dull, listless fare, apart from British imports. (As an aside, let me go on record as saying that it is British imports that more often than not have often distinguished Broadway, e.g. The Entertainer, A Taste of Honey, A Man for All Seasons, Butley, The Homecoming, Lettice and Lovage, The Norman Conquests, Mary Stuart, et cetera.) The Paper Mill Playhouse did not have to go to Broadway; Broadway came to it by way of extravagant musical revivals of Annie, Fiddler On The Roof, Evita, Damn Yankees, Jesus Christ Superstar, and La Cage Aux Folles. Under Artistic Director Angelo Del Rossi (before he became unpopular in some quarters for his high budgets), the Playhouse attracted Stephen Sondheim, Maury Yeston, and Jerry Herman, and operettas became so successful that Beverly Sills took three of them to the New York City Opera. The crowning musical achievement was a production (in honour of the Playhouse’s 60th anniversary) of Follies—a full-scale one, at that, which is the only way to really stage this Sondheim sensation without diminishing it. Look at the cast list, oh, other regionals, and gnash your collective teeth in envy: Eddie Bracken, Ann Miller, Kaye Ballard, Donna McKechnie, Phyllis Newman, Tony Roberts, and Liliane Montevecchi.
The Playhouse commemorative book acknowledges the theatre’s Outreach programs, and other enterprises such as student training, Adopt-a-School, Theatre Start, Young Critics, Rising Star Awards, Summer Musical Theatre Conservatory, and Storybook Theatre. Its administrators and creative personnel seem to realize that a theatre dies unless it creates vibrant links with a broad community and strives to find future audiences and future artists. Somehow the Playhouse has managed to survive economic downturns and adversity. The most serious threat came in 2007, but management approached members of the Millburn Township Committee to form a financial partnership with the not-for-profit theatre. The town purchased the land and buildings on Brookside Drive from the Playhouse for nine million dollars, so that the theatre could pay off its bank loan to cover a huge operating deficit. I can’t think of a comparable act of community generosity and dedication in Canada—certainly not on this scale, and certainly not in any of our Ontario suburbs such as Mississauga, Brampton, or Oakville, or even in Stratford and Niagara-on-the-Lake. Perhaps what distinguishes many regional American theatres from ours is this very American spirit of cooperation where the profit motive is tamped down in favour of art and culture. The Playhouse did not suffer from the usual Canadian philistine cringe. Nor did it suffer from dud or unprincipled politicians or bureaucrats who so befoul our culture. The coffee-table book expresses the American spirit of community admirably by the space it devotes to appendices listing all the people who worked at the theatre from 1982-99, all the patrons, sponsors, and benefactors.
What the book lacks, however, is a firm sense of organization and critical self-evaluation. After an interesting historical survey, it seems to skip from subject to subject without much sense of organic form, and nowhere is there anything but admiration for its many productions. Moreover, the style of writing is bland rather than inspired, but taken, all in all, it is the sort of souvenir book that can only promote its subject, and in this era of shrinking theatres and stages, that is not a trivial or unimportant thing.
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