Posted 6:56 PM by Gene

Here in downtown Philthydelphia the Walnut Street Theatre is home to a glorified stock company, a money-making irrelevance. It so little merits notice as to pave over what must be an astounding history. Only in the last few weeks did we learn it opened as an indoor circus 200 years ago today; when it was rejiggered as a theater years later Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette showed for its first play, Sheridan's The Rivals. And to think of the many other things: Edwin Forrest played there, as did the whole constellation of Booths and Barrymores; Edmund Kean is said to have introduced the curtain call there. Its stunning history continued even after that golden age; Louis B. Mayer once owned it, and as a home for Broadway tryouts it displayed an inestimable galaxy of stars; A Streetcar Named Desire played there, for one. So did the Marx brothers; I'll Say She Is made them a smash. Its last attraction of any note was a presidential debate between two dullards in '76; aptly enough the audio blew a fuse. For twenty-five years it's housed its stock company, so profitable its give-'em-what-they-want head has banished Shakespeare for the last twenty-three, calling it "castor oil", conveniently neglecting the five hit musicals he inspired. Now it's all Annies and 42nd Streets and heat-'n'-serve theater, nothing to give the masses a pain -- or a dream, and thus it will be forever, but at least we can dream of the time the theater was the heart of show-biz, and giving 'em what they wanted didn't mean giving them a heavily processed portion-controlled serving of it.