Who starred in My Fair Lady when it premiered at the Shubert Theatre in 1956? Whose ghost haunts the Palace Theatre on Broadway? What is the fastest song sung in Hamilton?
The questions may have been trivia, but the cause wasn’t trivial.
The trivia contest — as well as a series of musical performances, a sumptuous set of take-home snacks, and a quick cocktail lesson — were part of the Shubert’s “Next Stop: New Haven,” a fundraising event on Monday evening that drew together the theater, its patrons, and a few local restaurants for an evening of entertainment and a reminder of the importance of preserving downtown’s cultural scene through the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Shubert’s last performance before the shutdown was Sunday, March 6, said Anthony Lupinacci, the theater’s director of marketing and community relations. It was a touring company of Cats. “We literally had six packed performances from Thursday through Sunday,” Lupinacci said. That weekend, he said, a few patrons called to say they couldn’t make it because they had been traveling and were under self-quarantine. But the full extent of what social distancing would requite hadn’t yet set in. “People were coming in and I was doing the elbow bump, and people said, ‘it’s fine, Anthony, give us a hug.’”
All of that changed almost overnight
“The next week after Cats, we had to start alerting our patrons that some of the shows were going to be postponed or cancelled,” Lupinacci said. The Shubert relies on nationally touring shows, and the week of March 9, those tours watched venues across the country cancel their shows, creating unsustainable holes in the tours’ calendars. Tour producers called the Shubert to tell the theater they had to back out of their appearances there.
“How could this be possible?” Lupinacci recalled thinking. “We just had people here last weekend.”
But he understood, too, especially as the rules for social distancing became clear. Both touring companies and theaters operate on very tight margins. A half-full theater wouldn’t be sustainable for anyone. And “not every show was cancelled” yet, Lupinacci said. In March, “we’ll be able to have shows by May,” Lupinacci thought. “Then it just continued to snowball.”
So the Shubert has been dark for over two months and will continue to be dark for the next few months — the longest it has been so since it closed in 1976 and was in danger then of being demolished. (It reopened in 1983, renovated, and evolved into a nonprofit.)
So far, Lupinacci said, the Shubert’s entire staff has stayed healthy. “It’s because CAPA” — the Connecticut Association for the Performing Arts, the nonprofit that runs the Shubert — “said, ‘everybody pack up and go home’” during the week of March 9. Graphic design staff brought home the computers they needed to do their jobs. Staff notified ticket holders that their tickets could be held for rescheduling, donated (if the show was canceled), or refunded. “We were gratified,” said Lupinacci, that many patrons chose one of the first two options. During the Great Give, “we surpassed what we had ever done in years past.”
Staff now hold two meetings a week. “We are actively confirming shows to happen next season,” Lupinacci said. The Shubert’s summer theater and arts camp will run at home in July. A touring production of Swan Lake has been scheduled for mid-September. For its 2020 – 2021 season, it is planning to host runs of Fiddler on the Roof, Anastasia, Hairspray, and Waitress, among many other productions. But right now, the Shubert faces a “very fluid situation,” Lupinacci said. Amid the uncertainty the pandemic has caused, “dates are going to be changing. We have to be flexible. But we can’t not do anything.”
The theater world nationally is waiting to see what happens on Broadway, which is currently slated to reopen in September. “We’re all waiting for the trigger of Broadway to reopen. That’s going to set the tone for theaters that do national tours,” Lupinacci said. Meanwhile, like every other venue across the state, the 1,591-seat theater is waiting on the state government to announce the details of its reopening plans for entertainment venues — when they can reopen, and at what capacity, and what restrictions may apply. “This is uncharted territory,” Lupinacci said. “We’re counting on the government, the state, and city of New Haven to tell us what to do. We’re going to have a list of shows we’re going to be doing, but we’re not going to do anything until it’s safe for our patrons.”
But Next Stop: New Haven — a fundraising event introduced last year, at which the Shubert announced its upcoming season — had proved popular. It had been scheduled for April 27 this year, partnering with local restaurants. That got postponed. Then the Shubert staff noted how downtown restaurants were adapting quickly to doing takeout and curbside pickup. “They were ahead of us,” Lupinacci said. So they rescheduled the event to be held virtually for May 17, allotting around 200 slots based on how many takeout meals partners could produce, and how long it would take the Shubert to give out those meals on the day of the event without creating a traffic jam on College Street. By Friday, May 14, the event was sold out.
“A lot of people just want to be supportive,” Lupinacci said. While putting together the event, “what I kept hearing was ‘what can I do to help?’” Meanwhile, the Shubert is also seeking to be supportive to the downtown restaurant scene. “We’ve always worked together with them because when people go to a show, they like going to a restaurant.” And “the restaurants are doing so much to help the community,” he added, as they deliver food to healthcare workers at Yale-New Haven Hospital and the VA Hospital through Frontline Foods New Haven. “We’re in theater, but they’re out there on the front lines…. We’re trying to do something to help everything.”
“A Benefit For Introverts”
For those participating in Next Stop: New Haven, the preparations began Monday afternoon, by signing up for a time to pick up meals in front of the Shubert on College Street. Orange cones marked a place along the curb for cars to pull over, and the meals were quickly loaded into the cars.
The comestibles inside the boxes were bread from Chabaso; cheese, dried fruit, and pickles from Olmo; chips and salsa from Geronimo; edible cookie dough from Doughlicious; and the ingredients for a cocktail from Ordinary. There was also information about Frontline Foods New Haven and how to get involved, as well as recipes from Claire’s Corner Copia, notices for a delivery service from Olmo, and takeout menus from Geronimo and Shell and Bones. The accompanying instructions in an email told us not to snack on anything before the show, as we would be given a tour first.
“This is like a benefit for introverts,” my wife Steph noted with satisfaction.
We followed a link given to us in the instructions to a live YouTube feed for Next Stop: New Haven. Operations Production Manager Justin Zenchuk, Director of Development Carla Sullivan, and Connor Deane of Broadway Method Academy quickly set a jovial tone as triple MCs for the evening, with Zenchuk also handling the technological side of things. The first act of the night: Jason Sobocinski and Tim Cabral reporting from behind the bar at Ordinary, to walk us through the cheeses and dried fruits that had been provided and to instruct us on getting the most out of our rum and citrus cocktails. It was easy, Cabral said: All we had to do was pour the citrus mixture he had provided into a shaker, add ice, pour the rum he’d given us on top of that, and then shake it all together.
“What if they can’t shake it up at home?” Sobocinski said. Not everybody had a shaker.
“They should just go to bed,” Cabral joked. Then he got serious. Ice and a stirrer would do. They shook up their cocktails together.
Sobocinski then informed us that he had given us two cheeses. One was a goat cheese topped with pesto made from foraged ramps (“I could tell you where I found them but then I’d have to kill you,” Sobocinski said; ramps are, of course, growing all over the place at this time of year). Then there was a finback, a cheddar-style cheese “I make myself in Groton,” Sobocinski said. He encouraged us to arrange all the food we’d been given on a board. “I can’t see what you guys are doing. There’s no reason you can’t just cram all this down,” he said. But presentation might make it even tastier.
“Hopefully we can see you at Ordinary” when things reopen, Cabral said.
“Cheers to all of you,” said Sullivan, toasting them.
A musical interlude featured Audrey Cardwell and Adam Kaplan, both of whom had appeared recently at the Shubert. Cardwell sang “Way Back in the Day” from Bright Star, which she had sung on the Shubert’s stage. Kaplan went for “Maria” from West Side Story as he noted that was the show that had made him want to become a performer as a child, “much to my parents’ chagrin,” he joked. Then he was serious again. “It set me on the path that led to the Shubert,” he said.
“That was butter,” Zenchuk said with enthusiasm after their performances. “That is how we sing a song.”
Zenchuk then led participants through a trivia contest that inspired the competitive spirit and maybe a bit of Cabral’s spirits in us. Nearly all of the attendees appeared to take part. Steph’s knowledge and love of theater goes deep, and she excels at trivia contests. Our answers were judged not only on accuracy, but speed. Under our son’s name, our team quickly ascended through the ranks to battle it out among the top five. When did the Shubert Theater open? We correctly guessed 1914. What was its seating capacity. We knew this as well: 1,591. What was the first show the Shubert staged? Steph got it fast by process of elimination. She knew Showboat, The King and I, and On the Town were all staged after 1914, leaving the improbable title of Who Paid the Rent for Mrs. Rip Van Winkle? as the only choice remaining. She also knew that Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews, and not Gene Kelly and Ginger Rogers, or James Dean and Doris Day, or Clark Gable and Grace Kelly, had starred in the Shubert’s premiere of My Fair Lady. She knew Ethel Merman, and not Mary Martin or Angela Lansbury, had played Annie in Annie Get Your Gun. She even knew that the original title of Oklahoma! was Away We Go, and not On the Farm or Send in the Cows.
“Who came up with Send in the Cows?” Sullivan said.
“I have to say that I came up with it,” Zenchuk said.
Our team fell behind when we guessed incorrectly that Phantom of the Opera had premiered in 1986, and not 1988. But Steph knew that The Lion King was the first show to make a billion dollars. She knew the fastest song sung in Hamilton (“Guns and Ships”) and guessed correctly that it was Judy Garland’s ghost that haunted the Palace Theatre in New York — not Bob Fosse’s, Katharine Hepburn’s, or Gwen Verdon’s. But we weren’t smart or fast enough to overcome four other teams’ abilities; the top three won glasses and t‑shirts from the Shubert, and of course, the admiration of hundreds.
Cardwell and Kaplan returned for second performances. “When I played at the Shubert, I remember being so overwhelmed by the history,” Cardwell said, being in a place where “so many legends had walked, worked, and created.” It was the first stage where audiences heard “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning,” she said, so it felt fitting to sing another Rodgers and Hammerstein number, the seasonally appropriate “It Might As Well Be Spring” from State Fair.
Kaplan finished with “Santa Fe” from Newsies, which he performed on Broadway in 2013. “It was a childhood dream brought to life,” he said.
“What did I just witness, Carla?” Zenchuk said with great enthusiasm.
“I miss live theater,” Sullivan said.
“Me too,” Zenchuk said.
“Continue supporting the arts in any way you can,” Deane said. “We’ll be back bigger and better. It’s only intermission.”
A Place In History
As the trivia contest noted, the Shubert will turn 106 in December. Before the theater went dark, Lupinacci found himself curious as to what the theater had done during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. “There’s no indication that anything was cancelled,” he said. “There are still printed programs.”
Lupinacci made a point of putting a little more detail in the Shubert’s records this time around. “In our archives, I’ve noted which shows got cancelled,” he said.“Fifty years from now, someone might be working here, thinking, ‘what happened during that time?’ I think it’s important that they know. I can’t see any other period in our history when shows were closed. This is one of those moments in time that’s important to document.”
He has thought about the Shubert going dark at the end of the 1970s and its resurrection. “And now it’s 2020, and we’re still here,” he said. “For us, the thought of ever having to completely close the place rips our hearts apart, because we’ve been working since the early 1980s.” It has “always been a constant challenge” keeping the Shubert going, he said. This is just one more challenge.
With the success of Next Stop: New Haven, “there’s already talk of ‘what’s the next one?’” Lupinacci said. “We have to be optimistic. The show must go on. And tonight, the show must go online.”
