A Home Town Architectural Catastrophe

In the early 1960s, Tyrone Guthrie, the great Irish theater director, arrived fresh from his great success in Stratford, Ontario, where he had created the energetic Stratford Shakespeare Festival. The Walker Art Center gave over some of its property, and local architect Ralph Rapson designed the space around the thrust stage which echoed the design of the outdoor Elizabethan theaters. It was a building whose public spaces were full of light and views of downtown Minneapolis. We were constantly reminded of the beauty of our town, and the transitions from life to drama and back again brought meaning to both experiences.

Five decades later, it was determined (note the evasive use of the passive) that this first space was no longer usable or desirable, and the board and management found a Swiss architect to build them a new trio of theatres. No doubt he and his minions arrived wearing handsome English suits and speaking with attractive foreign accents - it had to be that which helped bamboozle the locals. One hundred and twenty five million dollars or so later, we have three theaters in one building (thrust, proscenium, and black box) and around them is a building so unworkable for bipedal primates that the result is a building which only the spiders who relish the warm metal exterior surfaces in the summer heat can like.

But let me be specific. The exterior of the building is not too bad (well, except for the arachnids), but only the ground floor restaurant has a sign indicating its entrance. The main way to the theatre is not disguised, nor is it obvious. Nothing like a marquee which has traditionally marked the main entry to a theater.

The theatres are on the top floor, accessed by elevators or an escalator which is most reminiscent either of a journey from hell or from the station level at Piccadilly Circus in London. One ascends into what can only be described as gloom but in reality is an unlit lobby. Along the walls are what appear to be black marble benches ,so I guess I shouldn't have been very surprised when the elderly gent leaving the men's room just in front of me took a hard right and banged his leg hard into the nearly invisible marble edge of the bench.

I've been in two of the three theatres, and they're OK. For some reason, the architects provided hand rails along one side of the aisle only, so the aged looking for support will be helped for only half of their theatre going experience. As one who nurtured a deteriorating hip, this decision to ration the hand rails leads to the conclusions that old people are not welcome in the theatre, the architects are too young to be sympathetic to such realities of life. or the architects lacked intelligence beyond their antipathy to the varied conditions which life creates for ageing bodies.

In the winter, there is no skyway to help people from the parking garage across from the theater, but there is a skyway for sets and props. One can imagine what donors must think of this situation - having always to cross a street, often in the dark, and sometimes covered with snow and ice.

Some years ago, there was a play called "Art," about three middle age male friends, one of whom pays a lot of money for a plain white canvas. When his pals arrive to see this new thing, one of them studies it very carefully, then observes, "Well, it's sh*t." (The balance of the play has to do with the re-stitching of the friendship.)

Apparently, no one on the board or staff of the Guthrie stood up and declaimed a sentiment akin to the one in the previous paragraph, and God knows, they should have.

Since the opening, the theatre has added light boxes in the lobbies to dispel some of the gloom, and stainless steel stanchions (how veddy attractive they aren't) mark the corners of the hitherto invisible black marble benches.

There should be sense of occasion in going to the theatre. In our town, what one needs is a sense of a flashlight.

At the most recent performance we attended, we sat in the first row of the balcony in the proscenium theatre and had about as much space for our knees as you get flying economy to Europe.

The Guthrie Theatre is no more - I call the building the USS Poseidon after the film about the cruise ship which turns turtle. Now I look for Shelley Winters every time I walk in the place, expecting to see her face floating somewhere overhead in the gloom.

The moral is that nice suits and foreign accents do not necessarily mean success, nor does a leadership group which is seduced by such superficial amenities. Where, oh where, is Frank Gehry when you need him? About a mile away in one the best museum spaces we've ever had at the Weisman Museum on the campus of the University of Minnesota. Odd that the academics got it right, but the bankers and lawyers and corporate moguls appeared to be paying too much attention to their own bottom lines and got it wrong.

We've had two catastrophes on our river lately. One was the bridge that collapsed and will be rebuilt; the other is a theater which will be an albatross around our necks well past my lifetime - and quite possibly yours, too.

Oh, the horror of it all.