Eldergays, how desperate WERE you for entertainment?

"The Only Equity Theater in the Gulf with its Own Tarpon Cannery" ???

Priceless

It's funny, but it has been pasted up by a mechanicsl artist with a sense of humor. This never happened.

Oh that's too bad, r2. I would have even paid $14.95 for that.

It's a steal. Especially if you get the mutton.

Always go for the mutton.

Tarpon are not a type of fish people eat, they're just big sport fish people like to catch.

It beat Gavin MacLeod and Rue McClanahan in "Love Letters."

I made the mistake of going on Sunday and they CLAIMED that they had run out of mutton. I was incensed, but I didn’t want to disrupt the show.

I couldn't stop laughing when I saw the theater's address.

By the way, I REALLY want to give credit to whomever created this. It's fucking genius. But I just saw it posted by a friend on FB and she has no idea where it originated either. Whomever you are, I have to assume you're an eldergay with a design background and a very sharp wit, so perhaps you haunt this place, too. If you do, name yourself, you flippin genius!

"similar"

Please, no dinner theatre in the 1970s served mutton. Maybe horse meat, but never mutton.

LMAO! East Mosquito Abatement Road (at the Outfall pipe). But is that mutton CHOPS, or LEG of mutton? Because mutton chops should NEVER be served during Camelot. And I'd definitely check on the condiments when I made reservations.

Omigod

662 East Mosquito Abatement Road (at the Outfall Pipe)

What's an Outfall Pipe?

Hell, what's an Abatement Road?

Never went to a dinner theater, BUT I wish I had seen SANDY DENNIS and STELLA STEVENS (such a surreal combo) in the female version of The Odd Couple.

I can't even imagine. Sheer heaven.

Unfortunately I missed the run of this show OP, but I did manage to catch Paul Lynde and Alice Ghostly the following season in a glorious performance of Man of La Mancha.

Some real ones: Leonard Nemoy in My Fair Lady. Arte Johnson and Dave Madden in A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, Rock Hudson in Camelot...

Back in the `1960s, Elaine Stritch did a season of summer stock alternating nightly between playing Mrs. Anna in The King and I and Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Now that's range.

The Sloughview Dinner Theatre would be tacky, but switching the 'e' and 'r' in the word theater saves it.

R18 Lol

But both Anna and Martha looked and sounded just like Elaine Stritch.

Elaine in King & I? LOL. Amazing.

Eldergays, was the Burt Reynolds Dinner Theatre, frequently referenced by Blanche Elizabeth Deveraux a real thing?

R8 again. I don’t want to harp on a bad memory, but it stands to reason that if you are going to offer a choice of two entrees for the same price, they should be proteins of equivalent value. Mutton and salmon, fine, I’ll take the salmon. But to look forward to mutton and have to settle for plain old chicken? That’s gonna sting. Then, to have to try and enjoy the show? It’s asking too much. Am I being unreasonable? I don’t think so.

Oh, and it certainly did not help matters that the other couples at the table were feasting on the mutton.

Constance Bennett: "Call Me Madam" (1959).

Ginger Rogers: "Bells Are Ringing" (1958).

If I can put your mind at rest, r22, I happen to know that the meat was NOT mutton. I’ll say no more.

[quote] Eldergays, was the Burt Reynolds Dinner Theatre, frequently referenced by Blanche Elizabeth Deveraux a real thing?

Yes, it was. Jupiter, FL, I think. It actually had a decent reputation but it ended up bankrupting him.

I thought Loni Anderson ended up bankrupting Burt.

Is this in Tarpon Springs, Fl.? The address looks familiar, I think I've been there, used to take the misses there in my white Lincoln Town Car from Top O' The World retirement village. Show started at 4:30 sharp

Good times man, good times

Stritch was actually an understudy Martha and later a replacement Martha in the original Broadway production of Virginia Woolf. She received excellent reviews. She later starred in a radio adaptation for the BBC. It's in two parts on youtube and she's fabulous.

holy shit, I think I remember this travesty

[quoteI thought Loni Anderson ended up bankrupting Burt.

It was the combination. I meant to include that in my post.

Jim Nabors was long long past his chicken years and I never thought or Ann B. as mutton (dressed as lamb). She always wore sensible, age appropriate attire.

I once saw an Equity Dinner Theater production of The Music Man that saved a lot on payroll by having no children. (Save for Winthrop and Amaryllis. Of course.)

The Burt Reynolds Dinner Theatre was never quite the joke people made it out to be. If those productions had been at LORT A houses with the same actors and directors, the not-for-profit "theatremakers" (as they call themselves today) would've been falling all over themselves. You'd never see stars like this at any regional theatre anymore at this level of fame unless they were in something pre-Broadway.

He got his friends - major stars who were much closer (at that time) to the apex of their fame - to come do theatre. Stars other theatres never really got, outside of Broadway. Can you imagine Carol Burnett (in Same Time, Next Year and Plaza Suite, with Burt), Ann-Margret, Sally Field (in Vanities with Tyne Daly), Farrah Fawcett (in Butterflies Are Free), Kate Jackson (in Barefoot in the Park with her husband), Julie Harris (in Death of a Salesman) doing dinner theatre? They did. And only at BRDT. I would've liked to see Robert Urich in The Hasty Heart. Charles Nelson Reilly directed there a lot.

And it wasn't all classics. Reynolds produced quite a few new plays by established playwrights, hoping to be a new out-of-town tryout space.

They even had BRITT - Burt Reynolds Institute for Theatre Training, a certificate program for young people sort of like AMDA, AADA or Neighborhood Playhouse, but with an emphasis on the real professional skills you needed to book work, especially in musicals.

So laugh if you must, but know that a lot of good theatre was created there, the actors always said they were treated well, and for all his other flaws, when it came to the theatre, Reynolds had a vision, he took it seriously, put his money behind it, and gave it a real try.

[quote] So laugh if you must, but know that a lot of good theatre was created there, the actors always said they were treated well, and for all his other flaws, when it came to the theatre, Reynolds had a vision, he took it seriously, put his money behind it, and gave it a real try.

All that and a fine veal parmigiana!

the stench from the cannery was so noxious that audience members could borrow nose plugs on request. after the show the waiters collected them all and yelled at you if you tried to walk out with one.

Have you ever heard of The Nearlyweds?

What an odd pairing. Cybil must have been hard-up for money back in the '70s.

R38, The director, Harvey Medlinsky, was once married to Christina Crawford.

I'm trying to remember summer stock shows I saw in the past ... the only one I can remember off the top of my head is Gary Collins and Sue Ane Langdon in "Same Time, Next Year."

Ann B. Davis in Once Upon a Mattress.

Broadway comes to Ann Arbor, 1960.

Thanks, but I think I'm going to wait for [italic]Lavarious A. Slaughter Presents: Camelost![/italic] starring Geoffrey Owens and Lisa Nicole Carson.

Melody Top was one of best known summer stock theaters. Near Milwaukee, they performed in the round in a giant circus style tent (later a wooden structure). Active mid 1960s through mid 1980s. I find this website, created and constantly being expanded by an alumnus, fascinating as he tries to document the company's history and productions over the years. They managed to get top film and Broadway stars for what were usually very well reviewed productions.

There was a local (professional) theatre with a tiny, tiny stage. When they did The Sound of Music they only had room for five children...

Not so desperate that we have and had to watch the Apprentice, Kardasians and Wives of ... like you baby gays.

[quote]The Burt Reynolds Dinner Theatre was never quite the joke people made it out to be. If those productions had been at LORT A houses with the same actors and directors, the not-for-profit "theatremakers" (as they call themselves today) would've been falling all over themselves. You'd never see stars like this at any regional theatre anymore at this level of fame unless they were in something pre-Broadway.

He got his friends - major stars who were much closer (at that time) to the apex of their fame - to come do theatre. Stars other theatres never really got, outside of Broadway. Can you imagine Carol Burnett (in Same Time, Next Year and Plaza Suite, with Burt), Ann-Margret, Sally Field (in Vanities with Tyne Daly), Farrah Fawcett (in Butterflies Are Free), Kate Jackson (in Barefoot in the Park with her husband), Julie Harris (in Death of a Salesman) doing dinner theatre? They did. And only at BRDT. I would've liked to see Robert Urich in The Hasty Heart. Charles Nelson Reilly directed there a lot.

And it wasn't all classics. Reynolds produced quite a few new plays by established playwrights, hoping to be a new out-of-town tryout space.

They even had BRITT - Burt Reynolds Institute for Theatre Training, a certificate program for young people sort of like AMDA, AADA or Neighborhood Playhouse, but with an emphasis on the real professional skills you needed to book work, especially in musicals.

So laugh if you must, but know that a lot of good theatre was created there, the actors always said they were treated well, and for all his other flaws, when it came to the theatre, Reynolds had a vision, he took it seriously, put his money behind it, and gave it a real try.

Didn't Burt sleep with almost all of the waiters, and actors at the dinner theater?

I am a Gen X'er but my parents who are from the silent generation told me about going to the Bucks County playhouse, Forrest theater, Walnut street theater, going to see broadway and later off-broadway shows in NYC. My dad worked at the Erlanger theater in the early 1950s until the very early 1960s and saw many try-outs and later productions of My Fair Lady, West Side Story, Man of La Mancha, and guys and dolls. My parents did not go to dinner theaters as it was easy to see many excellent plays, and operas in/around Philadelphia and in NYC.

I loved the Bucks County Playhouse when I was a kid.