SCOTT MOREAU as Johnny Cash in Maine State Music Theatre’s “Million Dollar Quartet.” PHOTO BY KINECTIV
BRUNSWICK
Ask Maine State Music Theatre’s Curt Dale Clark why we need musical theater in the Midcoast, and he’s adamant when he gives a response.
Having Broadway-caliber theater in Brunswick, Maine State’s artistic director said, “is of the utmost importance.”
Clark is very, very serious about this.
“Come to a matinee of ‘Million Dollar Quartet,’ and you’ll see more evidently than anything I can possibly tell you as to why it’s important,” Clark said, referencing the first MSMT main stage production of the year. “We’re sort of the Major League Baseball of this area. … We say, ‘Summer’s here. You made it through the winter.’”
The curtain rising June 6 for the debut of “Million Dollar Quartet” will do more than mark another season for Maine State Music Theatre. The main stage production signifies 60 years of bringing Broadway-style musical to Brunswick.
The Tony Award-winning jukebox musical is based on a true story, where rock ‘n’ roll legends Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins came together for an impromptu recording session in 1956 at Sun Studios in Memphis.
VICTORIA CRANDALL, with Larry Brooks, in front of what was then called Brunswick Music Theater. PHOTO PROVIDED BY MAINE STATE MUSIC THEATRE
Hunter Foster, who is directing Maine State’s production of “Million Dollar Quartet,” starred as the original Sam Phillips in the Broadway run.
Maine State will continue its Maine Stage run this summer with productions of “Beauty and the Beast,” “Saturday Night Fever” and “Singin’ in The Rain.”
In addition to its Main Stage productions at Bowdoin College’s Pickard Theater, there are a number of performances ranging from a performance of “Cinderella” for young audiences June 16 to its Monday performance series. The season caps off with another partnership with Portland Stage in a production of the musical comedy “Nunsense” in August.
Maine State Music Theatre was founded as the Brunswick Summer Playhouse by Victoria Crandall, a former concert pianist. The Cleveland native and Eastern School of Music graduate worked as a rehearsal pianist, working with performers such as Ethel Merman and Jimmy Durante, according to her 1990 obituary by the Associated Press.
Crandall would stage 186 productions over 30 years reaching a total audience of 1.5 million.
In 1967 the company changed its name to Brunswick Music Theatre.
Since the 1970s, the organization has operated as a nonprofit, having expanded its mission to educate young people in the theater arts. Marketing and Communications Director Carol Marquis attributed the theater’s success in more recent years to running the organization as a tight ship. “We clearly are a nonprofit — that’s how we run our business, but we think of it in the mindset of a for-profit business,” Marquis said. “We want to succeed, and the status quo isn’t good enough for us.”
Marking its 30th anniversary in 1988, then-Gov. John McKernan presented an award to Crandall marking the occasion. In that year, the company’s name changed again to Maine State Music Theatre.
Things would change again in 2013, Clark, then-consulting artistic director, had the “consultant” part of his title cut while Stephanie Dupal, a Lisbon native, was named managing director by the theater’s board.
Clark is often the voice of Maine State, and that voice is very passionate about musical theater and its place in the Midcoast.
“Growing up in, Pecatonica, Illinois, I didn’t discover theater until my senior year of high school,” Clark said. “What I saw in Rockford, Illinois — which was the nearest ‘big’ town —was the only example I saw of it. Pecatonica gave me nothing. For this area, we’re as close to Broadway as it gets.”
As tastes in theater have evolved over the past 60 years, so too has Maine State Music Theatre.
“In the early days of Vicki Crandall’s Brunswick Summer Playhouse — and indeed the very first production “ Song Of Norway” — Operettas still sufficed as options for the summer season,” Clark said in an email to The Times Record. “Sadly, operettas are all but dead for venues like MSMT where budgets have ballooned past the point that operettas can produce enough ticket sales to meet the sales goals.
“In addition, today’s audiences are used to fully realized sets and costumes as well as full scale Musical theatre orchestras — all of that is very expensive,” Clark continued. “Finally, our full company of actors, technicians, administrators and musicians is more than three times the size it was under Vicki.”
With that growth comes a crunch for space for the myriad of people who work on stage and behind the scenes who come to the Brunswick area from across the United States every summer to be part of Maine State Music Theatre.
As a result, the theater has left a physical mark on the downtown, having purchased and renovated buildings such as its offices and workshops on Elm Street across from Hannaford, as well as summer housing on Cedar Street for performers.
Last year, Maine State purchased a Noble Street house that had been vacant for six years and had fallen into disrepair. An intensive renovation will mean members of Maine State’s technical staff will have a place to live during the season — right across from Pickard Theater.
“We are saving that building on the backs of five straight years of solid profit,” Clark said.
In recent years, Maine State has also been building its intern program. Interns serve, in part, as ambassadors to the theater within the community.
“From the time they get here from the time they leave, they’re never not in rehearsal,” Clark said. “And they still have some other duties.”
He added: “They have a youth and energy that’s like a Vitamin B injection every time they get here.”
Maine State will be celebrating its own heritage and its connection to Brunswick on Aug. 15 at an outdoor Diamond Jubilee concert free and open to the public. The performance will take place on the Mall in the heart of downtown Brunswick, in conjunction with the Brunswick Downtown Association’s Music on the Mall concert series.
“We’re really going to be doing this as a thank-you to the town,” said Marquis.
The feeling, apparently, is mutual.
“Not only does MSMT bring outstanding performances to Brunswick and the entire state, they bring vitality, energy, and incredible fun to our community,” said Brunswick Downtown Association Executive Director Debora King in an email.
Maine State’s concert on the Mall will feature talents of current and past seasons.
“It is our intention to make that the largest outdoor gathering Brunswick’s ever seen,” Clark said.
jswinconeck@timesrecord.com
Maine State Music Theatre hosts panel discussion on the making of the musical ‘Million Dollar Quartet’
BRUNSWICK — Maine State Music Theatre in partnership with the Curtis Memorial Library will hold a panel discussion “Peek Behind the Curtain — Million Dollar Quartet” at noon Wednesday, June 13, in the library’s Morrell Meeting Room. The event is free and open to the public.
The discussion, part of a series that will run each month from June through September, will feature a panel of MSMT artists, actors and staff involved in Million Dollar Quartet showing this June at the Pickard Theater.
Broadway World Maine Editor Carla Maria Verdino-Süllwold will act as moderator, with a question and answer period to follow. The panel discussion will be followed by a short, informal meet and greet.
Million Dollar Quartet shows from June 6-23 at Pickard Theatre on the Bowdoin College Campus in Brunswick. Tickets range from $49-$85. Tickets are available online at www.msmt.org, over the phone by calling (207) 725-8769, or in person by visiting the Box Office located at the Pickard Theatre at 1 Bath Road, Brunswick.
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