Book Review: The Guthrie Theater: Images, History, and Inside Stories
by Ed Huyck
07/31/06
www.talkinbroadway.com / Go to review
With a last-minute plan to save the building turned aside, it appears that the venerable original Guthrie Theater will be torn down this fall. And, while the theater lives on in a new $125-million facility in downtown Minneapolis, an important piece of American theater history will fall victim to the wrecking ball.
That history is brought to colorful life in The Guthrie Theater: Images, History, and Inside Stories, a new coffee-table book by longtime staffer Peg Guilfoyle. The book traces the history of the theater from the early days, when Sir Tyrone Guthrie and his partners searched America for a home for their regional theater, all the way up to this spring, when Hamlet became the final show to be presented at the theater.
Along the way, Guilfoyle introduces us to the men and women who made the Guthrie tick through the decades – not just the artistic directors who guided the theater through each phase of its history, but the multitude of actors, crew members and staff who made the facility tick.
Much of the book is told through the remembrances of these people, and that is where it truly shines. It can be Nathaniel Fuller detailing how he finally made it from audition to stage at the theater (he prepared over-the-top readings of a dozen Shakespearean messengers); or a disastrous matinee of Arsenic and Old Lace in 1975 that featured not just a pair of patrons lost in the aisles but a wardrobe malfunction where a watch chain ended up connected to an actor’s earring, causing her head to jerk every time she looked at her watch.
There are also hundreds of illustrations drawn from the theater’s history, many including the unsung heroes of the Guthrie: the design, prop, costume and other backstage crews that have made the theater tick for decades.
The book does gloss over some of the troubled times for the theater, with the narration at times suddenly revealing that there is financial trouble, or that an artistic director had resigned after a single year, with little clue as to what may have been going on behind the scenes. I’m not interested that much in gossip, but it would help to flesh out the story of the theater to know the details of the downs as well as the ups.
Still, longtime patrons will get to take a trip down memory lane, while newcomers will get a taste of what the fuss has been about for the past 40-plus years. Everyone should come away with insights into the how the theater has worked since day one, and the special connection made among everyone involved, on stage, backstage and in the audience, with that signature thrust stage.