The bloody Stephen Sondheim musical "Sweeney Todd" may have entertained Broadway crowds, but it didn't translate well to dinner theater. Productions like "Les Miserables" or "Titanic" were described as either too expensive to mount or having subject matter that made them off limits to family audiences. The availability of Broadway shows was another reason cited. Pullinsi at the time cited the relatively recent introduction of riverboat gambling in the Chicago area and northwest Indiana as competing for entertainment dollars. Several reasons were cited for the Candlelight's business struggles. It's hard to have fond memories of a place when something like that happens."Īs the publication Playbill noted in its 1997 report on the closing of the Candlelight and its sister theater, The Forum, no refunds were offered but 16 other Chicago-area theaters including Drury Lane and Pheasant Run stepped up to offer ticket exchanges for Candlelight patrons. We tried but we didn't get our money back. "We had just paid for the next season when three months later they shut down. "My wife and I were season subscribers and truly enjoyed the plays for quite a few years," wrote Leroy Marcheschi of Orland Park. The financial difficulties of its final years still shade some readers' memories of the Candlelight. Sustaining that level of efficiency must have been difficult when the Candlelight closed for financial reasons in 1997. I could find no official account of Candlelight attendance, but when I do the math I conservatively estimate the Candlelight must have sold more than 3 million tickets during its 36 years of existence. That's an amazing feat when I think about it. Unlike attending a movie in a cinema today - where it's common to sit in a nearly empty theater for many screenings - I remember most Candlelight performances were sold out. Great effort went into selling as many seats for every show, like how airplanes typically operate at capacity today. Thinking back to when I worked there as a waiter in 1987, the Candlelight was something like traveling on an airliner. In 1964, the Candlelight moved into a larger space at 5620 S. When I think about the Candlelight, I'm struck by the incredible efficiency with which it operated for many years. Candlelight opened with a resident company (no stars), ran each show six weeks or longer and produced 52 weeks a year." "No Chicago company ran 52 weeks a year, no show ran longer than three weeks, and no theatre operated successfully without the star system. "There were very few professionally produced local plays," prior to the Candlelight, Pullinsi is quoted as saying. But seeing famous people onstage at the Candlelight was the exception, not the rule, Pullinsi told Joe Stead in a 2010 piece for Chicago Critic about how the Candlelight transformed theater in Chicago.
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