The Allen Theater, built in 1921 as a 3,000 seat movie theater, joins the State, Ohio and Palace theaters to make up Cleveland’s Playhouse Square. The city had big dreams for cinema, but tough times forced the theaters to abandon cinema in the late sixties and the Allen remade itself as performance space. Throughout the ’70s, the Allen featured such star-studded acts as The Budapest Symphony Orchestra, The Sierra Leone National Dance Company and The Boss, Bruce Springsteen. Even after hosting New Jersey’s Prince Springsteen, the Allen almost came down again in the 1980s. The hall was saved, though, and renovated to become part of Playhouse Square, the nation’s second largest performing arts center.
It wasn’t out of character for the Allen when, two weeks ago, avant-garde composer Philip Glass came to perform, attracting a brood of black-cladden artists as well as popcorn munching grandparents. Not to mention several city-struck Obies. The Glass Ensemble performed the most recent score to the movie Todd Browning’s Dracula as the 1937 film played. With this performance of the Cuyahoga Community College’s Contemporary Visions Evening Series, the Allen merged its cinema roots with its modern mission of performing arts.
This blend was echoed within the audience. While some patrons wore slick clothes and talked of Glass’s prolific career, others wore capes in homage to the Transylvanian count. Under the Allen’s corinthian columns the audience mingled together, appreciating Glass’s music, Budweiser in plastic cups and of course, $2 boxes of Junior Mints.
Although eclectic, the audience was not so large. Of the 2,800 seats in the theater, it seemed that over half were empty. And while the space felt as barren as Dracula’s home, the seats were still nearly as tight as his coffin.
Regardless of empty seats, the Allen ushers, in shockingly red sport coats, were difficult to ignore. They were persistent with ticket stubs and gradually a three-row section of empty seats grew in front of a full capacity section of another three rows. Soon after the show began, an usher in her sun-bright blazer forced a man out of his seat to aid a couple to their seats, though there was an entire section of empty seats directly across the aisle.
The performance itself kept the crowd on its beer-tipsy toes. The audience watched, rapt, as the five-piece ensemble and conductor performed and the film played. At times, the music was too loud, drowning out the dialogue and sound effects. Beyond these technicalities, the music worked with the film. I was even half-spooked. The show’s weaknesses came at times when the music’s repetitive hypnotic nature clashed with the suspenseful jolts of the film. That hypnotic feel, however, worked well in the moments when Dracula was hypnotizing his victims. Over all, the gradual somberness of the score jibed with Dracula’s strong emotional elements. We felt the love, we chewed extra hard on our Junior Mints when things got scary.
For me, it felt odd to listen to Glass play over a chorus of candy-munchers and beer gulpers, but that’s Glass. All different folks in the crowd holding on to brass hand rails and shaking their head at a choppy Orchestra, more black clothes than even Oberlin accommodates, a few smiles and some tepid beer.