A clearer vision is transforming old eyesores

By Maureen Dezell, Globe Staff, 9/19/2003

Back in the days when the Theater District was dark and dreary, a tattered pylon and tacky ticket trailer stood outside the Wilbur Theatre, symbols of a neighborhood in decline.

During the 1990s, the Wang Center for the Performing Arts, Broadway in Boston (formerly American Artists), and Emerson College began lighting up their playhouses more often. The Theater District evolved into the bright, bustling, traffic-clogged Boston neighborhood it is today.

But the pylon remained at the corner of Tremont and Stuart streets, wind-whipped, color-drained, and sagging with dated advertising banners. A half-empty emblem, the two-story structure -- like the nearby ticket outlet, where few if any walk-up sales appear to take place -- seemed impervious to the transformation of the area.

Just in time for the fall-winter season, however, the moribund pylon has been reborn. It is now a larger-than-life outdoor ad for Blue Man Group at the Charles Playhouse.

The ticket trailer remains in place -- but not for long, according to Harry Collings, executive director of the Boston Redevelopment Authority, which owns the parcel next to the Wilbur. The BRA and the Cultural District Business Alliance are working together to spruce up the area, he says.

"We'd like to make the experience of going to the Theater District more friendly and pleasant, with uniform street lighting, trash barrels, signs, and banners," says real estate developer Steven Heims, manager of the neighborhood business alliance.

"With the renovation of the Opera House, the Theater District now extends way down Washington Street. We want to make it easier for people to navigate," Heims adds.

"The Lion King," which is scheduled to open at the new, improved Opera House next summer, is expected to draw crowds of people -- many of whom won't have any idea where to park, much less where to go to dinner, says Heims.

The neighborhood alliance pays for local improvements with member dues from approximately 20 area businesses and with income it receives from the pylon -- which should be a sought-after place to advertise, says Heims, now that it is no longer an eyesore.

"There aren't a lot of opportunities like it in the city, and some major advertisers are interested," he says. "We think we can get over $100,000 a year from the pylon.

Meanwhile, according to Collings, the BRA is soliciting proposals to develop the sliver of property next to the Wilbur. Both the city and the Cultural District Business Alliance, says Collings, would like to see the parcel "put to an attractive, appropriate cultural use."

A rare performance Cleopatra, says actress Anne Gottlieb, "lives at a different size than the rest of us."

The Egyptian queen was both a passionate seductress and a skilled politician, says Gottlieb, who plays the formidable lover and leader in Boston Theatre Works' new production of Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra."

"The character herself is fearless," says Gottlieb, who is known to Boston audiences for her leading roles in "The Laramie Project" and "Macbeth" at Boston Theatre Works, and for her performance in the Nora Theatre's "Betrayal" last season.

Cleopatra is frequently portrayed as a manipulator, says the actress. "But I think making her manipulative sells her short. She is passionate. And I think she has a great sense of humor. If you play her as Shakespeare's written her, there's no way around her humor."

The work is not done often, Gottlieb notes: Theatre Works says this is the first professional production here in 20 years. "It's a four-hour play, with close to 42 scenes," she says. "One scene just flows into the next; there are scenes within a scene. It's filled with messengers and entrances. It changes locations."

The action takes place in a vast, war-torn empire. "But it isn't a war play. It isn't `Henry V,' " Gottlieb continues. "It's an intimate play that is also about world politics. The two are intimately fused."

Jason Slavick, who is directing it, has cut the action of the play, and is mounting it in the round at the Tremont Theatre.

The staging makes the play more intimate, says Gottlieb. And it makes playing Cleopatra, "a fantastic experience, even more glorious."

"Antony and Cleopatra" opens for preview performances tonight and runs through Oct. 5 at the Tremont Theatre, 276 Tremont St., next to the Wang Theatre. For tickets, call 617-939-9939, or visit www.bostontheatreworks.com.