Mirvish’s next glitzy act
The Princess of Wales Theatre is being torn down and I will shed no tears over its passing.
Don’t get me wrong, it was a gorgeous facility from every point of view, but the city of Toronto never really needed it and so I have no trouble supporting David Mirvish’s bold new plan for the Entertainment District that calls for its elimination.
It’s interesting that when the announcement of Mirvish’s intention to demolish the theatre became public knowledge on Saturday, there was a rush to judgment by a lot of people, pronouncing it a body blow to the cultural life of this city.
It’s no such thing. Here’s the simple fact: there are currently too many large theatres in Toronto and this excess has actually been damaging to our cultural life over the past few years.
Look around us: the Princess of Wales, the Royal Alex, the Sony Centre, the Elgin, the Winter Garden, the Ed Mirvish, the Panasonic, the Toronto Centre for the Arts.
Can you think of one time in recent years when they’ve all been filled with shows that people were clamouring to get into? I can’t. Yes, it’s true that once upon a time, there weren’t enough largesized venues in this city to accommodate the mega-musicals that threatened to swallow up the theatrical life of the world for a time.
But then the pendulum swung too far in the other direction.
Between 1989 and 1993, a total of six new theatres opened in Toronto with a combined capacity of 9,211 seats
The Princess of Wales was almost the final one of these, opening its doors on May 26, 1993 with a production of Miss Saigon.
In fact, that’s why the theatre was built. Really. There was nowhere in the city big enough to house the mammoth musical, except what was then called the O’Keefe Centre (now the Sony) which couldn’t be used for a long run because of its status as the home for the Canadian Opera Company and National Ballet of Canada.
And so Mirvish created a spectacular home for the show that everyone thought would run as long as The Phantom of the Opera, then packing them in at the Pan- tages (which is now the Ed Mirvish Theatre).
Only Miss Saigon wasn’t a super smash and ran here for just two years. Although it would take a while for everyone to realize it, the mega-musical was a dying breed and Toronto had come to the party with its building frenzy just a bit late.
Lots of younger theatre fans have fond memories of “all the hits” that they saw at the Princess of Wales, but here are the facts: after Miss Saigon closed in 1995, there have only been two other shows with lengthy runs in the intervening 17 years of the POW’s history: Beauty and the Beast (two years) and The Lion King (four years). Everything else, including the Colm Wilkinson-starring revival of Les Misérables (six months), the Toronto production of Hairspray (eight months) and The Sound of Music (14 months) lagged far behind. (The current occupant, War Horse, has been running seven months.) The media (myself included) started groaning about the end of the golden era of Toronto theatre when shows could run for years, but the problem was that there were too few hit shows being created and we had too many theatres to house them. Supply and demand. It gets you every time. I believe that Mirvish’s new plans for a Frank Gehry-designed complex that will include museums, public areas, retail opportunities and lots of living spaces will do much more for our city than the often-empty Princess of Wales Theatre. And if you look at the big hit shows that have been generated in Toronto in recent years — The Drowsy Chaperone, Da Kink In My Hair, Kim’s Convenience — they all started in tiny, tiny venues. Theatres don’t create shows. People do. Sometimes, if you don’t build it, they will come.