A QUEEN’S RULE
In Texas, ye olde ways are changing at famed medieval dinner theater.
DALLAS — It had been a pretty laidback Sunday before Monet Lerner’s afternoon shift at Medieval Times. She poured a cup from her Mr. Coffee and watched a little “Beyond Stranger Things” Netflix. She thought a lot about acting, d did some vocal warm-ups. Then she led on her shiny black rain boots, said goodbye to Hoppy Joe, her rescue bunny, d headed out. Lerner’s drive to work takes about en minutes in her used Nissan Sentra ich, like her condominium, she never uld have been able to afford if she dn’t gotten lucky and landed what for w is her dream job. She works in a replica of an 11thcentury castle off the Stemmons Freeway th of downtown. It can pack in 1,000 ple who pay $60.95 (less for children anyone with a coupon) to put on paper wns, slide behind long counters and r apart chicken with their hands while tching a low-tech, two-hour drama that aps elements of professional wrestling ide a Renaissance fair. As the fog from dry ice floated out over arena’s sand pit and waiters set slabs pongy garlic bread in front of the audie, Lerner adjusted her gold cape and e out on an Andalusian stallion bred ecially for the show. She was Doña ria Isabella, the sole ruler of a kingdom ed with battling knights. For the 34 years Medieval Times has n in business, that monarch has been an. But the show, which draws an mated 2.5 million customers each year, eplacing all of its kings with queens. d its peculiar brand of dinner theater sort of G-rated “Game of Thrones” — aking on an unlikely resonance amid national jousting over gender equality voked by the .MeToo and .TimesUp movements. The new production, with a woman wearing the crown, had its debut here last fall, then opened at the castle in suburban Chicago. It was rolled out in Lyndhurst, New Jersey, on Jan. 11. By year’s end, a queen will reign in all nine of the castles in North America.
In the show’s old plot, the king had to fight off a challenger from another realm using a knight who bested five others in a tournament. In the new script, the queen has taken over for her late father (presumably the king from the previous show). She presides over a tournament to find the best knight in the land; drama ensues when a knight who has been acting dishonorably challenges her authority.
Leigh Cordner, a former Marine who left his job as an FM disc jockey 30 years ago to join Medieval Times, directs the show. He started rewriting it a year and half before the sexual harassment accusations against movie producer Harvey Weinstein, chef Mario Batali and a host of other men started a national conversation.
“The fact that a woman is sitting on the throne in our show at the same time the gender equality movement hit is a coincidence,” he said. Cordner was simply responding to audience members who kept asking why women played nothing but princesses. (On the other hand, the show still refers to its waitresses as wenches.)
The joust-and-eat prototype for Medieval Times was created in 1973 by an entrepreneur who wanted to capture the tourist trade in Majorca, Spain. Since the American version began in Orlando, Florida, in 1983, almost 66 million people have attended.
Here in Dallas, the production runs Thursday through Sunday; on a busy Saturday, they’ll run three shows, and go practically nonstop for the nine days during spring break.
Medieval Times has a campy cachet among the young, and the rich and famous. Celebrities routinely show up at the castles in New Jersey and Southern California. In Dallas, Katy Perry and about a dozen of her pals took front-row seats on a Saturday night this month.
“She ate everything,” said Gretchen Midkiff, the Dallas marketing and sales manager.
A different queen was on the throne that night. Lerner, 27, shares the role with three other actors, including Quinn Coffman, 23, a close friend who was her roommate until Lerner saved enough money to