Three Decades Later, I See Les Mis A Second Time at Detroit's Fisher Theater
Does the Detroit Theater District Really Have More Theaters than Broadway?
Sunday, December 25th, 2022 at 7:00 PM
Christmas Day
Yorkshire Woods
Detroit, Michigan
I remember seeing Les Misérables at the Fisher Theater in 1990. I attended with Linda, the woman I married the following year. All of our Detroit friends were talking about it, so we splurged for tickets during the Christmas season. Les Mis was the Hamilton of the Nineties, packing the Fisher Theater night after night.
I should have picked up all the discarded programs and saved them. A copy of Stage, the program for the Fisher Theater, from that December 1990 run now has been posted for sale on eBay for forty dollars. What a difference three decades makes. We sat on the main floor, close to the stage, close enough to read the expressions of the actors. I seem to remember the actors making use of a turntable, stage center, to add to the action.
On Christmas Eve, a friend treated me to front row seats for the Broadway in Detroit presentation of Les Misérables. The front row seats perched on the leading edge of the Loge, the lower level of the balcony. Every volunteer usher we encountered reminded us not to use the edge of the loge as a shelf. A serving of wine in a spill-proof glass would burst open if it dropped into the Mezzanine.
I could truly hear and feel the music from this vantage; I felt like an angel floating over the action. The claim that the Fisher Theater has no poor seats might be a valid one. When the house was converted from a picture house to a theater in the sixties, over one thousand seats were removed from capacity. For a theater selling Broadway priced tickets, the seating doesn’t put you too close to ones neighbor. As the theater was modified in the Sixties, the interior details evoke the motifs of midcentury modern.
I was happy to learn that Broadway in Detroit tickets also include free parking in the structure to the west of the Fisher Building, a real value. Parking across the street on Grand Boulevard was asking for ten dollars a car, even though the lot was empty and no attendant stood ready to collect. The package liquor store looked open, ready to sell liquid Christmas cheer. I cannot think of anyone who would want to cross Grand Boulevard, another Detroit street with no traffic calming. With temperatures in the single digits, it was a blessing to sprint from the garage into the art deco halls of the Fisher Building.
I’m unsure how Broadway in Detroit can make the claim of sixty years in the city. We all knew it was the Nederlander Organization bringing the great shows to town. I loved how Nederland brought great stage plays to the small Birmingham Theater. I went several times. Once, my credit card refused to work when we stood at the box office to buy tickets. The agent let us in anyways, a nice gift for my twenty-sixth birthday. I remember the kindness, but not much of the play. Mostly I remember the phrase, “where the woodbine twines.” The theater is now a multiplex on the downtown stretch of Woodward Boulevard in Birmingham.
As far as I can tell, Nederlander doesn’t have a presence in Detroit now. Broadway in Detroit as a brand now belongs to the Ambassador Theater Group. This fact seems sad because David T. Nederlander started the family in theater by leasing the Detroit Opera House for shows in 1912, the Detroit Opera House that was demolished in 1928.
Broadway in Detroit now stays busy, keeping keen Detroiters entertained at the Music Hall, the Detroit Opera House and sometimes at the Gem. I don’t know how Broadway in Detroit made sixty years, but I’m happy to wish for one hundred years for the organization.
Now if someone could explain to me the claim once made that the Theater District in Detroit has more theaters than Broadway, I would be deeply in your debt. To be true, Detroit would need more than forty theaters in the vicinity of the Fox Theater.
Lovely Ladies concept by Andreane Neofitou, inspired in part by the drawings of Victor Hugo.