Our Broadway Babies: The Glimmer Twins

Courtesy of Village Theatre

A tiny cohort of theatres nationwide braves near-hopeless odds to produce modern musicals: California’s Ahmanson, La Jolla and Old Globe, Chicago’s Goodman – and two local makers of national hits, Seattle’s 5th Avenue Theatre and Issaquah’s Village Theatre. Between them, they’ve racked up an astounding seventeen Tony Awards and forty Tony nominations in seven years. 

Though decidedly independent, increasingly the two organizations function as a team. “Next season’s Next to Normal, born at the Village, lauded on Broadway, returning to Seattle on our stage, is a great example of our growing influence on the national scene,” says 5th Avenue publicist John Longenbaugh. Village subscribers get a 20 percent discount on N2N tickets at the 5th Avenue next year. 

Each theatre has a vital role to play in a high-risk arena. “To do a new musical costs more than two million dollars, sometimes a lot more,” says the 5th Avenue’s executive producer and artistic director, David Armstrong. “We’ve done ten new musicals in ten years.” The Village launched fifty in nine years, on a smaller scale. “We work with new musicals in their infancy,” says Village publicist Michelle Sanders, “at varying levels – readings, workshops or developmental productions – and sometimes these new musicals even move onto our mainstage.”

Why would anybody trust a world premiere to a theatre in a town like Issaquah, whose entire population is less than one-tenth the size of the 5th Avenue’s annual audience of 287,000? Sanders chalks it up to “our great track record and wonderful Seattle talent pool.” The 5th Avenue’s titanic track record probably helps attract talent across the lake as does the New York fame of multiple Seattle Rep and Intiman exports.

Back in the 1960s, a millionaire patron urged Seattle Times drama critic Wayne Johnson to quash the idea of a second theatre besides the Rep, saying, “Seattle can’t support two theatres.” It turns out that we need multiple theatres to thrive. And few are more needed – from here to Broadway – than that two-headed beast, the Village Theatre and the 5th Avenue. •