Doubt Creeps In
In the middle of the decade, there were serious discussions about opening a second, small theatre on Laclede's Landing, and for a time in 1976, there was talk of the Loretto-Hilton assuming the management of, and perhaps performing in, the 1800-seat American Theatre in downtown St. Louis. But renovations there would have been costly, and the theatre's board feared that the theatre's focus might become too commercial, so the idea was scrapped.
Opening the Studio Theatre in 1978 may have helped satisfy urges for a second performing space, but the precipitating discussions may also have been symptomatic of some people's nagging disappointment in the Loretto-Hilton.
While the Post-Dispatch characterized the Loretto-Hilton as "one of the nation's major regional theatre groups," Richard Marc Rubin, writing in St. Louis Literary Supplement in the winter of 1977, probably said what some people were thinking when he claimed, "Timidity seems to be part of Loretto-Hilton's difficulty."
He accused the theatre of "avoidance of anything too carnal, politically shocking, or intellectually complex..." and he blamed the management for offering "no modern European plays, no classical tragedies, no Jacobean theatre."
In addition, there was no consensus in reviews of the plays. Rubin, for example, panned the 1976 production of Billy Budd, of which both Joe Pollack of the Post-Dispatch and Bob Goddard of the Globe-Democrat approved, and audiences loved.
And while some voices in the community called for experimentation and stretching, others expressed scant tolerance for innovation, and still others scoffed at anything that was not "classic." Near the end of the 1978-79 season, the board of directors and David Frank, seeking to clarify the theatre's direction, invited a team of theatre consultants to help analyze the situation.
By then, the theatre was on sound financial footing. Its subscription list was above 16,000. The books balanced. Five plays were being presented annually on the Mainstage and three in the Studio, and the Imaginary Theatre Company was traveling with two plays. Paid staff members were relieving volunteers of many chores they had shouldered over the years, and Steven Woolf had arrived as production manager during the 1979-80 season.
Despite all that was going well, some things were not so healthy. Season subscriptions, which had topped 16,500 in 1976-77, had flattened out to about 16,000 and the 1978-79 receipts were below projections. There was also fierce competition for St. Louis cultural monies, and a nationwide economic recession put the theatre in a squeeze.
On top of that, local theatre critics began to write about the company's work as "flat," "lackluster," "ingrown." Despite the prospect of Frankenstein, a premiere production of the theatre, and Crimes of the Heart, which had undergone revisions here, being taken to New York, it was hinted that the Loretto-Hilton was not keeping up with some regional theatres in sending plays to Broadway.
And although patrons flocked to see it, A Christmas Carol was scorned by one of the two major dailies' critics. Over Labor Day in 1979, David Frank offered his resignation, effective the following spring.
