His dream lasted more than a decade, as 116 productions played out on his stage, graced by such stars as Martin Sheen and Julie Harris and Charles Durning and Judd Nelson. And by the dreamer himself, Burt Reynolds.
From the moment they broke ground for it in May 1978, the $2 million Burt Reynolds Dinner Theatre -- in tiny Jupiter, Fla., of all places -- was phenomenally successful. Its first season was a sellout months before Sally Field, Tyne Daly and Gail Strickland even started rehearsing for "Vanities," the production that got the theater going in January 1979.Ten and a half years later, with some remarkable achievements and a few fiascoes behind it, the dream recently came to an end. The curtain fell on both "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" -- and on the theater itself.
The renamed Burt Reynolds Jupiter Theatre has been given by its founder to Palm Beach Community College to use as a performing arts/educational facility. Remodeled, its seating capacity increased from 49 to a probable 700 seats, it may also become a not-for-profit regional theater, where the kinds of stars who have performed at the BRJT through the years might continue to appear. Or it may not; its future, just now, is as cloudy as its past is clear.
It is a past laced with glamour. The stars who played Jupiter included Carol Burnett, Charles Nelson Reilly, Shelley Berman, Farrah Fawcett, Eartha Kitt, Ned Beatty, Vincent Gardenia, Elliott Gould, Deborah Raffin, Kirstie Alley, Robert Hays, Marilu Henner, Robert Urich, Alice Ghostley and Ossie Davis. Marsha Mason, Dom DeLuise, Reilly and, quite notably, Reynolds all directed there. The 140 apprentices who earned their Equity cards through the Burt Reynolds Institute for Theatre Training took classes from the likes of Liza Minnelli, Sheen, Reilly, DeLuise and Reynolds.
From the beginning, Reynolds had a strong notion of what he wanted his theatre to be.
"I want a theater for people who haven't seen live theater, at prices they can pay," he said in the fall of 1978. "I imagine we might have as 75 percent of the audience guys who climb down out of pickups.
"I also want to have a place where actors, friends of mine who most producers don't have access to, can work ... I've made friends who grew up in theater. They just don't want to get clobbered by the New York critics. They want to have fun. They can do the show they want to (here). I can't pay much, but they'll get a condo, a car, the royal treatment.
"So many dinner theaters go for `names.' It's tired casting, of people I thought were dead. It's a place for them to go when they can't do anything else. No one ASKS the hot actors."
Reynolds did, though, and plenty of them said yes. But even though he did treat them royally, he couldn't ensure the kind of professional safety -- freedom from criticism and the freedom to fail -- that he wanted. Bad reviews became painful, and the relationship of the theater and the press over the years was often contentious.
"The most difficult part of my job here is putting people back together who come here for the most unselfish reasons," Reynolds said in a 1983 interview. "Like Parker Stevenson, who turned down a film with Charles Bronson to come here because I told him he'd learn more in four weeks on the stage than in 14 weeks on a film -- which I really believe. Then it's really difficult to pick up the paper and read this boy should have stayed on `The Hardy Boy.' And for him to wonder, `Why did I come here? I don't need that kind of pain.'
"Then Jim Nabors. I make him come down here and do `The Music Man.' And he got killed. We sat here, and he got tears in his eyes. And I said, `What are you gonna do? You can either quit, and phone it in, or you can come here for the whole reason that you came here in the beginning, which was to get better.' He DID get better. You REALLY aren't an actor 'til you've been on the stage."
Reynolds himself was on his stage as a performer in just three of the 116 shows: co-starring with his then-love Field in 1979's "The Rainmaker," which he also directed; with Burnett in 1980's "Same Time, Next Year"; and with Stockard Channing in 1982, in one of the three one-acts that made up Ernest Thompson's "Answers."
Putting most of his performing energy into fast-paced moviemaking -- he was the country's top box-office draw from 1978 to 1982 -- Reynolds more often directed at his theater. Besides "The Rainmaker," he directed Sheen and Julie Kavner in 1979's "Two for the Seesaw," Sheen in 1982's excellent "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," Durning in a first-rate "Mass Appeal" in 1983, Nelson in 1987's "Wrestlers," Hays in 1987's "Tea House of the August Moon" and Ossie Davis in 1988's much-admired "I'm Not Rappaport."
Though others held the title of producer, Reynolds was always in charge, consulting on the choice of shows and stars, persuading the famous to appear at his place. But when he was on teh scene, directing a production, it was never a case of a movie star playing at directing because he could afford his own theater.
Karen Poindexter, who was the theater's associate producer from 1980-85 and producer from 1985-88, remembered her first production meeting with Reynolds the director, on "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."
"He knew exactly what he wanted scenically, from costumes to lights. He had wonderful, creative ideas and understood the restrictions of his theater," she said. "His philosophy was to produce high quality, because when you're using stars like that, you have to surround them with quality. He's the best director I've worked with."
Nelson, who appeared first at the BRJT in 1986's superb production of "Orphans," found Reynolds an especially sensitive director.
"What makes it great working with him is like when you have a drill sergeant who runs with his troops. He does it WITH us. He understands the process, not just the result."
Of his directing, Reynolds said, "My passion for directing is so much more than for acting. I suppose because when you love actors and you love this business so much, there's only so much you can do as an actor. If you love it as a director, you can do anything. Cast people that would never be cast. Turn people's heads around as far as a project they thought was just OK."
In its decade of doing theater, the BRJT won 18 Carbonell Awards from the South Florida Entertainment Writers' Association, and Reynolds won a 19th, as the 1982 recipient of the organization's Outstanding Achievement in the Arts award, for establishing the Burt Reynolds Institute for Theatre Training.
It staged the world premiere production of the less-than-notable "Cowboy and the Legend," "Crystal, Crystal Chandelier," "Walls" and "Stage Struck," and the flawed but far more promising "The News" (which died a swift and unfair death on Broadway) and "Dangerous Music," by the creators of "Dreamgirls."
Given its star power and its famous boss, how did the BRJT come to its closing night and an uncertain future?
For one thing, the theater almost never made money. It earned a profit only twice, in 1981 and '85. Its break-even point was an impossibly high 95 percent of capacity, according to current producer K.R. Williams -- and though it sometimes did business at that level during the season, attendance plummeted during the summer. Though its initial 400-seat capacity was increased to 449 during a 1982 remodeling, the cost of productions -- of maintaining the quality Reynolds wanted -- kept climbing. The value of the theater has increased to $4.5 million, but it is $2 million in debt, a debt which must be erased before PBCC can accept Reynolds' gift.
Too, the condition that once allowed the BRJT to flourish changed. Tourists once flocked by the busload to obscure little Jupiter, imagining that Burt himself might greet them at the door. The town has grown in size and sophistication in 10 years, and the big stars theatergoers came to expect on BRJT's stage are sticking with films and television -- or limited runs on Broadway, if they decide to do theater at all.
"It has been increasingly more difficult to get stars," Williams said. "We can't be competitive with TV, and the stars' agents haven't been as helpful. this isn't a career-making situation. It's become more money-oriented. Fewer people of that caliber are committed to the theater. The people who came here did it as a gift, to themselves and to the theater. But the community kept after us for stars. They got used to it."
This year, the stars have been Desi Arnaz Jr., Gloria Loring, Rip Taylor, Peter Reckell, Michael O. Smith, Marie Windsor and Avery Schreiber. A change, certainly. Where are the likes of Michelle Pfeiffer and Jeff Goldblum and Gregory Hines? In Central Park, working for Joseph Papp for a few weeks.
The theater's recent final performance was a $100-a-ticket benefit for the Reynolds Institute, which is definitely continuing. Two little pieces of irony, given the BRJT's fortunes of late: The benefit was a sell-out, and it was awash in big-name stars. Reynolds and wife Loni Anderson hosted the evening, which begins with cocktails during the afternoon and continued unti lthe wee hours with a tribute to 10 years of some very fine theater.
And with some tears, no doubt, as a dream came to an end.