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“I realized that the last missing piece was the energy,” said Herzig the day after the event. “I felt like the Energizer Bunny yesterday.”
On Friday the Huntington Theatre will throw open its doors for the first time since the spring of 2020, with the first performance of August Wilson’s “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.” The late playwright enjoyed a long, fruitful relationship with the Huntington. In a special dedication on Oct. 19, the theater will unveil the naming of its lobby after Wilson, who died in 2005.
“There’s no question about the most significant artistic relationship the Huntington has ever had,” said longtime managing director Michael Maso in a Zoom interview. “There is no second place.
“He spent so much time in that lobby. He was so publicly engaged with people. He was a person of enormous energy and appeal. He filled that space.”
For the theater overall, that’s the plan for the upcoming season and almost 100 more. In a deal crafted with developer QMG Huntington LLC, with the help of the administration of former mayor Marty Walsh, the Huntington will also occupy the first two floors of the proposed apartment tower set to break ground next door. When that work is completed, it will give the theater a welcoming new 14,000-square-foot lobby with a bar, cafe, and performance-space options. While the Huntington owns the theater outright, it will lease the to-be-built lobby for $1 for 100 years.
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Under the direction of the architectural firm Bruner/Cott, the refurbished theater includes all-new HVAC and electrical wiring, new all-gender bathrooms, and the return of the original terrace on the front of the building. What was previously an alley along the side of the building is now an enclosed, arcade-style addition accommodating a universal design entrance and a second-floor gallery.
All of the ornate, leaf-themed trim around the building has been carefully restored. To accommodate more leg room, the seating capacity has been reduced from 890 to 734. The theater has been repainted in a deep shade called Narragansett Green, with its domed ceiling painted gold.
The comprehensive makeover was long overdue, Maso said.
“We were holding it together with chewing gum by the end,” he joked.
Despite the effects of the pandemic, the Boston area is in the midst of a theater boom, with plans underway for new stages in the Seaport and Kendall Square and a new home for the American Repertory Theater in Allston.
“It is sort of the golden age of quality, range, diversity, and daring of the performing arts in Boston,” said Maso. He noted that Boston added no new purpose-built theater between 1925 (when Henry Jewett opened the Huntington’s predecessor) and 2004, when the Huntington expanded its operation to include the Calderwood Pavilion in the South End.
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“That’s bizarre,” he said. “There was just no investment.”
As it has done at the Calderwood, the Huntington intends to collaborate with smaller production companies around the city at its newly reopened crown jewel.
“We’re going to continue to be great neighbors and partners with the rest of the cultural community,” Maso said. “We’ll put that on overdrive once we get the east wing” — the new lobby next door.
The Huntington also has a “west wing,” a rehearsal space and ballroom that was used for years by BU’s theater department. With work being completed on huge windows that were covered over years ago, the ballroom has been renamed the Michael Maso Studio.
“I am equally embarrassed and honored by it,” said Maso, who celebrates his 40th anniversary at the Huntington this year. The company’s board of directors raised $5 million in second gifts to support the naming. “To me, that makes it worth it,” he said.
Built in 1925 as the first nonprofit theater building in the United States, the Repertory Theatre was the brainchild of the Boston theater legend Jewett, whose portrait as Macbeth hangs in the lobby. Billed as “America’s Civic Playhouse,” the theater was forced to close its doors when the stock market crashed in 1929.
Boston University bought the building in 1955 and used it mostly to stage student productions. The Huntington Theatre Company was founded in 1982 and incorporated as an independent nonprofit four years later.
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In February of this year, the company hired Loretta Greco as the fourth artistic director (and the first woman in the role) in its history. She previously spent 12 years with San Francisco’s Magic Theatre, which had a long-running relationship with the playwright Sam Shepard, much like the Huntington’s association with Wilson.
Greco feels fortunate that she’s arriving in time for the debut of the Huntington renovation.
“It feels like Christmas morning,” she said. “This is a moment to celebrate this incredible building and the miraculous accomplishment of the board.”
Then she echoed the sentiment of her colleague Herzig, the venue manager: “It’s people that make theaters.”
The new artistic director sat in recently on an early run-through of “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.”
“The room was giddy with joy,” she reported. “I’ve never seen a company so damn happy.”
E-mail James Sullivan at jamesgsullivan@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @sullivanjames.
