As summer sets in and New Yorkers escape to greener, milder, beachier pastures, Broadway performers are flocking elsewhere: the great, landlocked outdoors of St. Louis, where summers are known for … bugs. Humidity. Unpredictable storms. Oppressive heat.
What draws them there is the Muny, a century-old outdoor musical theater nestled in Forest Park that seats nearly 11,000 a night through a rapid-fire lineup of seven shows in 10 weeks. The experience, according to the actors who return year after year, is worth the elements.
Preparations for the Muny’s 107th season, which begins June 16 with “Bring It On,” are in full swing. A whirlwind week of rehearsals began on Monday, as has been the Muny’s fast and furious way for decades. Only this summer, the process is unfolding with an extra notch in the company’s belt: this year’s regional theater Tony Award.
The honor is certainly a nod to the cast and crew members who put up Broadway-caliber shows in an impossible span of time, seven times in a row. But it’s also a recognition of the significant role the Muny plays in St. Louis — a place where generations of families have spent their summer nights, an institution as synonymous with the city as the Gateway Arch or the Cardinals.
“Everyone has worked so hard, really worked hard, because we believed in what this could be for our community and our audience,” said Mike Isaacson, the Muny’s artistic director and executive producer.
Plenty of locals work onstage and behind the scenes at the Muny. But come June, actors in New York begin their own migration west. “You hear from all of the other Broadway performers, word of mouth, ‘When you’re not doing a Broadway show, where do you want to work in the summer?’” said Jessica Vosk, who has been in Muny productions for the last three summers. “And nine times out of 10, it’s always the Muny.”
Several of this year’s Tony nominees are Muny alumni, including Natalie Venetia Belcon (“Buena Vista Social Club”), Francis Jue (“Yellow Face”) and Julia Knitel (“Dead Outlaw”). Danny Burstein, a nominee for “Gypsy,” and Jeb Brown, a fellow “Dead Outlaw” nominee, have been in roughly a dozen Muny shows each.
“It just feels like you’re shot out of a cannon,” said Burstein, whose first show there was in 1984 — back when tech rehearsals would run overnight, and the actors would all go out to grab breakfast together afterward. “You’re well rehearsed, you’re well prepared. But nothing quite prepares you for this short amount of time.”
The short rehearsal window can be a blessing, though, in the Missouri heat. When Heather Headley played the Witch in a 2015 production of “Into the Woods” — dress and hat and wig and all — the dressers found ways to tuck ice packs into her costume. “I’m from the Caribbean,” she said. “I know heat. But this is different.”
For “Beauty and the Beast” in 2010, Brown was cast as Cogsworth. Others, fur-wise, were not so lucky. “There were certain people who literally, I’m not kidding, wore built-in electric fans in their costumes,” he said. “If you were playing the Beast in ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ you had three or four.”
In a time when regional theaters across the country have struggled, the Muny has fared comparatively well, according to Kwofe Coleman, its president and chief executive. The theater has a loyal subscriber base, not including the thousands of free seats offered at each production, and completed a centennial fund-raising campaign just before the pandemic. (Coleman is a walking example of the Muny’s staying power in the community: He started working as an usher there when he was 16.)
But the award also comes after a tornado tore through Forest Park and the surrounding neighborhoods last month, leveling homes and killing five people in the city. The Muny was fortunate, but not unscathed: There was damage to the far back wall of the main stage, and a smaller preshow stage was completely lost. A tree fell on one of the concession stands.
The Tony comes with $25,000, and Coleman says the Muny plans to give some of that money to other local theaters. Some will also go toward helping its seasonal employees who lost their homes.
“They respect everybody who works for them, left to right, front of house to back of house,” said Patti Murin, who will return for her sixth Muny show this summer (reprising the role of Anna in “Frozen,” which she originated on Broadway). “And you feel that. It makes a difference.”
Nancy Coleman is a senior staff editor.
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