Historic Waterfront Theaters and Their Upcoming Productions

By Donald H. Sanborn III

On opposite sides of the Delaware River are historic theaters that continue to nourish a thriving performing arts scene: Bucks County Playhouse, located in New Hope, Pa., and Music Mountain Theatre in Lambertville, which sits near the property that used to be the home of the Lambertville Music Circus.

Beach Haven’s equally historic oceanside Surflight Theatre continues to be a staple of the Jersey Shore’s summer scene. Near Surflight is the Show Place Ice Cream Parlour, where theatergoers can enjoy ice cream, along with singing waitstaff, before or after a show.

These theaters all have something in common: they have origins (in the case of Music Mountain Theatre, a predecessor’s origins) as a summer stock company. All three venues now offer productions throughout the year, but they promise summertime events to keep theatergoers entertained over these next few months.

Bucks County Playhouse exterior. (Wikipedia)

Bucks County Playhouse

Bucks County Playhouse (BCP) has been producing concerts and theatrical works for almost 90 years. Co-founded in 1939 by St. John Terrell (who also founded the Lambertville Music Circus a decade later), orchestrator Don Walker, playwright Kenyon Nicholson, and actor Richard Bennett, BCP has helped launch the careers of many luminaries. Among them have been Grace Kelly, Robert Redford, Rob Reiner, and Audra McDonald.

Walker and his colleagues partnered with the Hope Mill Association, a group of “public-spirited people” who had bought the mill. The playhouse was built on the site of the New Hope Mills. Constructed in 1790, the gristmill gave the town of New Hope its name. The playhouse was going to be named the New Hope Theatre; Walker’s recollection was that his wife Audrey suggested calling it the Bucks County Playhouse.

BCP’s outgoing Producing Director Alex Fraser told me in 2017, “The founding mission of the playhouse was to give young new playwrights a chance to spread their wings. Of course, it quickly became famous for star-driven summer stock productions. In some cases they were new plays, and some were beloved chestnuts. I think originally the productions just were plays, but … musicals were added as time went on.”

Notable productions have featured playwrights Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman performing in their The Man Who Came to Dinner (1941); Helen Hayes in Alice Sit-By-The-Fire (1946); Thornton Wilder in his plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth (1948); the pre-Broadway tryout of The Fourposter (1951), starring Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn; and the first stock production of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun (1961). In 1980 Eartha Kitt performed two sold-out concerts. More recently, James Earl Jones and Tyne Daly performed benefit readings of Love Letters (2012).

BCP has faced its share of challenges. Its website notes that in 2010 it shut down after “a devastating flood and bankruptcy proceedings.” Kevin and Sherri Daugherty’s Bridge Street Foundation bought the theater out of bankruptcy, funding a multimillion-dollar resurrection of the theater. 

Fraser joined the company in 2014, along with Executive Producer Robyn Goodman and Producer Josh Fiedler. In a Zoom interview, Fraser admits that when his tenure started, “I didn’t know what the community wanted. I frankly wasn’t sure what I wanted. You have to get your feet wet to figure out what’s good. Over time, we eased into it. The one thing that was important to us was the quality of the work. In the beginning, we did some plays that we loved that we thought were going to be great but frankly didn’t engage the audience. The first few years were tough, and we weren’t financially viable.”

That changed with Fraser’s third season, when “we did Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story. Overnight, suddenly the theater attracted three times the audiences that we’d been attracting to a show.  I didn’t have a particular interest in Buddy Holly; I’d love to do Shakespeare! But Buddy is a great show — I was underestimating it.”

The BCP’s productions this summer include two musicals of differing styles and eras: Rodgers & Hammerstein’s 1949 South Pacific (June 18-July 26) and Jonathan Larson’s 1996 Rent (August 13-September 13).

“It’s so interesting how popular music changed,” Fraser reflects, observing the contrast between the two shows’ musical styles. “It’s wonderful to be able to do such different shows. South Pacific, people my age would take their children or grandchildren to and expose them to something that they don’t know. But Rent, the kids and the grandkids want to see because they know it. It’s a wonderful balance, because nobody wants to see the same thing over and over.”

On March 17, the Bucks County Herald reported that Broadway veteran BT McNicholl was named BCP’s new producing artistic director. He succeeds Fraser, Goodman, and Fiedler, all of whom step down this month. As a director, McNicholl served on the creative team of a dozen Broadway shows including Spamalot, Billy Elliot, and Cabaret. A BMI Award-winning writer, his musicals have played off-Broadway, on national tour, in regional theaters, and at Madison Square Garden.

McNicholl is in the process of selecting productions for the 2027-2028 season. Asked about his vision for BCP, he says, “Alex has said, and I tend to agree, that the vision is what’s on stage. But I would also say that I’m standing on the shoulders of some pretty terrific producers: Alex Fraser, Robyn Goodman, and Josh Fiedler. And so my aim is to really continue the trajectory of what they’ve started and carry the torch forward, as it were, into the future — using what they’ve already done as a template for success.”

He adds, “It’s one of the oldest and most beloved theaters in the country; it’s nationally known. Readers and audiences should know that they have a famous theater in their midst that’s nationally recognized. It has launched the careers of any number of legendary artists — that will continue to happen here.”

For more about Bucks County Playhouse, visit bcptheater.org.

Lambertville Music Circus, Music Mountain Theatre

The Music Circus was established in Lambertville in 1949. Founded by actor and impresario St. John (“Sinjin”) Terrell, the company offered summer stock productions of light operas and operettas — staged in the round, under a circus-style tent located on grounds Terrell named Music Mountain.

In the 1950s the Music Circus began staging musicals such as Show Boat and Brigadoon, in addition to operettas like The Merry Widow. This trend continued in the early to mid-1960s — for example, the company staged The Sound of Music in 1965, the same year that the film opened — but in its final year concerts were the primary fare, bringing in artists such as Doc Severinsen and the NBC Tonight Orchestra, as well as The Four Seasons, Fleetwood Mac, and Ike and Tina Turner.

Nearly 50 years after the Music Circus’ closure in 1970, another venue opened adjacent to the grounds where the tent once stood. Technically, the Music Mountain Theatre (MMT) does not sit on the original Music Mountain — that property is now occupied by private residences (though street names such as Music Mountain Boulevard and Terrell Road recall the original venue’s history).

Nevertheless, the new theater resides close enough to the original property to use the name in tribute to its predecessor. Music Mountain Theatre was founded by Executive Producer Ginny Brennan; her son, Producing Director Jordan Brennan; and Artistic Director Louis Palena.

“The three of us all met while working at the Bucks County Playhouse,” says Palena, who is married to Jordan Brennan, in a Zoom interview. He adds that for varying reasons, the trio left BCP.

Beautiful. (Courtesy of MMT)

MMT’s website explains that the fledgling company “began as Downtown PAC in 2001, offering classes and performances in local venues. In 2010, we took up residence at the Washington Crossing Open Air Theater, where we produced more than 150 shows as Curtain Up Productions. We moved into our own venue and opened our doors on October 6, 2017, as Music Mountain Theatre and The Theatre School at MMT.”

The website notes that the company’s “mission is to enrich, educate, and entertain our community through the study, performance, and appreciation of the arts.”

“First and foremost, we like to say that we are theater for the community, by the community,” Palena says. “‘Community theater’ can sometimes have a negative connotation connected to it. Because we (my husband and I) both worked as professional performers kind of all over the country … we really try to focus on giving the community as professional an experience as we can — not just for the patrons, but it’s for the performers as well.”​

The Scarlet Pimpernel. (Courtesy of MMT)

Palena clarifies that MMT’s budget does not yet allow for actors to be paid. “We are, on paper, community theater.” But the company is more active than many community theaters — “we run 50 weeks out of the year, nonstop — we’re basically running on a summer stock schedule year-round.”

He draws attention to MMT’s community outreach. “We are always at the Shad Festival in Lambertville; and we work with Fisherman’s Mark,” an organization that provides food, education, and social services to those in need. He adds, “We also had our first Dramatic and Performing Arts Conference, where some high schools come to compete and show” segments of “their shows.”

This summer MMT will present My Fair Lady (June 12-July 5), Urinetown (July 10-August 2), and The Will Rogers Follies (August 7-30).

Palena looks forward to directing My Fair Lady (1956), which “I like to be very traditional,” he says. “There are shows that I feel don’t need much help because they’re perfect the way they are. if you are looking through a current lens at an old show, of course there are going to be things that maybe don’t line up with how we’re living today and how we’ve evolved. However, … it’s especially important for young people to understand that when these shows were written, what they were doing was progressive.”

Urinetown (2001) will be directed by John Fisher. “He’s performed for us a few times; this will be his directorial debut here,” Palena says. He describes the show as “something different and strangely topical — we’re hoping it will resonate.”

Referring back to MMT’s mission, Palena especially wants audiences to know that “if you come in here and you see a show, then you become part of the family. We hope that you will come back, and we hope that you will linger in the lobby and say hi to the actors afterwards and give us input on what you liked and what you didn’t like. We are always striving to do better and do the best that we can. So come and see something — and challenge yourself to see something that maybe you don’t know if you’ll like. Maybe you’ll be surprised!”

For more about Music Mountain Theatre, visit musicmountaintheatre.org.

42nd Street. (Courtesy of Surflight Theatre)

Surflight Theatre

Located in Beach Haven, Surflight Theatre was founded in 1950 by Joseph P. (“Joe”) Hayes, a businessman and actor who also worked as an assistant stage manager for the Ice Capades and a technical supervisor for Ringling Bros. Circus.

Not unlike the Lambertville Music Circus, Surflight Theatre initially staged its productions in a tent (during its first year). After changing venues four times, in 1954 the company moved to indoor premises when Hayes rented a mechanics’ garage (which he purchased in 1967).

The realization of Hayes’ vision for the company was made possible by his business partner, T. Scott Henderson, and by Eleanor Miller, whose services to the company included, but were not limited to, sewing costumes, driving Hayes to meetings, and feeding the casts three meals a day.

Another brainchild of Hayes and Henderson is the nearby Show Place Ice Cream Parlour, which opened in 1975. Designed to recall ice cream parlors of the 1950s, replete with candy-stripe costumes, the establishment offers refreshments that have theater-inspired names including Oliver’s Twist and A Chorus Line Split.

In the lavishly illustrated Joe’s Dream: The Magic of Surflight Theatre, Fay Austin and Al Parinello write that in the early years, “Surflight offered ten different shows each Summer; six performances of a new show every week. In the beginning revue shows were offered, but a selection of plays and popular Broadway musicals were added to the performance schedule.”

Notable performers who are alumni of Surflight include Beaches author and librettist Iris Dart; stage and television actor Richard Kind; writer, performer, and broadcaster Seth Rudetsky; and actress and dancer Charlotte D’Amboise.

The 22 years following Hayes’ untimely death in 1976 saw what Austin and Parinello describe as a “rotating cadre of directors and producers.” Eventually, Henderson determined that the company needed a full-time “artistic director and a production manager committed to taking the theater to the next level.”

Producing Artistic Director Steve Steiner — a former Broadway actor — and his wife Gail Anderson (whose titles include associate artistic director, production manager, and press director) have been with Surflight since 1998, with one interruption in the former’s tenure.

One of Steiner’s first decisions was to operate the theater as a nonprofit arts organization, Joseph P. Hayes Theater Inc. Steiner recounts that the new entity’s accomplishments include “growing the theater from a main stage attendance of under 24,000 annually to in 2009 up to 52,000,” increasing “children’s theater from about 15,000 to 20,000 annually,” and adding “programs that they didn’t have before, like concerts and comedy.”

Despite these achievements, in 2010 the board decided that they wanted a change in leadership (Steiner describes this as “executive director fatigue”). Steiner says, “Over four years they had three different executive directors and dwindled their main stage attendance back down under 23,000 and went bankrupt twice and closed.”

Steiner convinced Al Parinello (a veteran Broadway producer whose credits include The Fantasticks) to purchase the theater out of bankruptcy. “It was December 2016. Al likes to say I ruined his Christmas, as he spent much of the holiday season researching Surflight Theatre’s history,” Steiner says in Joe’s Dream. Nevertheless, Surflight reopened in June 2017.

Asked about the central factors that drive artistic choices, Steiner tells me, “We have several different audiences and different demographics at different times. Of the year in late spring and early summer (like before July 4th) it’s largely groups and some locals, and the groups are coming from all over the place. This year we’ll have probably 400 groups, averaging 37 people per group. They come from Staten Island, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and all over New Jersey. And they usually come by bus.”

Surflight’s productions for this summer include the classic musical Guys & Dolls (June 18-July 5); Young Frankenstein (July 7-26); and Pretty Woman: The Musical (July 28-August 16). Later in August (20-29) the theater will commemorate the 250th anniversary of the U.S. with the musical 1776. Steiner notes that the latter show will be staged with traditional casting, in contrast to the style of the 2022 Broadway revival.

Referring to the other upcoming productions, Steiner says, “Guys and Dolls has not been here at Surflight since before I was here, so it seemed ripe for a revival. We try to do one of the Golden Age shows every year.” The production of Young Frankenstein will be Surflight’s first staging of that musical; Steiner believes that both that show and Pretty Woman will appeal to vacationers nostalgic for the respective films on which those recent musicals are based.

Steiner emphasizes that Surflight Theatre is the “fifth largest professional theater in New Jersey, and most people that have not been here think, ‘Oh, that must be a community theater.’ And it’s not. It’s a professional Equity Theatre. It’s fifth largest in terms of attendance as well as in terms of budget. And the level of quality that is produced on our stage is almost always surprising in a very good way to the first-time visitor.”

For more about Surflight Theatre, visit surflight.org.