Cleveland's Playhouse Square

     Page One Hundred-Seventeen.
     Well, it's official: there's one spot in downtown Cleveland where I can purchase a good hot pretzel.
     On page one hundred-thirteen of this blog I wrote about my displeasure with the current state of  affairs concerning contemporary, American, hot pretzels. However, I mentioned that I did eat a good one recently while downtown at a performance. Well, it happened again at the same location. So, I think I've hit on something here.
     Playhouse Square is here in Cleveland, downtown, at the intersection of East Fourteenth Street and Euclid Avenue. It's a conglomeration of about eight or nine stages with over ten thousand seats. It's the largest theater complex in America outside of Lincoln Center in New York City. The buildings and primary stages were all built in the 1920's at the height of the "movie palace" era though some were intended to be Vaudeville houses, too. The theaters had a great run until the late '60's when they began loosing customers to the suburbs. Then, fires and vandals were a real threat to the buildings and there was serious talk of tearing the buildings down.
     The Playhouse Square Association, a non-profit group, was formed in the early '70's to purchase and save the buildings and stages. Over the next twenty years, The Playhouse Square Association was extremely successful in their renovations and marketing of the venues. So nowadays, you can go down and see visiting Broadway musical productions, dance, Shakespeare, student theater, avante-garde theater, the occasional Rock show, you name it. (One of my brothers tells the story of how he saw the Doors at Playhouse Square in 1968.) Almost any evening of the year you can go down and see two, three or four different wonderful things. Well... maybe not quite that much all the time, but often it really is that much.
     So, right now, and for the next two weeks, they're showing classic movies at the Palace Theater. Last Thursday at the opening night of the 16th annual "Cinema at the Square" they showed Grease. And, not only that, but it was a Grease sing-a-long, with all the lyrics superimposed onto the screen. The Palace is huge, a few thousand seats, and it was packed. It was too fun for words and they served a great hot pretzel.
     I was down at Playhouse Square a few weeks ago when I got the other really great hot pretzel, too. So I think I've hit a gold mine for good hot pretzels. (The play I saw a few weeks ago was awful, but the evening was glorious because of the wonderful pretzel.)  On Sunday, August 11th, at 2PM, I'll be back down there to see Who Framed Roger Rabbit? I can't wait for that hot pretzel!
     (Actually, I have quite a history with the Palace Theater. In the 1990's I was an extra in Cleveland Ballet's version of The Nutcracker for five or six years. So I was on that stage many times. Then in the late-90's I was once in charge of decorating the Palace lobby for a benefit party. It's a stunning, opulent theater. These are two separate stories that I'll share sometime.)