For entire decades, as in the Thirties and Forties, the Spanish rococo theater at 2500 Main Highway was given over to the near-tawdry, serving as a second-run movie house that dispensed grainy Green Hornet episodes. During much of the Seventies, by contrast, the Playhouse produced serious, startling, original drama. In flashes, Miami got what good theater should be - a collection of transcendent on-stage happenings meant to unsettle, not soothe; inspired by and peculiar to a particular time and a unique community.
Between the mundane and the sublime poles of its history, the Playhouse lived through many nights like January 3, 1956. With Marlon Brando and Gypsy Rose Lee in the audience, and Life magazine reporters lurking in the lobby, the curtain rose on the American premiere of Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. The Kentucky oil tycoon who owned the Playhouse expected a smash. But the play, unorthodox in style and serious in content, was inappropriately billed as "the laugh sensation of two continents." Bert Lahr, a burlesque notable, had been chosen as the lead. Miami didn't get it, got up, and walked out.
The opening night of Godot revealed the essential character of the Playhouse. All the defining elements were in place, all the patterns and tendencies that have repeated themselves since the 1950s: A stab at the most serious kind of drama was botched, resulting in financial and critical damage; the audience, appearing somewhat less than open-minded, fueled the myth that Miami is a city of Philistines, a parochial burg where the seeds of art are cast on parched soil; the play's producer, assuming both a paucity of local talent and an overriding need for razzle-dazzle star power, had recruited all his actors from New York; and the landmark three-story Playhouse, coincidental with its function as a community art space, served as a machine for the social aggrandizement of its plutocrat owner.
These days the Playhouse is run by a wealthy board of trustees instead of a wealthy Kentucky oil man, having become, in 1977, the second member of Florida's state theater program. (The Playhouse building, and the land on which it sits, is actually owned by the state and leased to the nonprofit theater company for one dollar per year.) In turn the Playhouse board of trustees has charged Arnold Mittelman with producing plays and running the theater, hoping he will be the one finally to synthesize the forces of commercialism and idealism.
But Mittelman's presence, and the fact that the Playhouse now receives more than $400,000 per year from Florida and Dade County taxpayers, has apparently not freed the theater to pursue much in the way of daring theatrical experimentation - even less so after a disastrous 1989-90 season in which it lost $381,000. Most recently, for example, the Playhouse offered up Forever Plaid, a slick, sentimental 1950s musical revue that's been drifting from city to city since its disgorgement from Broadway.
While Forever Plaid ran during January and February, crowd after crowd of senior citizens and middle-age professionals finished their T-bones at the Taurus Steak House, walked up the street to the theater, and occupied more than three-fourths of the seats for every show. The light musical has surely been a moneymaker, but hardly something to inspire a standing ovation, or to argue about afterward, or to remember next week. It's not meant to be.
Despite a handsome building, high hopes, and a vibrant community, the Coconut Grove Playhouse has always fallen short - sometimes just barely short - of a successful compromise between the basic need to draw a crowd and the more noble and abstract goals of theater as art. Some people are troubled by the failure of Miami's oldest stage to join the ranks of America's most renowned regional playhouses, among them the Long Wharf in New Haven, San Diego's Old Globe, and Actors Theatre of Louisville. Other people, the vast majority, have never set foot in the theater. If noticed at all, the Playhouse is a purely physical presence, a piece of refreshingly aged architecture to be admired while driving through the Grove on Sunday afternoon. It remains as relevant to their lives as the mountains of the moon.
In early 1986 the Playhouse seemed well on its way to greater relevance, thanks to the efforts of its new director. The board of trustees had reason to think of Arnold Mittelman as something of a savior.
In one whirlwind year the tall, bushy-haired Mittelman had awakened the dormant educational program at the Playhouse, and he had energized its floundering fund-raising efforts. When Edward Albee bought a house in Coconut Grove, Mittelman talked the playwright into directing his Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Seascape at the Playhouse. He obtained the rights to Rum and Coke, Keith Reddin's play about the Bay of Pigs invasion. Most important, this silver-tongued son of an accountant convinced the Florida legislature to appropriate an unprecedented $800,000 for Playhouse debt reduction. Plus another $400,000 in the same year for renovation and operating expenses. In appealing to legislators, Mittelman has often had the assistance of the Tallahassee-based lobbying firm Stephen Winn and Associates, spending up to $36,000 annually on such services.
To accomplish these feats, Mittelman could invoke a dark vision of impending financial doom. Several times in its history the Playhouse had flirted with bankruptcy, and in early 1985 it had seemed to be doing so once again. Mittelman's predecessor, the award-winning film and stage thespian Jose Ferrer (who died last month at the age of 80), had left the Playhouse nearly one million dollars in debt following two uninspiring seasons that featured a crippling feud with the local press. The smooth operation of the Playhouse had been shaken six months earlier when trustees fired G. David Black, who handled the theater's business affairs.
Not only was the 50-member Playhouse board of trustees ready for a white knight, they were willing to dip deep into Playhouse coffers to buy one. The board agreed to pay Mittelman more than $100,000 in annual salary, and also kicked in another $1250 per month toward mortgage payments on a spacious Coconut Grove home Mittelman purchased. The director was also given a hefty bonus package, an expense account that allowed for frequent travel, and a Cadillac to drive.
Board members also agreed to Mittelman's demand for control of both the business and artistic sides of the nonprofit corporation, and the somewhat grandiloquent title of producing artistic director. (Typically, nonprofit theaters split the business and artistic functions between two executives of equal power, partly to help assure fiscal accountability.) Mittelman also demanded plenty of leeway to hire and fire whom he wanted. With board approval, he proceeded to hire his business partner at $57,000 per year, an acquaintance from New Jersey for another $57,000, and his wife at $50,000, later casting her in several plays.
Ten years before Playhouse trustees wooed him from afar, flew him to Miami on several occasions, and finally hired him, Mittelman had been driving a Ford Fiesta and putting on plays in the basement of a Baptist church in Montclair, New Jersey. The now-defunct Whole Theater began as a countercultural collective of ten couples committed to community theater. As it grew to a $1.2-million-per-year success, former general manager Larry Feldman says a rift developed between producing director Mittelman and the troupe's artistic director, Olympia Dukakis. Dukakis, who would go on to win an Academy Award for her own acting, was something of a purist, bent on staging "signature works" - classics, ambitious new dramas, or daring reinterpretations of older plays. "Arnold's camp was founded more on a commercial ideology," Feldman recalls. "He was trying to survive, and his idea of survival was trying to change the theater to a more commercial operation."
By the early 1980s Mittelman had acquired the rights to a play called Alone Together. The work was a success at the Whole Theater and Mittelman was determined to reproduce it on Broadway. To this end he formed a for-profit company with Lynne Peyser, a fellow theater enthusiast and the wife of a New Jersey physician. Mittelman/Peyser Productions took Alone Together to Broadway in 1984 for a brief run. Frank Rich, theater critic of the New York
Times, described the sitcom-like play starring Janis Paige and Kevin McCarthy as "so antediluvian that [the playwright] might have titled it My Three Sons Revisited." Rich also said he thought Mittelman had allowed the technical staff to "get away with exceptionally slovenly work."
The formation of the for-profit production company created the impression among some of Mittelman's colleagues that he was using the nonprofit Whole Theater as a testing ground for works that could be parlayed into commercial successes - with he and Peyser as financial beneficiaries. The production of another play, the big, glitzy musical Nobody Starts Out to Be a Pirate, reinforced that impression. Though the production fizzled before reaching Broadway, its run at the Whole Theater made some members of the company wonder at the apparent conflict of interest in Mittelman's would-be dual role of for-profit and nonprofit producer.
According to Feldman, the Whole Theater's board of directors launched an investigation into a production deal Mittelman worked out with the Seagram's Company for funding of Pirate. The board concluded that in both the fiscal and legal senses, there was nothing improper, but let it be known that they considered Mittelman's commercial tendencies incompatible with the direction of the theater. Feldman says the board suggested Mittelman move on.
Ppart Two
Mittelman himself offers a different account of his departure from the Whole Theater, featuring an amicable parting of ways sadly necessitated by his work on Broadway. "At the Whole Theater," says the 47-year-old artistic director, "I certainly was a force for the range and variety and spectrum of repertory theater - musicals, comedies, multiethnicity, new work. I think there was a certain group of people in the Whole Theater who didn't have that range of thinking. With my leaving, that's what remained, and it didn't survive. My vision was, I think, a much broader vision."
Mittelman also does not recall a predawn telephone conversation that Feldman says he remembers, in which Mittelman supposedly screamed recriminations at him, faulting Feldman for talking to the board of directors during its probe of theater finances.
In Miami trustees of the Coconut Grove Playhouse took a shine to their new producing artistic director, but the same can't be said of Arnold Mittelman's colleagues and underlings. Asked to ponder the robust supply of professional acquaintances who are willing to say unkind things about him, Mittelman points out that the theater world is filled with flighty gossips inclined to cast aspersions on anyone more successful than they. Mittelman's critics concede that many of their barbs are opinionated and subjective - they fault Mittelman for a dictatorial management style, an arrogant attitide toward local actors, and a generalized lack of artistic daring. But in some cases, they say, substantive aspects of Mittelman's stewardship of the Playhouse have troubled them.
Several former Playhouse employees claim that during the late 1980s, the Playhouse routinely failed to file annual Internal Revenue Service tax forms for various types of executive income, such as housing allowances, consulting fees, and bonuses. By not reporting the amounts to the federal government via IRS Forms 1099 or on W-2 wage statements, the ex-employees speculate, Mittelman and other top executives positioned themselves to avoid paying taxes on a substantial portion of their incomes. Three former Playhouse business managers say they expressed concern about these practices to executives or trustees on at least three occasions, but claim their worries were glossed over. (Further, since 1987 the Playhouse has regularly failed to report its ongoing use of professional lobbyists on disclosure forms required of nonprofit corporations.)
"I think we all feared having some governmental person or body come in and do some big audit, and then our names be on something," says Montserrat Paradelo, who worked as business office administrator from November 1988 to February 1990. "How much could they hold me accountable? That was always the big fear."
Merle Dowling, a former RKO Pictures executive who served as general manager and director of institutional development from July 1988 to March 1989, says she repeatedly asked Jordan Bock, when he was general manager, to assist her in filling out tax forms on his monthly housing allowances, but that Bock refused. (Bock, who served variously as general manager, fund raiser, and associate producer, and is employed by the Playhouse as a consultant, did not respond to telephone calls seeking comment for this article.) "I became concerned, when preparing year-end reports, that 1099s were not being issued to various individuals receiving sums in excess of $600, as they should have been," Dowling says. "When I moved down here, I was excited about the prospect of working with the Playhouse. I quickly became disillusioned upon discovering that the administration's version of nonprofit regional theater was ethically different from what I knew through both considerable training and experience."
Chris Kawolsky, a former general manager, says he left the Playhouse for a lower-paying job in March 1990 because he was troubled by many of the theater's business and personnel policies. Like Dowling, Kawolsky says he tried on several occasions to prod executives into supplying a more thorough accounting of their expenses and income. At one point, he claims, Jordan Bock explained how disarray in the business office worked to Bock's advantage: the appearance of disorganization made Playhouse finance committee members loath to ask detailed questions of Bock, believing he would be unable to answer them readily.
More generally, ex-employees claim Mittelman and a small clique of fellow executives frequently used funds from the nonprofit, taxpayer-supported Playhouse for their personal vacations and shopping trips, extended themselves interest-free loans from Playhouse coffers, and flaunted their expense-account lifestyles before their underpaid employees. (One business office staffer during the 1989-90 season recalls Bock bragging about a ring the staffer later discovered had been purchased with Playhouse money. "Here we are not getting raises," says the former staffer, who requested anonymity. "We can barely afford to pay the actors. I don't care if he's paying the money back or not. Can you imagine me asking the Playhouse for a car loan?")
Playhouse financial records from April 1989 show Mittelman's wife, Playhouse education director Judith Delgado, getting a $40 massage at the posh Grove Isle Club. They show Mittelman receiving a $200 disbursement recorded as a "cash loan." They show Bock, with whom Mittelman worked at the Whole Theater in New Jersey and brought to Miami in 1985, spending more than $2000 on clothing, shoes, and services at Bloomingdale's in Miami, Saks Fifth Avenue in Palm Beach, Gucci at Bal Harbour, and the Marquesa Hotel in Key West. (The same records show only one $750 repayment on Bock's Playhouse American Express account during a one-year period.) Receipts from November 1989 also show the Playhouse picking up the tab for a $500 red leather jacket purchased at Romanoff, a fancy Grove boutique, and for $1372 in furniture purchased at the Door Store.
Dave Ormstedt, a specialist in public-charities ethics who works with the state attorney general's office in Hartford, Connecticut, calls the practice of extending de facto interest-free loans via Playhouse executive credit cards "highly questionable.... I can't think of any justification for it," says Ormstedt.
After considering a request to review Playhouse tax documents and other financial records, trustees said they would not allow New Times to independently confirm whether various types of executive income had been reported via IRS Forms 1099 or through W-2 statements. This decision, according to Playhouse board secretary Maurice Weiner, was based on an attorney's advice that disclosing such tax documents would be illegal. However, John Schnellmann, an IRS spokesman in Fort Lauderdale, says he knows "of no IRS law that would prohibit a private entity from releasing that kind of information." Board chairman Judith Weiser and finance committee chairman Stan Martin said they thought sharing financial information with the press risked setting a precedent other Miami arts institutions might feel compelled to follow.
Playhouse trustees did volunteer to conduct their own review of executive-income reporting practices, and also to examine several incidents in which Mittelman, Bock, Delgado, and associate producer Lynne Peyser appeared to have used Playhouse funds for personal expenditures or received interest-free cash loans from Playhouse accounts. A written response issued by the board on March 2 contradicts the statements of former Playhouse business office employees, and claims that ancillary executive income such as housing and transportation allowances, bonuses, and consulting fees were in fact properly reported to the IRS. But the response failed to address most of the time period in question, the years from 1985 to 1989. Trustees were willing to produce limited financial information for the past two years only - a period during which, by the trustees' own acknowledgement, a new manager had been hired to reorganize the business office.
"Because of the concerns raised by you," the board wrote, "we engaged our auditors to perform a special review of 1099s and W-2s issued for the past two years to [Mittelman, Bock, Delgado, and Peyser]. Additionally they reviewed that the types of payments identified by you were consistent with the underlying employment and/or contractual agreements. We believe, based on this work, that our overall tax posture is in compliance with IRS rules and regulations."
As for the abuse of funds alleged by former business office employees, trustees said executives did in fact use American Express cards issued by the Playhouse for personal travel, goods, and services in the past, but had paid back all the money - at some point - through payroll deductions. And beginning two years ago, the policy of allowing such personal use of business credit cards had been discontinued. Contrary to the claims of former employees, cash loans were never extended to senior executives, the trustees claimed. Any misperception was probably created by accounting terminology used to describe cash advances. "Playhouse funds that were given to employees as cash advances for business purposes were listed as `loans' until such time as payment was made," the board wrote. "Some time ago, the accounting method was changed, and such items are no longer listed as `loans.'"
Jordan Bock's travel and shopping sprees, and the Grove Isle massage billed to education director Judith Delgado, are examples of personal credit card charges that were paid back, the trustees said. The $500 jacket purchased at Romanoff was used in a production of The Roar of the Greasepaint, the Smell of the Crowd, and was paid for directly by the Playhouse. The $1372 bill from the Door Store was generated by "several pieces of furniture...for use in the artists' housing within the Playhouse building," the board wrote.
Stan Martin, a certified public accountant who heads the board's five-member finance committee, says he does recall meeting with several employees who had complaints about management practices at the Playhouse. "I took it very seriously," Martin recalls. "We talked to our auditors, and made inquiries, and basically didn't think there was much to it." Martin's response echoes the contention of other trustees and of Mittelman - that representatives of the accounting firm Coopers & Lybrand would have brought any financial improprieties to the attention of board members during its annual audit of Playhouse records. Trustees also emphasize that finance committee members review Playhouse financial statements each month. But Chris Kawolsky, a former general manager, says Martin's brief inquiry into the allegations had only one effect - it caused Mittelman to call a staff meeting at which he admonished other employees against complaining directly to board members about Playhouse policy.
Mittelman admonished employees for complaining to board members about Playhouse policy.
Part Three
Mittelman and his supporters on the board of trustees say they believe spite, envy, and an incomplete knowledge of Mittelman's and other executives' employment contracts have prompted the accusations from former employees. That the Playhouse paid $900 each month to Jordan Bock's late father, Max Bock, may have raised the eyebrows of business office employees, but in fact it served the purposes of efficiency: the younger Bock was given a $900-per-month housing allowance as part of his compensation package, and his father happened to be his landlord. Similarly, staffers may not have understood why the Playhouse for years paid $500 per month to associate producer Lynne Peyser toward rent in New Jersey, plus another $1000 per month toward her Grove Isle apartment in Miami. The explanation, say trustees, is that one room of Peyser's New Jersey residence was used as an adjunct office by the theater to house an answering machine and hold occasional casting sessions for New York-based actors. (The Playhouse recently closed its New York-area office.)
Mittelman is quick to acknowledge that the financial affairs of the Playhouse were far from orderly during the mid- and late-1980s. Sloppy bookkeeping may sometimes have given the appearance of impropriety, he says, but this was never intentional. Furthermore, the office has been cleaned up in the past two years, Mittelman claims. "There is no current employee in the business office who was here in April 1989," he points out. "Why is that? They weren't good enough, quite frankly. They didn't get it, they weren't able to keep up as the volume of work increased.
"Keep in mind we are just now getting fully computerized," Mittelman adds. "We've instituted what I consider to be the current state-of-the-art - albeit a pain in the ass - accounting process. It's very good for the institution, and very important for the responsibility we have to the public and public funds. It would be fair to say that [Playhouse bookkeeping practices] at a certain point in time, were vague - but never dishonest."
Mittelman, in characteristic colorful style, suggests his detractors find something better to do. "I don't know how it is in your business, but the arts are full of what we call the yenta squad - it's a Jewish expression for people sitting around kvetching," he says in a thick New York accent. "You know this expression: `It's not enough for me to succeed - you have to fail, too.'"
Jose Ferrer, Mittelman's predecessor, was roundly criticized by the local press for hiring family members to direct and star in his productions. Mittelman calls that reaction to theatrical nepotism "stupid," suggesting that many great repertory theaters have been based on the special bond that develops among family and long-time friends. The perception that Mittelman has established an arrogant, spendthrift clique comprising himself, his wife, and two close associates is similarly small-minded, he contends. (Along with Jordan Bock, Judith Delgado and Lynne Peyser would not respond to telephone calls during the preparation of this story.)
The larger question of whether Mittelman's compensation package is excessive - currently roughly $150,000 per year paid to a single individual by a nonprofit, taxpayer-supported theater - will surely remain a subject of debate at the Playhouse. (Mittelman, on the advice of an attorney, declined to allow New Times to examine his contract.) Mittelman does point out that the sum is lower than that received by directors of other large cultural institutions in Miami. If he wants to be compared with those who earn more than he does, Mittelman is placing himself in illustrious company. In the fiscal year 1989-90 the Playhouse's tax form indicated he earned $101,124, plus a $14,000 bonus and his housing allowance. That year Michael Tilson Thomas earned $296,000 as artistic director of the New World Symphony - but he was also the orchestra's principal conductor. Famed dancer Edward Villella, the artistic director of the Miami City Ballet, received $200,000 in 1989-90. On the other hand, Judy Drucker, president of the Concert Association of Greater Miami (since renamed the Concert Association of Florida), received $100,000 that year. And Robert Heuer, general manager of the Greater Miami Opera, earned only $90,000, with no perquisites other than a company car. (The executive director of the Asolo Center for the Performing Arts in Sarasota - like the Playhouse a nonprofit state theater, with a comparable, five-million-dollar budget - is paid $75,000 in flat salary. He gets the use of a company car, but no bonuses or additional perks.)
Alvin Davis, the Miami attorney who represented the interests of the Playhouse in the original contract negotiations with Mittelman, defends the compensation package as reasonable. "He was coming down to take over a theater that was in pretty sorry condition," says Davis. "In its current position, I might negotiate different terms for the Playhouse, but you have to look at the circumstances. My view was that we were in dire circumstances when Arnold came on. He came down and worked eighteen hours a day, seven days a week to turn it around. Is it a fair compensation package? The answer is yes. If Arnold hadn't come in and done the job he did, the theater wouldn't be here. You tell me what compensation that deserves."
Fred Orenstein, a spokesman for the Professional Actors Association of Florida and a regional representative for Actors Equity, has publicly criticized the Coconut Grove Playhouse for years, writing to Florida Secretary of State Jim Smith, calling Gov. Lawton Chiles, speaking out at meetings of the Dade Cultural Affairs Council, demanding meetings with Playhouse board members.
He is among the many who believe the Playhouse has failed in what should be one of the chief goals of a regional theater: to provide local actors, directors, and playwrights a place to hone their talents. Though the statutes that govern state-supported cultural institutions do not require a quota of local talent, the spirit of the law certainly calls for it. "We emphasize that the state theaters should certainly give priority to Florida-based artists," explains Judy Pettijohn of the state Cultural Affairs Council. "That's not to say that they can't bring someone in from outside, but we certainly like them to give priority to local residents. It's not a requirement, but a strong encouragement."
"It galls us that a state-supported institution, a regional institution, does not in fact hire Florida actors," says Orenstein, citing recent Playhouse productions of The Roar of the Greasepaint, Matador, The Big Love (starring Tracey Ullman), Shirley Valentine (with Loretta Swit), Once Upon a Song, and a giddy revue of Chita Rivera ditties as examples of a theater totally disconnected from the local scene. "I and a lot of other local actors have pretty much given up on the Playhouse. The board sees the Playhouse as an ornament. Their interest is in bringing in big-name performers and packaged shows that are cast out of New York. Mittelman is clearly acting like any other commercial entrepreneur, but under the guise of a state-supported institution."
Deborah Simon, Playhouse production manager from 1988 until May 1991, says it is a common belief among the staff that Mittelman's purported commercial ambitions jibe nicely with the board's desires for the Playhouse to be nationally recognized. "They're looking for the project that will take them to New York so they can be Broadway producers," she notes. "That's the hidden agenda, and it's not really so hidden. I think most of the staff recognizes that, and they have no particular loyalty to the Playhouse." Simon also claims it was arrogance on the part of Playhouse executives that helped push its technical staff into the arms of union representatives in the past year.
"I'm fed up not just with the fact that Mittelman won't employ local talent, I'm fed up with the fare he keeps bringing here," says Joseph Adler, who directed The Shadow Box at the Playhouse and won a Carbonnell Award two seasons before Mittelman came to town. "A regional theater should be doing cutting-edge stuff. We have the potential to become one of the most important regional theaters in the country, and we've got Arnold Mittelman standing in the way."
"The way a theater community gets on the map is by developing new local talent in directing, acting, and writing," says a former Playhouse employee who worked closely with Mittelman. "Doing revivals of pieces that have already been done better elsewhere isn't ultimately going to do anything for Miami's reputation. Mittelman is running a road house; he's duplicating what TOPA and the Broward Center for the Performing Arts are doing. What we need is someone who is developing more than tried-and-true box office successes. If you've got a state theater that's also supported by contributions, you ought to be less worried about selling tickets and take some more risks. As it is, we're looked upon as a sort of cruise ship on terra firma."
While Mittelman concedes that few leading roles on the main stage of the Playhouse go to local actors, he defends his approach as serving the ultimate goal of theatrical excellence. The world of regional theater, he says, has changed significantly from what it was just a few years ago, and has led to misunderstanding about what he's up to. "One part of what I believe in and do has the ability to be very popular and commercially successful," Mittelman notes. "The people who don't understand the breadth of what I'm about may judge me by their limitations, and make accusations as a result of that. Not-for-profit theater in America, not-for-profit regional theater, has become as wide-ranging, and correctly so, as the Goodspeed Opera House, which now has launched three or four major musicals for Broadway on direct transfer. The definition of not-for-profit theater over the last ten years has become so radically diverse and so unique unto its own institution, that when we all get together, my colleagues and I, it's very rarely that you see too many direct patterns."
Trustees of the Coconut Grove Playhouse, however, recently acknowledged they are attempting to draw the theater closer to a well-established national pattern. They are looking for a new managing director for the institution, someone to take over the business-side operations. The new structure would leave Mittelman with half his former responsibilities, radically readjusting the management formula of the Playhouse. Then again, the trustees also noted that they have been searching for someone to fill the position on and off for six years.
