In the early days, when his grandfather had to sign the legal papers for his theater because he was under age, William Pullinsi was just Billy. He was, even then, a prodigious producer and director, but he was also a kid from the southwest suburbs, dressed in pink and black greaser wear, who was a freshman at Catholic University in Washington, D.C.
He had been graduated from St. Procopius Academy in Lisle with no intention of working in theater, and his opinion of anybody who did was,
”He`s crazy.” When he went away to college, however, he discovered, quite unexpectedly, that he wanted to be a director in the theater; and in the summer of 1959, he and his friend Anthony D`Angelo, a fellow Catholic U. student who was planning to become an electrical engineer, opened a summer theater operation in conjunction with a banquet hall in Washington. They produced 9 shows in 12 weeks, in the process launching the nation`s first recorded instance of serving meals and producing plays in the same dining room-theater space.
Two years later, on July 7, 1961, while he was still going to college, Pullinsi brought the concept of dinner-theater to an old multi-purpose building his grandfather, William Altier, owned at 5508 S. Archer Ave. and, to attract early customers, offered a package of chicken dinner and comedy for $3.95.
His idea of show business action at that time was Rush Street, but the space his grandfather gave him was in Summit; so, picking a name that sounded theatrical to him, he set up shop and called the 112-seat theater Candlelight Dinner Playhouse.
After opening with the romantic comedy ”The Moon Is Blue,” he ran each show there for a month, directing all of them, and on Saturday mornings, he put on a puppet show for children. Occasionally, he also would fill in for an actor.
Everybody chipped in. June Pullinsi, his mother, did everything from working the steam table in the kitchen to rewriting dialogue and helping direct rehearsals while Billy was doing postgraduate work at the Goodman School of Drama. D`Angelo even took on a bit part or two–and missed his cues, Pullinsi insists. Gramps Altier, who was the theater`s major financial backer until his death in 1972, would greet customers at the door and lead the applause for the curtain calls.
Unpretentious as these beginnings were, they have resulted in a singular success story and an impressive history of production in Chicago-area theater, a history that will be observed Monday night with a celebratory dinner at the current, 550-seat Candlelight, located since 1964 at 5620 S. Harlem Ave. in Summit.
The occasion will be marked by speeches, toasts, awards, a special commemorative program and a slide show of scenes from Candlelight`s history. Dozens of performers who played Candlelight will be there to massage memories, and finally, there will even be a few words from Billy Pullinsi himself.
Low-key, to say the least, when called upon to make a speech, Pullinsi really has no need to be loquacious. His track record is eloquent enough.
In his quarter-century here at Candlelight and the adjacent Forum Theatre, he has staged long-run productions of sure-fire musicals, such as
”Man of La Mancha,” ”Hello, Dolly” and ”Fiddler on the Roof” (whose 21-month engagement holds the Candlelight record), and light comedies, such as ”The Tender Trap” and ”Mary, Mary.”
But along with these bread-and-butter productions that could be staples of any commercial theater operation, Pullinsi`s Candlelight served up much spicier and more exotic fare, such as Edward Albee`s dark view of suburbia,
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”Everything in the Garden,” Barbara Garson`s savage political satire
”MacBird,” and Murray Schisgal`s oddball comedy ”Jimmy Shine.”
Long before Chicago`s vaunted off-Loop, nonprofit theater movement was making national news, Candlelight was offering these highly risky
presentations because, Pullinsi says, ”I thought if I liked them, everybody would. If I love `MacBird,` they`re all going to love it.”
This may seem naive, but it is a key part of the reason for Pullinsi`s success in theater. When in doubt, he has trusted and gone with his own instincts and tastes; and, once having decided on a project, he has produced it with all the crafstmanship he could command.
In so doing, he often has gone against the advice of experts who have told him, at one time or another, to stay away from serving meals and to stick to proven box-office successes. When one such expert advised him to concentrate on Neil Simon comedy hits, Pullinsi ruefully had to inform him that he was doing Simon (”The Sunshine Boys”), and that it was not a hit.
Through the years, Pullinsi has misfired, and he has seemed tired and second-hand in some of his shows. The Forum, built at a cost of $350,000 and opened with high expectations in 1972, when ”Fiddler” next door was big at the box office, ran into the mid-`70s recession and its own expensive ambitions, forcing Pullinsi and D`Angelo to close it down in early 1976 as a second production base and use it primarily as a rental house for other producers. (Two such rental shows, ”Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up?” and ”E/R Emergency Room” became long-run hits at the Forum.)
At Candlelight`s best, however, Pullinsi and D`Angelo have used their space with remakable insight, energy and economy.
When they were planning the Candlelight building in 1964, for example, D`Angelo says, ”I hated the idea of in-the-round staging,” which meant stagehands running up and down the aisles with furniture for quick, skimpy set changes. So he conceived and designed a hydraulic elevator, whereby elaborate settings could be raised and lowered from the basement. It cost about one-third of the building`s $350,000 construction cost, but, along with the use of fly space, allowing scenery to be lowered from the ceiling, it made possible the production of such future Candlelight musical extravaganzas as ”Follies” and ”Nine.”
To this day, D`Angelo, Pullinsi and choreographer Brian Lynch set the basic design for every production weeks before the cast ever steps on stage, and when work finally begins, D`Angelo says, ”We have them working on the actual set, or as close to it as we can make it.”
Almost all Candlelight productions are rehearsed within two weeks, and, Pullinsi swears that ”Nine,” his triumphant 1985 remounting of the Broadway musical, was ready in a week and a half.
”Of course, you rework or revise things a little when you actually get the cast in rehearsal,” Pullinsi says, ”but it`s a luxury to let the actors find their own way to their roles, and we don`t have that luxury.”
To get the best results for his money, Pullinsi sometimes picks up original settings and costumes for a song. For $6,000, he bought the complex, mechanical setting of ”Company” for his own Chicago-area premiere production of the Stephen Sondheim musical in 1972, and for a similarly low price, he acquired the original, exquisite costumes of last year`s ”Nine.”
This meticulous planning and pre-planning, best exemplified by Pullinsi`s faithful reproduction of the National Theatre of Great Britain`s original presentation of Peter Nichols` ”The National Health” at the Forum in 1972, has earned him some mild scorn by local theater professionals, who consider such work merely elaborate mimicry.
Time after time, however, Pullinsi, in such shows as his ”Evita” and the current production of ”Little Shop of Horrors,” has added significant improvements to his version of the original staging; and in the American premiere of ”The National Health,” a demanding show with a cast of 26 actors, he gave Chicago actors and audiences a rare production of a major theater work. (The play remains Pullinsi`s favorite among the approximately 130 shows he has staged at Candlelight and the Forum in his 25 years here.)
Today, at 46, Pullinsi has settled down comfortably as a family man, living with his wife, actress Ami Silvestre, and son Jamie in Evanston and commuting to Summit.
There have been times when he considered setting up other Candlelights in other suburbs, but now, he says, ”I don`t have the passion to produce I once had, and besides, construction costs are so high.” But then, he adds, ”Of course, something could always turn up.”
He does hope to take some of the Candlelight hits, including ”Little Shop,” to a downtown theater, and he is saving those delicate ”Nine”
costumes in hopes of producing the show again.
Candlelight`s achievements are many. It has survived the stigma of being considered a form of bastard theater in a remote southwest suburb (actually, as near to downtown Chicago as Evanston is) to become an operation of high craftsmanship and occasional artistry.
Very early on, in the days when he had to hold the touring star`s dog while she was on stage, Pullinsi learned to dislike the problems of dealing with ”stars” in his productions and chose instead to work with a solid core of local actors whose work he knew and liked. He says, ”I felt a resident company would give me a shot at doing a better production.” In so doing, he was among the first here to stick with Chicago-area talent for his year-round resident theater.
Most of all, Pullinsi and D`Angelo believe, ”Candlelight brought people into the theater who otherwise never would have come.”
Once they were in the theater, moreover, Pullinsi made sure that he gave his audiences the best show he was capable of producing. That was the high standard he created for himself, and it is the standard his audiences
–whatever their theatrical sophistication–have come to expect.