Even though the Martinique Drury Lane is one of the most successful banquet-theater facilities anywhere in the country, its youthful owners, the Lazzara brothers, can hardly be accused of resting on their laurels.
On any Saturday night, John is at the maitre d`s booth, personally greeting long lines of hungry visitors as they stroll through the front door. Younger brother Raymond can be found in the massive kitchen, inspecting each plateful of food himself-and there can be as many as 2,000 in a night-before it passes on to one of the nine dining rooms.
Drury Lane has been an Evergreen Park landmark virtually since it was built by the legendary theater entreprenuer Anthony De Santis in 1954. But by the time De Santis, preoccupied by his newer Drury Lane Oakbrook Terrace, was ready to sell four years ago, the dowager facility was looking a bit frayed around the edges. Theater attendance had fallen to anemic levels, the beef-laden menu had grown dull, and the clientele had narrowed to a largely senior-citizen profile.
The place needed a facelift, and that`s just what the two Lazzaras, together with older brother James, a local dentist who is a silent partner, have provided. They`ve given the menu fresh pizzazz by adding seafood dishes, installed a new management team, replaced everything from the drapes to the carpet and, most importantly, brought the theater back to profitable status.
The public has responded enthusiastically. Revenues have nearly doubled since the Lazzara takeover on March 1, 1988. You want a big Saturday night banquet in the Martinique Restaurant and Banquet Complex? The current wait is two years for an opening. The place is so busy that John, 42, who has just announced that he is getting married for the first time, is struggling to find an open slot for himself on an upcoming Sunday, an otherwise off night for lesser halls.
”Drury Lane put Evergreen Park on the map,” declared Anthony Vacco, the village`s mayor for 24 years. ”The Lazzaras have made a lot of changes, but you have to be willing to change to meet new standards. They have great insight into what it takes to be successful in the business today. They`re always looking ahead.”
At the same time, other traditions remain strongly intact. De Santis always believed that dinner-theater ought to be a dual experience: Feed your patrons in the dining room and then march them into an honest-to-goodness theater for the show. Competing complexes such as Candlelight Dinner Playhouse in Summit and Pheasant Run Theatre in St. Charles elected to do both in the same room, with clinking coffee cups an occasional distraction to the movement on stage. The Lazzaras endorse the De Santis format without hesitation.
More Top Picks Instant Pots
”I don`t want our guests sitting here watching a show with dirty plates still sitting in front of them,” said Ray, 40, who manages the food and beverage half of the business. ”Eating and theater should be in separate rooms.” Brother John, who has grown into the role of theater impresario, agrees.
In fact, the two say they hardly ever disagree, which is surely a key to their longstanding success together. They`ve been running restaurants and banquet facilities for almost two decades together and, according to John, who carries the title of chief executive officer (Ray is president of the corporation), the two haven`t had a single argument in all that time.
”When I`m gone and Ray has to make a decision, he makes the same decision I`d make 95 percent of the time,” John said proudly. ”We have tremendous synergies and no jealousies at all. You learn that if you take care of your partner, he`ll take care of you.”
The Lazzaras grew up on Chicago`s Southwest Side and, from 1961 on, in adjacent Oak Lawn. Their father, Blase Lazzara, a second-generation Italian-American, owned the Blue M Electric Co. along with his three brothers and a sister in Blue Island, where they employed 300 workers and produced laboratory testing equipment. The family sold the business in 1981, and today it`s owned by General Signal Corp.
Oldest brother Jim graduated from Brother Rice High School, but John and Ray attended Richards High School in Oak Lawn. Jim went on to get a degree in dentistry from the University of Illinois (he practices today in Oak Lawn). John got a degree in marketing from Indiana University and Ray a degree in hotel-restaurant administration from Florida State University.
None of the Lazzara children has strayed very far. Sister Diane is a homemaker today and lives in Oak Lawn. Jim resides in Palos Heights, Ray in Burr Ridge and John has taken up residence in the penthouse suite at Drury Lane that served for many years as De Santis` base of operations.
Blase encouraged his sons from the start to go into business for themselves. Right out of college, John started a pizza restaurant in the Arena Bowling Alley in Oak Lawn called That sa Nice Restaurant. Mother Eleanor came in and cooked the soups from old family recipes, while Blase, who died in 1982, baked pizzas in his off hours at night. Ray graduated in 1973 and joined the business immediately, bringing such college-bred logic as menu planning and portion controls to the restaurant. The restaurant was a solid success, with annual sales rising from $72,000 in 1972 to $280,000 by the time it was sold in 1976.
In 1975 the brothers hit upon a radically different format. They acquired a bankrupt Shakey`s Pizza franchise for a trifling $2,000 at 82nd Street and Cicero Avenue in Burbank and transformed it into the Chicago area`s second themed restaurant (only Rich Melman`s R.J. Grunt`s preceded it).
They called it Annie Tiques and punctuated the decor with myriad eccentricities, like putting the salad bar in the bed of a 1925 Model T truck in the front of the restaurant. The venture seemed risky at the time. It cost more than $100,000 to remake the Shakey`s, though the brothers had just $35,000 and couldn`t get credit for the rest. Their construction contractors ended up floating loans to them.
”I told my dad that broke is broke,” Ray recalled. ”This was our big shot. If I hadn`t made it I would have been relegated to making pizzas for somebody else the rest of my life.”
The gamble paid off, of course. Annie Tiques was standing-room-only after opening and grossed $1 million its first year. Not only was the debt all paid off, but by the end of the first year the Lazzaras had built a new addition and kitchen. Catered events became so successful, in fact, that by 1984 the restaurant was closed, and the entire facility was converted to a banquet complex.
The hours were stressful, to say the least. Ray typically worked from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. six or seven days a week, while John had to be on premises until 5 a.m. And each was vaguely unfulfilled. Ray put together a design for a banquet hall in the western suburbs, though he didn`t have a site or John`s endorsement.
Then Ray got a call from Jim Angio, the controller for De Santis, offering Drury Lane for sale. The place had actually been on the market for years, with De Santis seeking close to $8 million, but there were no takers.
”Some potential buyers saw this as a declining area,” said Ray, who made the first visit around Thanksgiving in 1987 to inspect the property by himself. He had confidence in the vitality of the marketplace and was surprised by Drury Lane`s considerable assets. The facility boasted such upscale touches as silverplate at each place setting, all-wool carpeting and a huge kitchen.
Yet the carpet was the wrong color, the silver seemed a bit tarnished and the frying machines in the kitchen were leaking hot oil. Moreover, prices were too low. Martinique was charging $19 a person, liquor included, for banquets, while Annie Tiques commanded $28 a person at the same time. A deal was reached soon after Christmas 1987 for the Lazzaras to acquire Drury Lane for less than $5 million.
They used $550,000 of their own money and borrowed half from De Santis
(the rest came from banks), which they were able to pay off within two years. The complex grossed about $5 million annually at the time.
Some $2 million was invested in new kitchen equipment, carpeting, chairs and tables. Two new dining rooms were added, and the workforce was nearly doubled to 300 employees. The renovation process is just now complete, and the results have been dramatic. Annual sales have reached $8.5 million, which includes a three-fold increase in the theater`s volume over the past four years. Where the Martinique once did five weddings on a Saturday, today the complex can accommodate 10.
The accolades have come pouring in. Betty Kooistra is the secretary of the Roseland-Pullman Area Sports Hall of Fame, which for 21 years has been staging its annual banquet at Martinique for more than 500 members. Her daughter had a wedding reception there recently. ”The Lazzaras have turned this into one of the most beautiful banquet facilities anywhere in Chicago. They`ve done a great job of remodeling and upgrading the place,” Kooistra said.
Greta Wiley is a book dramatist who stages readings of new novels once a month, attracting crowds of 400 or more to the Martinique`s grand ballroom. The Lazzaras have intalled a new sound system and built an elevator to the ballroom from the first-floor lobby.
”Drury Lane has been vastly improved by the remodeling work. There isn`t another ballroom as big or as beautiful in this area,” Wiley said.
Meantime the theater has made impressive artistic strides under John, who carries the title of executive producer. He exerts control over everything, right down to casting decisions on new shows, and hasn`t been afraid to take chances (see accompanying story). Yet he`s been willing to delegate wide authority to such trusted lieutenants as Marc Robin, the director and choreographer of the current show ”Nunsense,” and Tom Joyce, a founding member of the Shakespeare Repertory, who is stage manager.
Now called Drury Lane Dinner Theatre, the playhouse at various times has been known as Drury Lane Martinique, Drury Lane South and Drury Lane Evergreen Park. De Santis, who had owned several nightclubs and taverns on Chicago`s Southwest Side in the 1940s, started his theatrical venture in 1956 in a tent out back on Drury Lane`s six acres. But stormy winds blew the tent over during the following summer, and De Santis moved the theater into a 400-seat hall in the basement, where it stayed until 1964, when the present theater-in-the-round was built.
With 821 seats, it reputedly ranks as the third largest dinner-theater in the nation, behind only De Santis` own Drury Lane Oakbrook Terrace (971 seats) and Marriott`s Lincolnshire Theatre (840 seats). Drury Lane kept running while several sister facilities owned by De Santis ran aground.
The central problem was that the star system inaugurated by De Santis-presenting shallow comedies and musicals headlined by fabled yet faded names past their prime such as Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Claudette Colbert and Martha Raye-didn`t catch on with a younger, more hip crowd of theatergoers.
”It was a system that worked well because back in the 1950s and 1960s TV put a lot of the big stars out of work, and they were available for reasonable prices,” explained De Santis, today 78 and working from his remaining Drury Lane in Oakbrook Terrace. His personal favorite was probably Pat O`Brien, who appeared at Drury Lane South 17 times, typically to busloads of senior citizens.
”We appealed to older audiences because they were the only ones who would come to plays,” De Santis said. ”The younger generation only wanted loud music. They wouldn`t come to plays much unless you had a `Hair` or
More Top Picks Best Wine Cellars
`Grease` for them.”
The Lazzaras have doubled the old De Santis budget for plays, spending $100,000 and more on a single production. They beefed up the children`s theater, too, and put local actors on stage while relegating the big-name stars to a separate concert series.
The advent of a subscription series and a sophisticated marketing program buttressed by a mailing of 600,000 pieces of advertising have also boosted business. When the Lazzaras took over, the theater averaged an anemic 12 percent of capacity and was losing money fast. The adult theater now averages better than 60 percent of capacity while the children`s shows all sell out.
”I`d like to get to 80 percent of capacity, and I think that`s a realistic goal,” John Lazzara said, adding that he thinks he`s still ”four years away from being a good producer. I need more time and experience.”
Indeed, the whole facility is likely to get better as the Lazzara brothers sink more comfortably into their roles.
The brothers still work long hours, but they`re nonetheless already laying plans for another banquet hall, resurrecting Ray`s premise for a facility around Naperville, most likely. They`re even kicking around the idea of franchising the Martinique name.
What really gives them a kick is the recognition they`re finally getting from outside the region.
”We felt we were really creative restaurateurs with Annie Tiques, but we never got noticed beyond the south suburbs,” Ray said. ”Now that we`ve got Drury Lane going pretty well, we`ve graduated into the big leagues. We`re getting real recognition from all over, and that`s been a nice reward for us.”