The Allen Theatre

The Allen Theatre had been in Cleveland's Playhouse Square 51 years before I first walked in the doors. These were the first shows I worked on there. It was quite an eventful weekend for a wide eyed 15 year old. I'll never forget the rush of excitement as the crowds poured in through the front doors on a chilly March evening, back in 1972. The conventional wisdom was that downtown was dead, these shows proved quite the opposite. These two shows were quite different from each other, one a classy show with a legendary British actor, the other a rather rowdy evening with a legendary British rocker. I must have a thousand stories about the Allen, and the rest of the Playhouse Square theatres. The first ones would revolve around these two shows.