Senator Fatigue Hits In Latest Push To Save Cinematic Gem

The city had always said that it bought the Senator's mortgage precisely to maintain control of what happened to the historic landmark rather than leave its fate up to anyone who showed up with enough money at a bank foreclosure auction. And it had always said that it was not going to let the theater go for less than the nearly $1 million it paid to buy its mortgage.

That doesn't seem so much a rigged auction but one that went as the seller had said it would go. So now the city will look for someone to either buy or operate the theater.

I'm not sure what outcome would have pleased Kiefaber and his supporters, other than the city saying, OK, we'll pay your bills and you just keep doing whatever you want with the Senator.

But then, auctions can be fraught affairs, and, as anyone who has bid on some ridiculous Pez dispenser on Ebay can tell you, they can make even the sane a little bit crazy.

And endings can be messy, on- and offstage, even when Shakespeare writes them. As he ended one scene in Macbeth, Exeunt fighting.