Mechanic Theatre

John M. Johansen has painful memories of a time when TV personalities Phil Donahue and Marlo Thomas paid $6.8 million to purchase a house he designed in Connecticut, only to tear it down. "It was like a death in the family," he laments. Now the retired architect wants to avert another death - this time a theater he designed for downtown Baltimore. Parking lot operators have purchased the dormant Morris A. Mechanic Theatre in Charles Center for $6 million and teamed with a developer who wants to build housing, stores and maybe a hotel on the site.

INSIDE TODAY WHAT THEY'RE SAYING TODAY'S SUN COLUMNISTS Road scholar A commuting columnist must reluctantly confess: Were it not for books on tape, there would be no books in her life at all. Today baltimoresun.com/reimer A consumer protected A homeowner who was bugged by the service she got from a pest-control company discovers that the Consumer Protection Division of the state Office of the Attorney General is available to all consumers to solve problems big and small. Business baltimoresun.

Croquet tournamentCheer on players in the Bel Air Croquet Tournament Saturday at the Liriodendron Mansion. Bring the family for a day of croquet competition, tours of the mansion, an antique car show, music, storytelling, puppet shows and face-painting for the kids. Picnic foods will be available.The event runs Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Liriodendron Mansion, 502 W. Gordon St. in Bel Air. Admission is 25 cents. Call 410-879-4424.Catch the 'Bus'The Magic School Bus rides into town Saturday for two showings of "A Bright Idea" at the Morris Mechanic Theatre.

At the end of the first act of the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical "Rent," there's a song called "La Vie Boheme" that celebrates "days of inspiration,/Playing hooky, making something/Out of nothing, the need/To express -- /To communicate."To a large extent, that exuberant sense of creation is what "Rent" is about. And this is a musical that exudes exuberance. The touring production at the Mechanic Theatre is the equal of its Broadway counterpart, with soaring performances that run the gamut from touching to rafter-raising.

Cathy Rigby is really wired, and it's not just a matter of the wire that enables her to fly through the air above the Mechanic Theatre stage in "Peter Pan."The former Olympic gymnast is a petite dynamo. She has more than enough boyish energy to portray that fabled boy who refuses to grow up.Her athletic skills come as no surprise, and by now her theatrical savvy also is well-established. Any doubts there might have been about her singing and acting abilities were resolved when she last flew into the Mechanic as Peter Pan in 1990.

They started lining up at 5 a.m. Five hours later, when auditions began at Max's on Broadway, there were 300 "Rent" wannabes. The hopefuls ranged from teen-agers who'd never auditioned for anything to pros who'd tried out before and, undaunted, were at it again. Some had never seen the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical; others were "Rent"-aholics, who follow it from city to city.The casting call was for replacements in any of the four North American companies of "Rent" (one of which arrives at the Mechanic Theatre tomorrow)

EFFORTS TO transform the old Hippodrome vaudeville house into Baltimore's performing arts center received a critical boost this week with Gov. Parris N. Glendening's announcement that he will include a $1.7 million planning grant in his supplemental budget.The long-vacant Eutaw Street theater would be the centerpiece of the $35 million cultural complex in an area that has been declining steadily but with considerable redevelopment potential. The Hippodrome's main theater could easily be renovated into a 2,300-seat venue capable of handling touring Broadway shows, smaller stage productions, dance performances and concerts.

"Rent," the Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical, is coming to the Mechanic Theatre for five weeks in the fall of 1998.The show, presented in cooperation with the Lyric Opera House, will be at the Mechanic from Sept. 22 through Oct. 25.Mechanic subscribers will have first call on tickets Sept. 29 through Oct. 11. Lyric subscribers will get first call Oct. 13 through Oct. 18. Non-subscribers can buy tickets for other dates.The announcement that "Rent" will come to the Mechanic was part of a story in yesterday's Sun about the Lyric Opera House's 1998 season.

Whenever a bell rings in the high school hallways of "Grease," you can't be blamed for having a Pavlovian response. Even if you didn't go to high school in the '50s, you still feel like you're suddenly back in class. Bullies pick on nerds, good cars mean more than good grades, and teachers seem like parents, only worse.Although the latest production of the 1972 Broadway musical to make a pit stop in town delivers enough nostalgia to ensure an enjoyable return to its "Summer Nights," it doesn't merit more than a "C" on its report card.

"Some people grieve to remember, but we celebrate," says Bessie Delany in "Having Our Say," Emily Mann's play about the centenarian Delany sisters. And indeed, "Having Our Say" -- currently at the Mechanic Theatre -- is an endearing celebration from start to finish.Adapted from the book of the same name, written by Sarah ("Sadie") L. Delany and A. Elizabeth ("Bessie") Delany, with Amy Hill Hearth, this two-person play celebrates the lives of a pair of extraordinary women. Daughters of a former slave who became, in Bessie's words, "the first elected Negro bishop of the Episcopal Church, U.S.A," Bessie was the second African-American woman licensed to practice dentistry in New York and Sadie was the first African-American domestic science teacher in a New York City high school.

Clarisse Mechanic made Maryland better Clarisse Mechanic leaves a legacy of having made Baltimore City and the state of Maryland better places to live. Citizens of Maryland and visitors are grateful to Morris and Clarisse Mechanic for their personal gift - no taxpayer dollars - of the beautiful Morris A. Mechanic Theatre, where for decades we were treated to great Broadway plays and other national and international performances. Acoustics were state-of-the-art and the seats were roomy and very comfortable.

Baltimore's Morris A. Mechanic Theatre will not be added to the city's landmark list, even though the city's preservation commission determined more than a year ago that it met the criteria for designation and recommended that it be listed. Baltimore's Planning Commission voted 7-0 yesterday to keep the shuttered theater at 1 W. Baltimore St. off the landmark list, after hearing testimony that its owners didn't want it to be added but do plan to preserve "80 to 90 percent" of its shell as part of a large redevelopment project.

The shell of Baltimore's long-dormant Morris A. Mechanic Theatre would be partially preserved as part of a mixed-use complex containing a 30-story residential and hotel tower and commercial space, if its owners can obtain city approval and financing to carry out their latest plans. Renderings of the proposed development were filed with Baltimore's planning department this summer in preparation for a public hearing at 1:30 p.m. today by the Baltimore Planning Commission. The project is the latest of several hotel and residential towers proposed for construction in downtown Baltimore despite the uncertain real estate market.

Right way to save Mechanic Theatre Thanks to Edward Gunts for pointing to a solution regarding the Morris A. Mechanic Theatre and its uncertain future ("Heightened drama," Aug. 4). The architectural and cultural significance of the building is without question, as affirmed by a unanimous vote for landmark designation by Baltimore's Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation (CHAP) and a flood of testimony from local and national experts. Among historians of architecture and urbanism, Benjamin Latrobe's Basilica of the Assumption is the only building in Baltimore better known beyond the city.

Baltimore's Morris A. Mechanic Theatre has been closed for four years, but it's still a source of high drama for those curious about what will happen to the key downtown property. A year after Baltimore's Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation recommended that the dormant theater at 1 W. Baltimore St. be added to the city's landmark list as a way to protect it from demolition, the building's owners have come up with a redevelopment plan that would keep it standing, although not as a theater.

Nell L. Tumminello, a former group ticket sales director at the Mechanic Theatre, died of heart failure Dec. 30 at her Arnold home. She was 97 and had lived for many years in Ednor Gardens. Born Anele Lelia Waitekunas on Baltimore's Hollins Street, she attended the old Greene Street Public School No. 1, where she met her future husband, Joseph V. Tumminello, in 1918. In the 1920s she studied Lithuanian language and culture under the poet and scholar Nadas Rastenis. She graduated from Western High School in 1930.

Twice this summer, Baltimore's preservation commission voted to recommend adding a building to the city's landmark list, despite objections from owners who didn't want that building to be designated a landmark. In both cases, the outcome was the same: The nomination was approved, and the building received the protection the panel wanted. But the difference in tone between the two sessions was as different as night and day. At the first meeting, involving the 40-year-old Morris A. Mechanic Theatre, the owners enlisted speaker after speaker to explain why they didn't think the downtown building should be named a landmark.

Slots debate heats up The O'Malley administration released a report concluding that slot machines are necessary to protect Maryland's racing industry. But officials attending the Maryland Association of Counties meeting last week found an Ocean City business community urging the state not to expand legalized gambling. Home sales drop Homeowners in Maryland sold 21.1 percent fewer homes during the second quarter than they did a year earlier, one of the biggest drops in sales in the nation.

John M. Johansen has painful memories of a time when TV personalities Phil Donahue and Marlo Thomas paid $6.8 million to purchase a house he designed in Connecticut, only to tear it down. "It was like a death in the family," he laments. Now the retired architect wants to avert another death - this time a theater he designed for downtown Baltimore. Parking lot operators have purchased the dormant Morris A. Mechanic Theatre in Charles Center for $6 million and teamed with a developer who wants to build housing, stores and maybe a hotel on the site.

INSIDE TODAY WHAT THEY'RE SAYING TODAY'S SUN COLUMNISTS Road scholar A commuting columnist must reluctantly confess: Were it not for books on tape, there would be no books in her life at all. Today baltimoresun.com/reimer A consumer protected A homeowner who was bugged by the service she got from a pest-control company discovers that the Consumer Protection Division of the state Office of the Attorney General is available to all consumers to solve problems big and small. Business baltimoresun.