Lightning damage could keep Crown shuttered for two months; Orpheum stepping up to help
The damage from a lightning strike and fire at the Crown Uptown Theatre last week — which caused the venue to have to evacuate its audience in the middle of a performance — is worse than originally thought.
Now, it appears, the theater at 3207 E. Douglas may be closed for up to two months.
But another Wichita theater — the Orpheum at 200 N. Broadway — has come to the rescue and is giving the Crown a steep price break on use of its stage so the Crown can salvage some of its production of “Come Together: A Beatles Revue.” The show was interrupted midway through opening night on Friday, June 11, and was scheduled for another eight performances at the Crown, including three this weekend.
Max Wilson, the Crown’s general manager, said that anyone who had tickets to the show can use them to attend one of the two performances at the Orpheum next weekend. They’ll happen at 8 p.m. both Friday and Saturday, June 25 and 26.
“They made us a really lovely deal,” Wilson said. “All of us theaters in town — the Orpheum, the Crown, Roxy’s and Mosley Street — we’re all pretty good at helping each other out.”
The show, which was to feature six vocalists performing 40 of The Beatles’ most popular songs, was wrapping up the first act last weekend when the 100 patrons in attendance felt the building shake, Wilson said. The lights surged, but no one knew anything was seriously wrong.
Then, people started to smell something burning. The audience, directed by the automatic fire suppression system, evacuated, and Wilson went to the basement, where he waded into a smoky room to find flames engulfing the Crown’s electrical panel. He put it out with a fire extinguisher.
It wasn’t until this week that insurance adjusters informed the Crown staff that not only was its electrical panel fried but that three of its four giant air conditioning units were also ruined. Adjusters determined that the building was actually struck by lightning three times that night, Wilson said.
The staff has since learned that the air conditioning units it needs will have to be custom built, which could take time. The estimate is two weeks on the low end and eight weeks on the high end. In the meantime, it’s 85 degrees inside the Crown, Wilson said.
Insurance should cover the theater’s losses, he said, which will be in excess of $50,000.
Besides the Beatles show, the Crown had only a few other events on its calendar in the coming weeks. A “Sunday Funday” Pride Celebration scheduled for the evening of June 27 is moving over to Mosley Street Melodrama, 234 N. Mosley, Wilson said. And Signature Theatre, the group that puts on the annual “1776” stage show and had planned to use the stage at the Crown July 1-3, will have to find a new venue.
The silver lining, Wilson said, is that when his new nonprofit theater group Crown Arts Collective puts on its production of “Next To Normal” in September, the air conditioning units and some of the electrical system in the 1928 theater will all be new.
“The good news is it’s almost like we’re going to have parts of a brand new facility,” he said.
People who had tickets to “Come Together: A Beatles Revue” will be contacted by the Crown and will be able to either transfer their tickets to one of the Orpheum’s dates or get a refund, Wilson said.
This story was originally published June 18, 2021 at 12:37 PM.
.jpg)