This year Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas! celebrates its 27th holiday season at The Old Globe. That’s an astonishing run by any measure: presidents and potentates have come and gone, but The Grinch endures. Children who were featured in our company two decades ago are now adults with kids of their own. And new generations of theatregoers continue to settle into our seats for their first dose of Seussian sweetness and magic.

All of us at The Old Globe are doing a lot of thinking about this amazing show’s run. We think about how much the world has changed since its first year, and how much The Grinch has given us an anchor of constancy and love throughout. We think about how the Globe has grown since the beginning in 1998: three sizes, just like the Grinch’s heart, and thanks in no small part to him! Mostly, though, we think about the impact this show has made on hundreds of thousands of San Diegans. 

This sweet story has become central to how our city celebrates the holiday season, and we are simultaneously astonished and delighted that this is so. But it’s been Dr. Seuss who has conferred magic on all of us through this story. His beautiful imagination, as interpreted by the creators of this musical, is what has been so meaningful for so many over such a long period of time. The Old Globe has merely been the vessel. We salute Dr. Seuss and his legacy, and we thank Dr. Seuss Enterprises and its visionary CEO and president Susan Brandt for a productive and happy partnership that we hope flourish for many, many more years.

The Grinch is on our stage thanks to the generosity of Audrey Geisel, one of the Globe’s most valued friends. I had the special privilege of getting to know Audrey in the last years of her life. I’d visit her office in La Jolla, which was the very room in which her late husband Theodor Geisel, Dr. Seuss himself, wrote and drew the books that have become cherished by children worldwide. It was a true thrill to be there, and a special delight to be able to thank Audrey in person for her ongoing support. Now it is an honor to memorialize her here by noting that her ongoing largess will sustain and stabilize this institution for generations to come. She changed the Globe in her lifetime by setting this production in motion, and in her death she supports us through a powerful legacy.

I’m blessed that my work at the Globe puts me in yearly contact with this happy and spectacular (and big and green and hairy) tradition. In The Grinch I see the ways that the art form of theatre really does its work. Theatre brings strangers together to create one audience, one community. It shows us great and moving stories like this one: a classic fable about healing and family and love and the balm that is the holiday spirit. And, magically, it makes us feel better.

On behalf of the Board, artists, and staff of The Old Globe, I wish you a joyous holiday season. And I thank you for helping us deliver to San Diego 27 extraordinary years of theatre magic.

Thanks for coming. Enjoy the show.

Barry Edelstein is the Erna Finci Viterbi Artistic Director of The Old Globe. 

Any feedback on tonight’s show or any of the Globe’s work?  

Email Barry at HiBarry@TheOldGlobe.org and he’ll get back to you!