By Katie Rodriguez

In honor of The Old Globe’s 90th anniversary, each program will highlight milestones and memories that have shaped our history. This is a look at the 1950s and 1960s, a time of thrilling growth and development for The Old Globe.

These two decades saw the staging of exciting Broadway smashes that set the box office ablaze, the triumphant return of the beloved Shakespeare Festival, and the introduction of an additional theatre space within the walls of Falstaff Tavern.

BEYOND THE BARD

After a seven-year hiatus due to World War II, the San Diego National Shakespeare Festival made its long awaited return in 1949. Following the festival’s success, the Globe took a bold step and staged a completely original production called Caught in the Act, directed by our very own Craig Noel. 

Caught featured skits, songs, and dances, written and performed by San Diegans that covered everything from local events and favorite hangouts to urban legends and the notable hometown personalities of the day. The revue quickly became a beloved mainstay, returning annually for six years. At a time when the theatre was competing with the exciting new access to television in the homes of the masses, it was no small feat to boast such audience loyalty. 

Despite widespread acclaim for both Caught and the annual Shakespeare Festival, the Globe had yet to find secure financial footing. If the theatre was to last, it was going to need a win at the box office. Noel began looking to the stages of Broadway for a show that could turn a modest profit. What he found instead, was a gold mine.

Craig Noel holding auditions for Mister Roberts, 1953.

A production of Mister Roberts, featuring Henry Zeiba (center) as Lt. Roberts, 1953.

ENTER MISTER ROBERTS

Forgoing the annual Shakespeare Festival, Noel instead mounted Thomas Heggen and Joshua Logan’s Mister Roberts – fresh off an enormously popular Broadway run – as the summer production of 1953. The show followed a group of American sailors (played by actual naval officers stationed in San Diego) as they battled seafaring boredom with hijinks against their detested Skipper. It was an instant and undeniable hit with local audiences. 

The show ran for 13 continuous weeks, playing to standing room only houses on a nightly basis. The box office watershed brought in nearly $70,000, and for the first time in the Globe’s young life, financial worries were eased. 

While Mister Roberts was a bona fide hit and a much needed financial success, longtime Globe supporters were appalled at the supplanting of their beloved Bard. The summer of 1954 saw the return of the festival, now with three productions instead of two: Othello, Twelfth Night, and The Merchant of Venice. Shakespeare was back and officially here to stay.

A NEW SPACE

For many years, Noel had ruminated on introducing a secondary playing space into the campus of The Old Globe. Not satisfied with the theatre merely growing; he wanted to push its artistic boundaries. In 1950, he took the leap and staged the world premiere of Beah Richards’ One is a Crowd within the Globe’s original restaurant facility, Falstaff Tavern. Over time, the space became folded into season planning, with a couple of small productions staged in the Tavern each year. 

By the mid-1960s, Noel had transformed Falstaff Tavern from a space used for light refreshments between shows into a legitimate venue for challenging new works fresh off the stages of New York and London. Plays from the likes of Bertolt Brecht, Harold Pinter, George Bernard Shaw, and Arthur Miller found a home at the Tavern, ushering in a new age of both American realism and European epics to the local theatre scene. 

Construction of the Cassius Carter Centre Stage, 1969.

In 1969, Noel fully realized his goal of a second theatre. Falstaff Tavern was enlarged, remodeled, and re-christened as the Cassius Carter Centre Stage (now the Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre), dedicated to producing experimental and innovative work. The boundaries of the American theatre were rapidly expanding as the decade drew to a close and The Old Globe was right there in stride, bringing that same pioneering spirit seen under the lights of Broadway to the stages of the West Coast.