After the first, Where's Charley?, Eagle went to the stage door and got Ray Bolger's autograph. With the money he made on his first trip to New York at age 14, he was able to buy tickets for two shows. "I sold tickets, much to my mother's embarrassment - not because I was charging money but because, as she said, 'You're bringing people into our dirty cellar?!'" "Right after seeing Oklahoma!, I started doing shows in my cellar with neighborhood kids, using bed sheets for curtains," says the diminutive, soft-spoken 69-year-old. The theater has since been razed but Eagle's enthusiasm for musicals remains. In his case, it was a national tour of Oklahoma! in the late '40s at the Boston Opera House. His interest in musicals began the way it started for many of us: An aunt and a grandmother took him to a show. 59,226) who came to teach in the town's school system in 1956, stayed for decades, and is still on the premises helming a company with four full-time employees and 100 seasonal part-timers. Reagle means Robert Eagle, a native of Waltham (pop. More often than not, the 1,082-seat house is filled for four summer musicals that play eight or nine performances each. As the years have passed, it's gone from a glorified high school theater company to one that now sports an occasional Equity performer and attracts notice from critics and audiences alike. (What?)Ĭelebrating their 35th anniversary this year, the Reagle Players may still operate out of an auditorium at Waltham High School but this is a little theater that could - and can, and does. And the winner was: Singin' in the Rain by the Reagle Players.
#Boston opera house stage door full
The nominees for the Best Musical Production of 2002 as voted by the Independent Reviewers of New England were: Ragtime at the North Shore Music Theatre Beauty and the Beast and The Full Monty, both at Boston's legendary Colonial Theatre and Singin' in the Rain by the Reagle Players in suburban Waltham, Massachusetts.