From Simon to ‘The Shark’: Laguna Playhouse Launches Its Reinvention
- Joel Beers
- 1 hour ago
- 7 min read
The Evolution of Laguna Playhouse, Part 2: With a fiscal crisis narrowly averted, Orange County’s oldest theater is transitioning into a more audience-focused, cost-conscious, and community-connected institution.
This is PART TWO in a two-part series about the evolution of Laguna Playhouse.
To read PART ONE, go to: Making a Deal: How a $500,000 Rescue is Reshaping Laguna Playhouse
American theaters once relied on Neil Simon to guarantee at least one box office hit each season. Last December, Adele Adkins threw him overboard – scrapping a planned production of Simon’s “Laughter on the 23rd Floor” for a smaller, more cost-efficient show with little name recognition but a perfect title for a beach town: “The Shark Is Broken,” which opened last week.
The move wasn’t about artistic merit. It was about survival.
When Adkins arrived last summer as the Laguna Playhouse’s managing director, she quickly saw the theater under financial pressure, struggling to recover from the pandemic and slow audience return. In 2018-19, the last full season before COVID, ticket sales were $4.37 million. After a 19-month shutdown, sales dropped to $1.87 million in a shortened 2021-22 season, rebounded to $3.1 million in 2022-23, then slipped to $2.6 million in 2023-24 – the lowest full-season total since 2012-13. Expenses barely fell, from $6.8 million to $6.2 million.
Ticket sales aren’t the only measure of a theater’s financial health – donations and grants play a major role – but they are a pretty good indicator of audience turnout.
“The more I got into the research, the more I knew before I got the job that how the business was being run was probably contributing to financial woes,” she said. After a month on the job, she realized a business-model reset alone wouldn’t solve the crisis. “We needed money just to get to the end of the fiscal year.”
A Gamble With City Support
As detailed in part one of this series, the playhouse struck a deal with the city of Laguna Beach, which owns the playhouse’s longtime home, the Moulton Theatre. The city approved a $500,000 grant, matched by the theater’s board, in exchange for opening the venue to nonprofit groups for up to 10 weeks each year.
But that money will be “in the rearview mirror” by July, Adkins said, and the theater is taking a gamble. Giving nonprofits 10 weeks of access means surrendering time the playhouse could program itself. While the $2,800 nightly rental fee might sound substantial, Adkins estimates the playhouse could lose $250,000 a year if nonprofits book all 10 weeks.
“That’s what we’re taking a gamble on. But I’m committed that we will find that $250,000 in contributed revenue and additional ticket revenue in the shows we’re doing. It is a huge leap of faith for the playhouse,” she said.
To balance costs and appeal, Adkins is choosing shows carefully. While she won’t control full season programming until the 2026-27 season, which begins this summer, she signaled her approach in December by replacing a large-cast show with a smaller, more cost-efficient production with box office potential.
“In complete transparency, I didn’t think it would sell that well,” she said of “Laughter on the 23rd Floor.” “I think of Neil Simon as an icon, but I’m also in my late 50s. Years ago, when I worked at a university in Maine, the college students had no idea who Simon was. And that was 25 years ago.”
Her solution was “The Shark Is Broken,” a small-cast comedy about filming the 1975 blockbuster “Jaws,” dramatizing downtime between the police chief, scientist and crusty captain charged with capturing the Great White – all while the mechanical shark repeatedly malfunctions.
Adkins had seen the play in its 2023 Broadway run and knew it was “great fun.” Rights were locked up, but fortune intervened: The Ensemble Theatre Company in Santa Barbara was closing its California premiere just weeks before Laguna needed to open. Adkins transferred the production for a lump sum, saving the playhouse the cost of building a new set or hiring a full design team.
Cutting Costs and Reshaping Leadership
Swapping a broad-audience, lower-cost show was just the first step in what Adkins believes will be a multi-year process to stabilize the playhouse. She’s already cut $48,999 a month through operational changes and staff reductions.
Another savings came when David Ellenstein, named interim artistic director in 2022 and full A.D. in 2023, resigned last September. (Ellenstein is also artistic director of North Coast Repertory, a thriving 200-seat theater in north San Diego County). No immediate replacement means Adkins oversees both business and artistic duties – a role she’s well-equipped for, with a career spanning Theatre Now in New York, the Collins Center for the Arts at the University of Maine, Clark State Performing Arts Center in Ohio, and the venerable Bucks County Playhouse in Pennsylvania. At Bucks County, which she joined in 2022, ticket sales jumped from $2.7 million in 2021-22 to $4 million in 2023, with $3.8 million in contributions.
The playhouse will stage four main productions each season, supplemented by special engagements. Longer runs help recoup up-front costs for sets, costumes and production staff.
“I could see just by looking at the schedule that they weren’t running titles long enough. That immediately jumped out at me, which was exciting, because it’s an easy adjustment,” Adkins said.
Audience-Friendly Programming
“Next season,” which Adkins hopes to announce in late March or early April, “we’re doing three big musicals, with a big cast and a big production and one comedic play that’s very well known and that people love.
“Data post-COVID show audiences prefer familiar titles across TV, movies and theater, and aren’t eager to take risks on unknown works,” she said.
Musicals are generally performing better at most theaters, but most post-pandemic productions at the playhouse have been either older classics like “Camelot” and “The Rainmaker,” newer works with little name recognition, or intimate shows like “Once.” Even newer musicals with strong theatrical pedigrees, such as 2025-26 season opener “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder,” can struggle.
“Although it won a Tony Award and was a wonderful show, it’s not the kind of title that everyone knows. Asking audiences to take a chance on it, followed by a newly written play, meant programming with essentially no name familiarity.”
Adkins pointed to “Million Dollar Quartet” and “Mamma Mia,” produced at the playhouse shortly before the pandemic, as examples of musicals that caught fire because audiences knew them.
The Title Matters
One key factor in staging “The Shark Is Broken” was its title.
“The first thing that goes off in my head if a play isn’t widely known is whether there’s a marketing angle to the title,” Adkins said. “And we are a beach town, so that was it. I’m not sure if I’d been at a theater elsewhere it would have jumped to the top of my list.”
A lack of recognizable titles since the pandemic immediately stood out. “They weren’t the most robust, not ones people were familiar with,” Adkins said, pointing to “Love Among the Ruins,” “Stages and the Realistic Jones,” “Shayna Maidel,” and most of the eight new plays since the pandemic. While well-produced and critically praised, many failed the playhouse’s most important metric: audiences.
Fresh premieres will be rare for the foreseeable future. Since 2022-23, six productions that debuted at North Coast Repertory Theatre transferred to Laguna almost immediately, another moved south after a 2022 debut, and one premiered in Laguna that year.
“I believe deeply in new work,” Adkins said. “As artists and theater people, whatever the genre, we have to be committed to it. I just think there are ways to do it more cost efficiently. And to do that you need some financial stability, because a lot of the time new work doesn’t pay the bills.”
Weighty works by Arthur Miller and August Wilson, including “A View from the Bridge” and “Fences,” fell flat in Laguna, and Adkins says they are a dramaturgical luxury the playhouse can’t afford at the moment.
“Other than the titles and elevated production values, I’m focusing on reaching nationally to bring in directors new to the area, and I think that’s going to be exciting for people,” Adkins said. She added that bringing in directors from outside the region introduces wider diversity of vision on stage.
Engaging the Community
While working with local nonprofits is part of the plan, Adkins wants broader engagement.
“The problems theaters face today predate the pandemic, but it is true that getting people out of their doors is harder. We need to offer more than just a show or the occasional talkback. The community is going to see activities around the shows.”
Possible ideas, Adkins said, are book clubs themed on productions, karaoke nights, lectures, all free of charge. We’re not going to charge people; it’s really about building community, and some activities won’t even be in the theater.”
For “The Shark Is Broken,” the playhouse partnered with the Newport Nature Conservancy for a March 19 screening of “Jaws” alongside a lecture by the artist who created the iconic poster, as well as a “Shark-Aoke” karaoke event before the March 13 show.
“I wish I had a crystal ball,” Adkins said of the playhouse’s future. “The upcoming season and some of the following seasons are being driven by finance, which may not sound fun, but that’s OK, because that’s what we want. We want strong finances, but we can still have high-quality performance. It’s going to be really first class. I just hope people come to the theater and enjoy the ride and the new direction we’re going in. Not only are the names going to be recognizable, but we are ramping up our investment in the physical productions, so it is going to be fun.”
‘The Shark is Broken’
When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays, 2 p.m. & 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, 7:30 p.m. Fridays, 2 & 7:30 p.m. Saturdays, 1 p.m. & 5:30 p.m. Sundays through March 22 (no 5:30 p.m. show on March 22)
Where: Laguna Playhouse, 606 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach
Cost: $39-$119, student and group discounts available
Info: lagunaplayhouse.com
