Dressed up to strip down

Donning a hard hat to interview a theater director on the Mag Mile isn't the kind of job-hazard prevention we're used to. But then, it's not often a new theater is constructed on that pricey strip. Using $7.5 million from the pocket of 91-year-old producer AnthonyDeSantis, the former cinema at Water Tower Place has been gutted to make way for Drury Lane's posh 549-seat theater.

As construction workers hammer and saw, Drury Lane Theatre's artistic director, Michael Weber, points out massive Strauss crystal chandeliers under plastic wrap, lush red carpet, the stage's turntable and the opera box where the orchestra will sit.

Don't let all the fancy trappings fool you. Like Broadway in Chicago, Drury Lane will rely on popular musicals to pull in the crowds. But while a ticket for Wicked or The Lion King in the Loop can peak at around $85, Drury Lane's ticket prices will be capped at $48. Diane Van Lente, DeSantis's daughter and a coproducer, says, "We tried to talk [my father] into a $50 ticket, and there was no way."

"An impresario in the grand old sense," as Weber calls him, DeSantis, who still works six days a week, aims for theater not only made for the masses but priced for them, too. The latest of his Drury Lanes is the sixth with that name; the third one resided at the same Water Tower address a couple decades ago (then a 1,140-seat theater-in-the-round). Emboldened by the growing number of residents in the Streeterville and Gold Coast 'hoods, DeSantis felt it was time to return to the city. His Drury Lane Oakbrook Terrace (the only other arm of the franchise that's still running) will stay open, but this one, Van Lente says, will be "a little bit edgier," featuring shows like The Full Monty, the new spot's inaugural production. The 1997 surprise-hit British film about steelworkers who earn some quick cash by stripping was put to song for Broadway in 2000 by pop composer David Yazbek. Formerly artistic director of Theatre at the Center, Weber predicts the new space will attract three main groups: nearby residents, visiting business folks and the many tourist shoppers who flock like moths to Michigan Avenue's flame.

A resident Chicago theater that produces mostly musicals (four of five shows each season) is rare enough. What makes this venture even more unusual is its mission to fill those musicals with Chicago actors and to hire Chicago directors and designers. "What you don't have happening a lot in Chicago in an equity-professional sense is a theater that's doing a lot of musicals and using those people in Chicago," Weber says. " [These ki-nds of theaters are] in the suburbs; you have it in Lincolnshire and Oakbrook Terrace and Munster, but not really in Chicago."

Weber doesn't cloak Drury Lane's commercial motives, but "we're not going to be bringing in road shows of things that are just tramping around the country in a cut-down version. It's going to be actual Chicago visions of these shows. We're not trying to replicate what was done on Broadway." With that civic-minded spirit, Weber makes this announcement to Chicago theater's (often underpaid or unpaid) professionals: "This is a new theater and you can work here. You can come here and make a living."

In that spirit, Weber hired Chicago actor and director Jim Corti to helm the theater's first production. Corti played Harry Houdini in the original Broadway cast of the musical Ragtime, a role that had him in "this really bare-ass–naked costume with just chains," as he puts it. So Corti can give The Full Monty's somewhat neophyte cast a few tips about taking it all off in public. "It really gets you in the pit of your stomach, the idea of being nude in front of an audience," Corti says.

Still in the rough when we visited, the jewel-box theater sat under layers of construction dust, but Weber was quick to acknowledge the crystal chandeliers. "The thing about these chandeliers that's so funny to me, I mean, they could've been glass. Who's gonna know? But [DeSantis] wants to know that you're getting the best thing. And you may not know it, but you are."

The Full Monty is in previews, opening May 20.