As if to prove what so many of us already know and love about Denver — that it’s a robust culture and sports town — not only are the Colorado Rockies marking 20 years this week, so too is the Denver Center’s Garner Galleria Theatre.
[/media-credit]The Galleria: Denver Center's little theater that could and has, celebrates 20 years with extension of hit "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change."
Sitting in his office in the wonderfully subterranean Helen Bonfils Theatre Complex, Randy Weeks, Denver Center president and executive director of Denver Center Attractions, recounts how the whole thing happened. It began with the musical revue “Forever Plaid.”
While living in Washington, D.C, Weeks went to see “Forever Plaid” at the Ford Theatre, he says, “to see the crazy boys in the plaid jackets.” It’s worth noting, Weeks shares this memory while wearing the type of pants one might find in the Land’s End catalog or at a Brooks Brothers store. Not plaid but nonetheless boldly yellow and patterned. He pulls it off.
Weeks had worked with Denver Center Attractions’ boss Robert Garner (the Galleria’s namesake) and when he returned to Denver to begin what would be a transition to succeed his mentor, he wondered what was going on with the space that now houses the Galleria. “I knew there was a theater there,” he says. “This would be perfect for a little cabaret space,” he recalls thinking.
Thanks to the openness of then chair Donald Seawell, says Weeks, he pitched the idea of doing a cabaret. “Go forth and do it,” was the visionary’s response. “And when you don’t have a clue what you’re doing, it’s a great way of learning. So we actually started producing shows – hiring a director, getting the rights to shows, going to New York to auditions.”
While the inaugural show, “Forever Plaid,” didn’t play forever, it did run for a year and a half. It also had a second run in 1994. “We made some money,” Weeks says, in no way boastful. Though he could be. “And we just kept on going.”
Other Galleria repeat hits: “Always…Patsy Cline,” “Girls Only: The Secret Comedy of Women,” and “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change.”
Friday, as a way of celebrating the Galleria’s 20th anniversary, Denver Center Attractions announced it was extending the run of “I Love You” etc. another eight weeks (through Aug. 19).