Somewhere along the line, dinner theater got a bad name. Booth said, referring to shows that played the dinner theater circuit in its heyday 20 years ago. Shows such as Arsenic and Old Lace, Last of the Red Hot Lovers or 6 Rms Riv Vu with performers such as Randolph Mantooth, Sid Caesar or Elaine Joyce played the Alhambra in those days. That kind of dinner theater doesn't really exist anymore, Booth said. In 1976, when he took over Chicago's Drury Lane theaters, probably the country's premiere dinner theaters, there were 147 professional equity dinner theaters across the country.
Today there are only nine.
Most have followed Booth's lead at the Alhambra, dropping the aging stars on the way down in favor of unknowns with star potential on the way up. None of which, in Booth's perception, has eliminated the stigma widely attached to dinner theater. That was one of the reasons that in 1991, he commissioned a set of architectural renderings. I thought that the world had ended. One of the biggest came very early.