MUSICAL OUTLET: Broadway-Style Theater Opens in Bargain-Shoppers' Paradise

Pressley, Nelson, The Washington Times (Washington, DC)

Can an untried Broadway-style musical revue make it in the heart of Pennsylvania farm country? Three businessmen in Lancaster think so.

They have built a $10 million, 1,600-seat facility called the American Music Theatre and have mounted a $1 million show titled "From Branson to Broadway," which opened April 12 and is scheduled to run through 1998. Tickets cost $25 - a mere third of Broadway's top price - and 90,000 tickets were sold before "Branson" had its first public performance last weekend.

When you think of hotbeds for razzle-dazzle and all that jazz, Lancaster isn't likely to be among the top 100 places that spring to mind. This is the land of the Pennsylvania Dutch, the traditional Amish farmers and craftsmen who disdain most of the technology of the 20th-century world, who dress in unembellished black and eschew the automobile in favor of horses and buggies.

Yet the theater is not a bit out of place in Lancaster, for Lancaster is hardly the sort of virgin throwback to pre-technology America that Amish country evokes. It's only partly Amish, after all.

The county also has an industrial base; a drive past the string of factories and commercial headquarters on Route 30 makes …

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Publication information: Article title: MUSICAL OUTLET: Broadway-Style Theater Opens in Bargain-Shoppers' Paradise. Contributors: Pressley, Nelson - Author. Newspaper title: The Washington Times (Washington, DC). Publication date: April 20, 1997. Page number: 1. © 2009 The Washington Times LLC. COPYRIGHT 1997 Gale Group.

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