January is traditionally a slow time of year for theater, but business is booming at the Apollo, where The Vagina Monologues has become “the best-selling show” in Rob Kolson’s five years of running the 450-seat venue. The play, a collection of stories based on interviews with women, has pulled in a half million dollars in ticket sales since it reopened on November 29. Kolson has been feeling so flush he speculated the show would take in another $50,000 on the day after New Year’s.
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The Apollo mostly hosts touring productions or remountings of shows that have proved popular in other cities. Last year at this time Kolson had his biggest hit to date with Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh!, a musical revue of Allan Sherman songs that ran for ten months. Kolson was planning to slate one of two shows for the fall–Daley to Daley, a new work by Second City writer Joe Keefe, and Mom’s the Word, a Canadian play about motherhood.
As a result he got left out in the cold when he learned Daley to Daley would not be ready in time. By then Mom’s the Word had made a deal with the Royal George Theatre Center (where it closed last week), and the Apollo was faced with the prospect of being dark in September, at the beginning of a new theater season. “I had to find something else to fill my theater.”
Before taking over the Apollo, Kolson spent four years teaching economics at the University of Chicago. In 1995 he came to the Lincoln Avenue theater to stage Gentlemen Prefer Bonds, the follow-up to Do The White Thing, his long-running collaboration with Aaron Freeman. The Apollo’s owners were thinking about converting the theater to condominiums, but Kolson convinced them to rent it to him.
