Flynn's Harp: Tony Award will open doors for Alhadeffs (6-23-10)

To Ken Alhadeff, the Seattle businessman who is the financial force behind Memphis, winning the coveted Tony award as Best Musical isn’t the climax of his five-year love affair with this play. It only sets the stage for subsequent acts, including a national tour that will launch in October of 2011 in the musical’s namesake city.

And he suggests that the award and the recognition it brings will also set the stage for the next act for Alhadeff and his wife, Marlene, who he emphasizes is his full partner not only in the development of the Memphis success story but in the opportunities that he knows will now open to them.

In fact, it was Marlene’s acquaintance with the founding partner of Junkyard Dog Productions, Randy Adams, when he was managing director of Palo Alto-based TheaterWorks, that set the stage for Alhadeff’s meeting Adams and his partner, Sue Frost. Alhadeff decided to join them as a partner, which he did in 2006.

He was soon given the script of a show that had been in production since 2003 to which they wanted the rights. Thus the Alhadeffs’ ties to Memphis were born.

“As the plane I was on sat on the tarmac in Seattle, I pulled the script out and read it and before the plane lifted off, my tears were falling on the pages of the script,” Alhadeff said during a telephone interview a couple of days after the gala New York celebration that followed the Tony Awards event.

Those who know Alhadeff know him as an emotional guy who gets as strongly committed to the success of his causes as he does to success in his business ventures.

And after that first reading of the script five years ago, he got emotional about Memphis, which he describes as “a meaningful statement about the power of music to change people and about the state of race relations in America.”

For those who haven’t paid attention, Memphis is the story of a poor white kid who frequented now-famous Beale Street’s black clubs to hear what he described as “the music of my soul.” It’s about his struggle to popularize the music in a white world and his relationship with a black singer. One reviewer described it as “a show of soulful sounds and a parade of engaging characters.”

I told Alhadeff that I had the distinct impression, when we talked in early 2009 for an earlier column as he set about the effort to raise the millions necessary to take the show to Broadway, that he viewed his effort as being as much a commitment to a cause as to a potential investment.

“That’s totally true,” he replied. “We believed strongly that this story needed to be told and realized that musical theater is the ideal vehicle to shed light and joy on a subject.”

Now the story has been told and retold on the Sam Shubert Theater stage to enthusiastic audiences. And the wildest-dreams kind of reward has come for the Alhadeffs and others who made the commitment to the cause.

“The production company will continue on,” he said. “Clearly, being Tony-award-winning producers will open almost any door for us to evaluate scripts.

“Because we have produced at the highest levels, along with our partners, it validates our credentials and thus opens doors,” he added.

And financial rewards will begin coming in from those who invested in the Memphis dream, even though he was clear from the outset of his raising capital for the musical that  “the core of the investment in this show has to be based on the passion that comes with seeing it.”

Alhadeff, at age 61, has made numerous successful investments during his business career. But he says this was the first time he had to ask other people to invest substantial amounts of money in his vision.

Part of the vision going forward is for growing theatrical success for his hometown, where Memphis had a two-week run in early 2009 at the 5^th Avenue Theater before its move to Broadway.

That last pre-Broadway stop marked a milestone both for the Alhadeffs and the 5^th Avenue, since it had been 30 years since his late father and a partner had undertaken the restoration and reopening of the landmark theater, which occurred in 1980. Alhadeff went on the 5^th Avenue board in 1994, after his father’s death, and subsequently served as chair of that board.

“Seattle has been on the rise for a long time as one of the premier theater cities in America,” Alhadeff said. “We are going to continue to see major productions developed in Seattle on the way to Broadway.”

And it’s clear that he and Marleen plan to bring their new national theater credentials to boost Seattle’s future opportunities.