Cape Playhouse

Cape Playhouse Review

For Broadway-style dramas, comedies, and musicals, as well as kids' plays, you can attend a production at the Cape Playhouse, the oldest professional summer theater in the country. In 1927 Raymond Moore, who had been working with a theatrical troupe in Provincetown, bought an 1838 former Unitarian meetinghouse and converted it into a theater. The original pews still serve as seats. The opening performance was The Guardsman, starring Basil Rathbone; other stars who performed here in the early days—some in their professional stage debuts—include Bette Davis (who first worked here as an usher), Gregory Peck, Lana Turner, Ginger Rogers, Humphrey Bogart, Tallulah Bankhead, and Henry Fonda, who appeared with his then-unknown 20-year-old daughter, Jane. Cape resident Shirley Booth was such an admirer of the playhouse that she donated her Oscar (for Come Back Little Sheba) and her Emmy (for Hazel) to the theater; both are on display in the lobby during the season. Behind-the-scene tours are also given in season; call for a schedule. The playhouse offers children's theater on Friday morning during July and August. Also on the 26-acre property, now known as the Cape Cod Center for the Arts, are a restaurant, the Cape Cod Museum of Art, and the Cape Cinema, whose exterior was designed in the style of the Congregational church in Centerville. Inside, a 6,400-square-foot mural of heavenly skies—designed by Massachusetts artist Rockwell Kent, who also designed the gold-sunburst curtain—covers the ceiling.