A Century at the Muny

LATE LAST JULY, I accompanied my husband, Joe, on a trip to St. Louis to visit the Muny, an 11,000-seat, open-air theater built in 1917 in the city’s Forest Park. Missouri in the middle of a sweltering summer would not normally be my preferred destination for a weekend getaway, but I was intrigued by Joe’s enthusiasm for the Muny, which had hired his company to consult on a project to upgrade its stage, facilities, and equipment. Joe and I both love theaters as physical spaces as well as performance venues, and he relishes any opportunity to modernize historic theaters while maintaining their distinctive look and feel. He hadn’t been this effusive about a job since he worked on the restoration of Radio City Music Hall, and I decided I wanted to see the Muny for myself.

Everywhere I went in St. Louis, any mention of my husband’s work brought the invariable response: “Oh, I love the Muny! I’ve been going there since