Artist v. Architect

Everyone knows Tyrone Guthrie’s name, but not everyone knows Ralph Rapson’s. Rapson was the architect who designed the original Guthrie Theater on Vineland Place. A relatively unknown Midwestern architect at the time, Rapson met his match in the famed Irish director, and the conflict between these two titanic egos is the comic vortex around which the History Theatre’s Tyrone and Ralph swirls.

Built in 1963, the Guthrie Theater was a place for Minnesotans to see and be seen, but some of the best drama happened before the building ever opened its doors. When the Walker Art Center leased its land to Guthrie for his theater, architect Rapson came as part of the package. (The Walker had already contracted him to design an auditorium). Like most prearranged marriages, there was a period of adjustment, and this one might have ended in divorce had both men’s careers not been on the line.

Forty-five years later, Guthrie and Rapson’s ceaseless bickering has become ideal source material for playwright Jeffrey Hatcher, who wrote Tyrone and Ralph. Hatcher’s dry wit was most recently seen onstage at the Guthrie in his adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s The Government Inspector. Hatcher’s comic sensibility and gift for adaptation is a perfect fit for a story about two headstrong artists at the top of their game.

“One of the odd things about the Guthrie and Rapson story is that I don’t think most people know about it,” says Hatcher in his bemused baritone. “There’s less than you would think available over [at the Guthrie archives]. Tyrone Guthrie held onto pretty much all of his stuff, or it ended up back in his home in Ireland. Ralph had the best material. He saved all the memos and letters, and there were some nasty ones.”

Rapson and Guthrie found all sorts of things to fight about, including the multicolored seats, which Rapson had installed surreptitiously when Guthrie was out of town. Guthrie, for his part, did things like summon Rapson to the Algonquin Hotel in New York City in the hope that his big-shot friends would intimidate Rapson.

“In one sense, Guthrie is fighting for his life, because he’d had some Broadway flops and a heart attack and people made fun of him because he came out to ‘that place’ to start a theater,” says Hatcher. “The idea of a repertory theater that wasn’t Broadway–based could have failed. For Ralph, there’s the career before 1960 and after 1960. For him, this is The Big One.”

Both of these men just happened to land their Big One at the same time, in the same place, making history in the process. Sept. 25– Nov. 2. History Theatre, 30 E. 10th St., St. Paul, 651-292-4323.