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player ready...Q. How did the Drury Lane theaters in Evergreen Park and Oakbrook get their names? Are they related?
A. Those theaters are named after the oldest operating playhouse in London, the Drury Lane, Theatre Royal, in the Covent Garden area. The current historic structure, one of London’s largest theaters, dates from 1812 and is actually the fourth such building to bear the name on that site. The first Drury Lane, opened in 1662, burned down, as did two succeeding versions. Some of the greatest actors in English theater history — David Garrick, Edmund Kean and Sarah Siddons — played in classic dramas at Drury Lane, but for the last 60 years the theater has been home to long-run musicals like “My Fair Lady” and “Miss Saigon.”
The first Drury Lane in the Chicago area was a summer-stock tent theater that opened in 1949 outside the Martinique Restaurant on 95th Street in Evergreen Park. When the original producers bailed out in 1952, Tony DeSantis, the restaurant’s owner, took over and eventually moved the theater inside. In all, DeSantis has opened five Drury Lanes, including shuttered versions in Water Tower Place and McCormick Place, and Drury Lane North, which is now the Marriot Theatre in Lincolnshire. The Evergreen Park operation continues under different ownership, and DeSantis’ Drury Lane Oakbrook is a successful restaurant-theater complex.