Light Opera of Manhattan - After Mount-Burke's Death

After Mount-Burke's Death

Mount-Burke finally succumbed to his diabetes in 1984. Gotham and Allen took over as joint artistic directors to oversee the productions, and assistant music director Todd Ellison was promoted to music director. Jean Dalrymple, a producer of City Center's musical theatre revivals in the 1950s, who had been involved for many years in fundraising for the company, became president of LOOM and produced the shows, which continued uninterrupted, 52 weeks per year. But the company almost immediately ran into a number of misfortunes and costs, perhaps most importantly the loss of the Eastside Playhouse. The Building was scheduled to be demolished to make way for an apartment building, and LOOM was forced to leave.

LOOM transferred first to The Norman Thomas High School Auditorium, which was too large for its intimate productions and too distant from the Upper East Side neighborhood where it had built its reputation. Its reduced audiences were dwarfed by the large auditiorium. Next, from February 1985 to October 1986, LOOM performed at the Cherry Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village, but this black box theatre was too small. Although the company's ticket sales improved there, even sellout crowds were insufficient to generate sufficient revenues to stay ahead of the expenses of paying the large casts needed for light opera. Nevertheless, LOOM continued to introduce new productions, including Herbert's Sweethearts and William H. Smith's The Drunkard. Despite constant fundraising, LOOM fell further into debt and ceased performing in October 1986 with a matinee of The Vagabond King.

After more fundraising, Jean Dalrymple brought the company back together in 1987, and LOOM resumed its full-time production schedule at the 299-seat Playhouse 91, returning to the Upper East Side. The artistic team created an adaptation of George M. Cohan's Little Johnny Jones, called Give My Regards to Broadway. The show involved more tap dancing than any other show Off-Broadway and revived the company's popularity. Despite good box office performance, the company continued to suffer from debts and old tax problems. LOOM closed permanently in August 1989, with a run of The Pirates of Penzance – the company's first opera in 1968. After 1989, there were discussions about trying to revive the company, and one or two brief New York City productions used the LOOM name, but they were not by the same company.

Raymond Allen died on January 29, 1994 in Queens, New York, ending any possibility of a LOOM revival.