Around St. Paul: Performance artist

By Joe Kimball, Star Tribune

Last update: July 26, 1998 - 11:00 PM

Birds darted over the stage, airplanes roared overhead and audience members munched on cheeseburgers and popcorn, but Max Metzger didn't miss a beat with his baton.

It was Thursday night at the Como Lakeside Pavilion, where he was directing the orchestra for a Como Lakeside Community Theatre performance of the musical Western "Paint Your Wagon."

Someone had stolen the company's microphones and amplifier the previous weekend, so artistic director Kristen Hirsch and her techies were experimenting with a new system. But none of these distractions fazed Metzger. Metzger, 76, has been in the performance business all of his adult life, and he has weathered worse disturbances.

"We were doing 'Oklahoma!' years ago -- in the old pavilion with a roof that leaked like a sieve -- and Curly was singing 'Don't stand in the rain with me. . . . People will say we're in love.'

"And suddenly the rain came right down on him," Metzger recalled.

"One year we were doing Victor Herbert's 'Sweethearts' and a goose waddled on stage: 'Wack, wack, wack.'

"We've had birds land on heads. Happens all the time," he said. "Of course, it's not so humorous at the time. It breaks up the performance."

Metzger is a fixture at Como, as familiar as the paddle boats on the lake below the pavilion.

For 48 years, he has directed a pops orchestra in the pavilion on summer Sunday afternoons. And he has been involved even longer with the Como community theater group, which his mother started 53 years ago as the St. Paul Opera Workshop.

He jokes that after all these years, he has to "keep doing it until we get it right."

Jammed for 'Joseph'

Attendance for the theater series peaked in 1995 with "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat." It was soon after the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical had had its second successful run in Minneapolis with Donny Osmond as the lead, and audiences wanted more of the show.

"They charged $75 in Minneapolis. We charge $4 for adults; $2 for children," Metzger said. "Of course, we couldn't compete with Donny Osmond."

Nearly 1,000 people crammed into the Como pavilion some nights for "Joseph," setting up lawn chairs in front of and behind the stage and in the aisles.

One night, a woman fainted and paramedics had trouble getting through, so now they're very careful to keep the aisles clear.

This summer, they're getting 300 to 400 at each performance of "Paint Your Wagon."

All in the family

Metzger's musical and performing aptitude is a birthright, of sorts. His parents were from Germany, where his father was a Shakespearean actor and his mother an opera singer and voice teacher. They moved to the United States in 1930. His father, Ludwig, managed restaurants until he died in 1949, and his mother continued with her music.

"Her name was Mady, but that was a nickname, short for Mädchen [German for "girl"]. Her real name was Sabina, but she hated that name," Metzger said.

He lived with his mother until her death in 1979. She always sat in the front row for his performances, even in her later years when she was in a wheelchair. "She was my severest critic," he said.

A few weeks after his mother died, Metzger married his longtime girlfriend, Lil. They met 40 years ago at the old St. Paul Auditorium theater -- she was in the chorus, he played bassoon in the orchestra.