ASPEN — When such Aspen landmarks as the Isis Theater, Cooper Street Pier and Explore Booksellers were threatened with extinction in recent years, the outcry to save them reverberated — even if government energy and expenditures were required — around town.

That cry was mostly missing when word got out that the Crystal Palace dinner theater — a unique and dynamic piece of Aspen that had endured for over half a century — was about to take its last bow.

What was the difference between a movie theater, a bookstore and a dive bar on the one side, and the Crystal Palace on the other? That’s easy. The Isis and Cooper Street — and Explore, at least after the death of founder and owner Katherine Thalberg — did not have someone who was virtually synonymous with the space and what went on there. They did not have a Mead Metcalf.

Certainly the show itself could continue being presented without Metcalf, the pianist and showman who founded the Palace, as a 23-year-old St. Louis native straight out of the military, in 1955. The cast features enough veterans who know the routines, both on the stage and behind it. In fact, there were murmurs from cast members that possibly they could buy the building and keep the show running themselves, or that the new owner might be persuaded to devote some of the space to a stage for the Palace’s musical satire. But those voices died out quickly.

It’s just hard to envision the Palace without Metcalf, who put his stamp on every aspect of the operation, handpicking both the signature stained glass and the performers. As Meredith Daniel, who has been a Palace cast member off and on for 22 years, put it in a 2005 article in The Aspen Times: “It’s all about Mead. He’s got the final word on everything.”

Including the decision on when to drop the curtain. Metcalf has been fairly vocal about his growing distaste for Aspen, and is moving to Crested Butte. He put the Crystal Palace building on the market last year and, after several false starts, the sale is imminent. Metcalf appeared to make little effort to have the dinner theater outlast him in Aspen.

Which is probably as it should be; the show has always rested on Metcalf’s shoulders. After a year playing dinner-time piano at the Hotel Jerome, Metcalf rented the old Mother Lode building, installed a kitchen and opened the Crystal Palace. While guests dined on the house specialty, Chicken à la Baby Doe, he played piano and sang. “Trouble in River City” from “The Music Man” was a signature tune. Metcalf was regularly joined by his dishwasher, Joan Higbie, who eventually became Mrs. Metcalf and a 20-year veteran of the Palace cast. (Metcalf’s present wife, Diane, whom he married in 2005, was a cast member at the Palace from 1968-74.)

When the Palace moved, in 1960, to its present location, Metcalf designed the interior, with its Victorian feel. He guided the show from a revue of Broadway songs to its current incarnation as sharp-edged social and political song-and-dance, taking his cue after seeing the satirical Upstairs at the Downstairs show on a trip to New York City in the ’70s. It was Metcalf’s provocative personality — and willingness to offend paying guests — that led to such original tunes as “The Neighborhood Porno Lady” and “My Garden Went to Pot” in the ’70s, and the current sketch that spoofs U.S. Sen. Larry Craig, “The Minneapolis Airport Men’s Room Getting to Know You Soft Shoe.”

The 52-year run comes to a close Saturday, April 12. Dozens of former cast members are returning to fill the night’s two seatings. The Aspen Times asked the performers, past and current, to share their memories and reflections on the Palace.

Little surprise that, almost invariably, those thoughts were not about a particularly brilliant sketch (or one performed particularly poorly), after-hours parties, or an encounter with a guest (even when those guests are Burt Bacharach or Stephen Sondheim, both of whom have attended to hear their work being performed). The memories almost invariably have to do with Metcalf.

Which proves the point: The building at 300 E. Hyman Ave. isn’t the Crystal Palace without Mead Metcalf, either behind the scenes, selecting the night’s program or, as he still is most nights, at the piano. (Whether it needs to be Metcalf singing “Peanut Butter on the Chin,” the Palace’s signature bit of silliness, is another matter.)

stewart@aspentimes.com

<b>David Dyer, pianist, 1980-2002, 2006-present</b>
One summer, on cleanup day prior to opening, I had some particularly cloudy wine decanters in need of sprucing. I created a cleansing concoction of ice, salt, Clorox and water to be abrasive and bleaching. Once I set them on a counter in the kitchen, I realized I had better make a sign discouraging the consumption of the contents, as there were children of cast members there helping out. Little did I know that while I stepped away to make the sign Mead would see the decanters and pour himself a glass of what he thought was fresh lemonade! I’ll never forget him hunched over the sink rinsing out his mouth, muttering “They’re trying to kill the bastard” under his breath. I’m still there, so I guess he got over it.

This winter, I have been especially aware of how lucky I have been for half of my life to sit inside this cocoon of a sparkling jewel box, a literal beehive of activity all glittering and colorful, surrounded inside by longtime colleagues and customers, while getting to do the thing I love most in the world ... making music. I can’t even describe how much I shall miss it.


<b>Peggy Mundinger, cast member 1986-2001, 2006-present</b>
When I got married, my husband Steve always said, as an outsider, he loved coming to the Palace because it’s such a family there. When you’re in the cast, you kind of forget that. But you go off and do other things and you realize it so much. Mead is the glue that connected us in that great big family. That I’ll treasure more than anything. When I took five years off, I was still welcome at the parties, at the piano bar. I came back because I wanted to be there for the end. That was so important.


<b>Suzi Sanderson, cast member, 1970s</b>
I remember the first summer I was at the Palace, 1970. Mead had one of those big-wheel bicycles with foot pegs on the back, so one of the bartenders would drive it around town with me on the back pegs and we would solicit business for the Palace.

In the early ’70s we worked our tails off. Mead did the renovation and added the balcony. We did two sold-out shows every night plus a cocktail show of Broadway tunes. We always had a pretty good turnout for that show too. Every night I listened to “Peanut Butter on the Chin” and laughed like it was the first time I’d ever heard it. Still do to this day.

The group in the ’70s was a real family — we skied together every day, worked together every night and played Ping-Pong until dawn! I was the party-thrower and even got Mead to attend a few of my Champagne pajama brunches! Mead started the Grand Finale in the early ’90s and I worked there for one season. We did an “oldies” show and one night Jimmy Carter was there, and we did a song from his presidential term: “There’s somethin’ about Jimmy Carter, somethin’ that leads me to doubt / With crime and corruption without interruption, what the hell is he smilin’ about?” He had a good sense of humor about it.

<b>Jeannie Walla, cast member, 1975-86</b>
The year we did the song “Ev’rybody Today Is Turning On” from the play “I Love My Wife,” Mead came over to my house to play the song, and he said, “I can’t figure out the lyrics here.” It was filled with double entendres, and it’s all these synonyms for marijuana: pot, etc. And he says, “Can of piss?” I said, “No, that’s not what they’re saying.”

I worked closely, lived closely, lots of us loved closely — and those are my lifelong friends. I never went away to college — that whole college-life thing for me happened at the Crystal Palace.


<b>Molly MacKinnon, cast member, 1961-62</b>
Mead didn’t know if I could sing or not when he hired me. How times changed! Hopefully when you’re 20 and 21 (yes, I worked with a fake ID the first summer) you have one golden summer of a great job, your first apartment and great new friends. I had two of those summers.

I mostly sang in the chorus, but if it was very late at night and there was hardly anyone in the place, and whoever was there was drunk, I got to sing “How Are Things in Glocca Morra?” sitting on the piano bench with Mead. I was sure I was destined for Broadway, but apparently no one else was. I had friends who said they could hear me braying off-key from three blocks away. One of my fellow waitresses also said I spilled roast beef juice on Lowell Thomas. I can’t believe that!

<b>Nina Gabianelli, cast member and business manager, 2003-present</b>
I was working at the Meadows in January ’03, the middle of the Palace season. Mead and I had been talking — I’d actually contacted him right out of college, in the mid-’80s — and I told him to get in touch with me when an opening came up.

He came to my office, a little coat room beneath the stairs. He asked me two questions: When could I start? And what song did I want to sing? I knew I had the job. It seemed like that fulfilled my destiny. I’d always wanted to work there.


<b>Kathy Pelowski, cast member, on and off since 1984, including 2004-present</b>
For me, I love the fact that someone like Sidney Poitier, who came in my first year — or anyone, maybe a 10-year-old girl — we know they’re there. We get to talk to them; we get to know the audience. You go to their table; you get to talk to them throughout the night. Every other theater I’ve worked in, it’s not like that. And a lot of opportunities have come of that.


<b>Mike Monroney, cast member, 1982, 1987, 1992-present</b>
In the summer of 1998, I took off to go to Europe with a girlfriend. But I wrote two songs — “Viagra” and “We’re Still Here on Mir” — that got into the show. Right before I left, Mead invited me to see the show opening night and have dinner on him. We in the show know it’s good, but sitting there in the audience — and not having the pressure on me to perform — just watching the show was eye-opening. Coming back the next fall, I had a new perspective on what we do, and why the audience enjoys it as much as they do.

<b>Dottie Wolcott, cast member, 1970s</b>
One New Year’s Eve, the Palace was full and I had a large table. We finished dinner, started the show, and sang a song making fun of the John Birch Society. Halfway through, middle of the song, everyone at the table got up and left. Rather surprised, Mead went running out behind them to see why they were leaving.

Needless to say, they were John Birchers. Mead said, “We didn’t mean to offend you — but don’t you at least want to tip your waitress?” They said no at first, but Mead shamed them into coming back and tipping me.


<b>And some memories from the man himself ...</b>
[Songwriter] Lesley Perrin was here on her honeymoon, with Forrest Perrin, and they sat at the back wall. They called Joanie [Metcalf] over and told her, “Well, I wrote three of the songs you performed tonight — uncredited.” So from then on, I started paying royalties.

And I married the girl who first came here in 1968. She walked in the front door with a bunch of girls for the Crystal Palace reunion. They were whooping, hollering. And there was Diane, back in the lobby, very reticent. It was a week after I had broken up with my ex-wife. And I couldn’t be happier, I must tell you.

<i>– Stewart Oksenhorn</i>