Guthrie venue to close Sunday

When Hamlet is bid a final “good night, sweet prince” on the Guthrie Theater stage in Minneapolis, it also will mark a farewell to a venerated auditorium that helped birth the U.S. regional theater movement.

More than four decades after Sir Tyrone Guthrie started his theater in the nation’s heartland as a reaction to the commercialization of Broadway, the Guthrie will close with a last performance of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” on Sunday. Weeks later, the Guthrie will reopen across town in a new, $125-million three-stage complex.

The old Guthrie will dim its lights 43 years to the day that it opened – also with “Hamlet” – on May 7, 1963.

Not everyone is ready to accept the end of the venue, which probably faces the wrecking ball late this summer. Some want it preserved for its cultural significance and hope a buyer will step forward. But the city’s Walker Art Center conducted a reuse study five years ago and found no groups to take it over.