Mendelssohn Theatre

I absolutely love this venue — it’s tied for my favorite in Ann Arbor for theatre. We have seen a ton of productions here put on by A2CT. The theatre is large, the seats are nicely placed on a slope so even short people like Kris and I can see, it is clean and well-​staffed, with big enough restrooms to accomodate. This is one of the few places where I will sit on the floor rather than the balcony, though, because I think the floor seating is actually better. The balcony feels REALLY far away and too high, almost but if it’s all that we can swing it’s fine because it’s still really good.
My only gripe? They either don’t have concessions or it’s in a place I haven’t found it. Not that I need to eat a ton during a show, haha, but I find that during intermission a glass of wine is always a great option (blame Broadway).

Yeah, I like the Mendelssohn. I should, I spent enough time there recently.
I just finished directing a play that performed there so I got to know the space pretty well. It is a small, quaint, theatre that has tons of U of M and Ann Arbor history. Back stage is a bit dungeony but the general public won’t ever see that.
The seats are comfortable and afford plenty of leg room and there doesn’t seem to be a bad view of the stage in the house.
However, if you do go see a show, do not sit in the first 5 rows. You are so close to the orchestra it drowns out the sound of the performers. Throughout rehearsals as well as each show, I sat in different areas of the theatre and to be honest, the best seats for sound are the front row balcony. It’s much more balanced between the music and vocals.
Not that this is the theatre’s fault, but parking around there is really bad. Although there are 2 parking garages nearby, they are cash only and can fill up pretty quickly.
All in all a nice little theatre to see a show and have a night on the town.

Lovely theatre inside one of the UofM buildings. I had never been before so I got a little confused trying to find the place (it’s on the 2^nd floor of the building) and then when I did I discovered I had to visit the box office which was back on another floor to buy my tickets. The line was a bit long and I had arrived REALLY close to curtain so I was stressed but once I got to the front it was relatively painless.
I sat in balcony and had a lovely view of the stage. The seats were fairly comfortable (I didn’t even need to get up and stretch during intermission!) and I thought the sound in the space was fantastic. The décor is not ornate like a lot of theatres around here but it’s still lovely and filled with a lot of beautiful dark wood detailing.
Parking in the area can be kind of sticky but I did luck out and found a meter spot right next to the building. But don’t count on that. There’s a parking garage a little west of there. Leave early to give yourself ample time to park there and hit the box office if you don’t already have your tickets in your hot little hand.

The Mendelssohn Theatre, is this place tucked away in the back of the UofM building. I’ve been here 4 times now and each time I wasn’t quite sure if that was the place.
Amazingly enough every time I went here I got a groupon discount for the opera or a play, so its always been a really good deal at something like 2 for $ 20. A great date night outing with your special someone if you happen to catch an event (or a groupon).
Once you do find this place, it is a very beautiful theatre, with a strong ‘well worn’ feeling to its stage, the type of feeling that tells you «great things happened here!».
The Opera’s we’ve seen were all very enjoyable, and each time we had a blast. The last one however, had some issues with the guy manning the projector for the translation (italian to english). In some cases he would either be too slow, and then quickly skip through sections of dialogue and in other cases you could ‘swear’ that they spoke more than the 8 words being projected.
Either way, overall a great experience. Technical difficulties happen, so I’m not too hung up about it, it didn’t detract from the overall store of the Opera.