A wow-inducing theater we didn’t know was there

Note to readers: Certain stories require an overtime period or two. My latest for the Baltimore Brew is such a story. I found that Paul Wenger, president of Flagship Premium Cinemas, had a good story to tell — about his career in movie theaters and about the role of good seats (recliners!) in luring customers back to the bijou — but also about a live entertainment venue I could only mention in brief in the Brew story.

It’s called FPX Events Live. It’s the largest theater at Flagship Cinemas in Eastpoint, Baltimore County. In my Brew story, I use the term “wow-inducing” to describe it. That’s because I uttered a wow when Mickey Cucchiella showed me the place for the first time last month. (Mickey and Matt Davis record their fun podcast, Mickey Talks, in a studio inside Flagship Eastpoint.) I had no idea such a large and technically-smart space existed inside the cinema, and with comfortable seating (but not recliners!) for 400.

Wenger, the subject of the Brew feature, explained that the venue was once used for movies and seated 600. Since Flagship purchased the Eastpoint complex in 2015, it has gone through an extensive renovation, with nine of the 10 theaters outfitted with electric-powered recliners for audiences. The 10th theater, FPX Events, has high-back rockers. Nice as those seats are, Eastpoint customers prefer recliners.

Putting 400 recliners in the big theater was impractical, Wenger says, so he had to figure out a new use for the big theater. He’s made it a space for concerts, comedy nights, award ceremonies and magic shows.

Yes, I said magic shows.

More on that in a minute. First, some questions for Wenger.

DR: What was the Eastpoint cinema like back in the 1980s, when it first opened? Had you ever come here as a customer?

PW: I was just a young man. R/C had just opened it. It was magnificent. It really was at the time a big deal — state-of-the-art, modern — and I mean this place was a true performer. I came here and never did I ever imagine that one day I would own it.

DR: The 400 high-back rockers you have in here, with plenty of leg room, they’re very comfortable. I’d be happy watching a movie here.

PW: They’re not recliners. So even though they’re beautiful, it wound up that this auditorium was no longer functional [as a movie theater]. Converting it to power recliners would not have been cost effective.

DR: OK, as I understand it, the original idea was to make this a theater for magic acts. Why magic?

PW: The pandemic hits, right? I’m not sitting at home. I can’t. So we would come here — my son, Paul, and my brother Nick. Nick is one of the factors that motivated me to do this. He’s not a magician. He builds magic acts. He lives here in Dundalk. He’s got his little workshop, and he sits there and designs and builds these incredible magic props and tricks that he sells all over the world. It started as a hobby and has developed into a nice little boutique business.. . . Nick had contact with a lot of high-quality magicians. I said, you know, coming out of the pandemic, we’re going to have to reinvent ourselves because we knew that the industry was kind of changing. Social behaviors were changing, and so we felt like there’s going to be a need for live entertainment. 

DR: So you settled on magic acts?

PW: We decided to keep ourselves busy and build this [theater into a] magic auditorium. We would put on magic shows, something unique in this area and the whole East Coast. My brother had contact with a gentleman by the name of Scott Alexander. 

FYI to readers: Scott Alexander was a magician who headlined at Caesar’s Palace and appeared on America’s Got Talent.

PW: He lived in Pennsylvania. My brother introduced me to him and I said, ‘Hey, I want to build a magic auditorium because I can’t do anything else with it, can’t justify the expense of converting it to powered recliners.’ So, I brought him here, and I said, ‘Tell me what you need and I’ll build exactly what you want.’

DR: Excuse me for asking again: You no longer saw this as a viable movie theater because you didn’t have the recliners, right? But, again, I gotta say these seats are very comfortable. 

PW: Didn’t matter. People wanted powered recliners for a movie, but these [rockers] are great for anything else — a play or if you had a concert. The National Edgar Allan Poe Theatre did 16 plays here, and they did an incredible job. 

DR: And so you pursued magic acts?

PW: I went along with my brother. I bought a levitation trick from Barcelona, Spain, that’s built into the floor. The stage has tunnels, trap doors. 

DR: Maybe you shouldn’t tell me everything. 

PW: As it turns out, people started finding out about the place. I mean, people never knew what was in here. When I bring people in, they say the same thing: ‘Holy shit.’ 

DR: That was my reaction. 

PW: I knew that magic was going to be hard to produce. But it was extremely hard to produce because they have to bring their props in, they have to do rehearsals.. . . . 

DR: When did you start producing the magic shows? Was there an audience for them?

PW: The shows were launched during the pandemic and so restricted capacity and spacing were respected. Overall the reviews were positive.  The average audiences were 150 to 200. Scott Alexander was doing the shows. 

DR: How many did he do here? 

PW: He became our house magician and he would qualify other acts because you want the professionals, right?  . . . Our shows did really well again. They were very well attended, some better than others.  

Note to readers: Scott Alexander died suddenly aboard a cruise ship in February 2023.

DR: It seems to me this room has a lot of potential for comedy nights, concerts, even special movies.

PW: We’ve put 400 people in here for a rock concert, for comedy. . . . Here’s the thing, we don’t live or die by this room. We have the cinema. What we found out was that there’s a huge demand for private rentals. For instance, there are people who make independent films, and they want to premiere them, and they want it to feel like a Hollywood night. So we can do that.

DR: Check out my Brew story about Wenger and Flagship. Also, you can find my columns now at Substack and Baltimore Fishbowl. Sign up for newsletters about my next play at YouHaveNoIdea.org