Manna still falls from heaven, if you're good enough to attract it. The three theater artists who founded Center City's 11th Hour Theatre Company have been good enough from the start, and manna has been their reward.
Not that it didn't take a lot of reaching out for Michael Philip O'Brien, 32; his sister, Megan Nicole O'Brien, 29, and Steve Pacek, 33, whose company has carved a niche for producing musicals usually too bizarre or too intimate to be on the general radar, and risky because of it.
On Monday night, 11th Hour opened Adam Gwon's Ordinary Days on the top floor of the Adrienne Theater on Sansom Street, where the O'Briens and Pacek are producing their first three-show season. Ordinary Days is the relatively young company's seventh Philadelphia premiere out of the 11 musicals it has done.
From its beginning - in 2003 with a cabaret and fund-raising concerts, then two years later with its first full staging, of I Sing! - 11th Hour has been patient, choosing carefully and aiming high, for a time doing only one show each season and giving it everything they could.
The result artistically has been clear; the small troupe is seen as an inventive, bold, and thoughtful producer that offers something special and has been recognized with six Barrymore Awards.
That's where the manna comes in.
"I really love these kids," says 11th Hour's board president, Alan Blumenthal, a cofounder and former artistic director of Act II Playhouse in Ambler, and before that an engineer who worked on top-secret projects for the Defense Department. "They have a way of looking at a show, not the traditional way, and trying to find a newness that corresponds with the audience."
Blumenthal is one example of the manna: After an early 11th Hour benefit concert, he called to offer his services.
Likewise, a few weeks ago, at the company's biggest fund-raiser ever ("11/11/11" they called it, to celebrate both the day and their name), major performers from the theatrical community who had never worked with 11th Hour volunteered to perform. (The event took in just over $30,000 after expenses, equal to about a 10th of the company's annual budget, a tiny spending plan for the work they do.)
