Est. 1913 · Thatcher Family Theater Legacy · Utah State Historical Register · Lyric Repertory Company Home
The Thatchers, a leading Logan family with a love of plays and opera, ran the Thatcher Opera House on the second floor of a bank building at Center and Main streets. After fire destroyed the opera house in 1913, the family built and opened the Lyric Theatre that same year, a few doors west on Center Street.
The 1913 theater anchored downtown Logan's cultural life and is listed on the Utah State Historical Register. It operated under various uses over the following decades, a common path for early-20th-century playhouses in small Western cities.
In 2000 Utah State University purchased the theater. A restoration and expansion followed, and the renewed building reopened in 2001 with a production of Peg O' My Heart. The work preserved the historic auditorium while updating it for a university producing company.
The Caine Lyric Theatre is now the downtown home of the Lyric Repertory Company, which operates in association with USU's Department of Theatre Arts and stages a rotating summer repertory. The university's Fine Arts Center handles ticketing, and the Caine Lyric box office opens about an hour before performances.
Sources
- https://www.usu.edu/lyricrep/about
- https://utahtheaters.info/Theater/History/160/Caine-Lyric-Theatre
- https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=44441
Disembodied voice calling to actorsFootsteps on the catwalksSense of a presence in the loge
Like many old theaters, the Caine Lyric carries a resident-ghost story, and at the Lyric the ghost has a name: Everett. The legend holds that Everett played the second gravedigger in an early production of Hamlet and got bigger laughs in the famous graveyard scene than the actor in the larger role, who became jealous. In the telling, Everett stopped appearing for later performances, while the lead gravedigger turned up with a suspiciously fresh prop skull.
The story is theater folklore rather than documented history; it is a tale the company keeps alive rather than a verified account of a real death, and no specific person is identified in public sources. Its appeal lies in how neatly it fits the Hamlet gravedigger scene.
The reported activity is the kind common to working theaters. Actors and technicians say they have heard Everett call out to them during rehearsals and performances, and he is said to walk the catwalks above the stage and to favor a seat in the right loge. Cache Valley ghost-story coverage regularly includes the Lyric among the area's haunted places.
The theater treats the legend as part of its character, a story passed between casts each season rather than a marketed attraction.
Notable Entities
Everett (theater legend)
