Ricardo Rosenkranz’s first step toward running The Rhapsody Theater started in 2009. That year, he saw Derren Brown’s Enigma. “I realized what a special vehicle the long-format show is, because it allows you to give room to illusions and to storytelling,” Rosenkranz said about Brown’s show. “When you’re limited to 20 minutes… sometimes it’s hard to do storytelling. And I saw Derren do that, and I told Eugene [Burger], ‘OK, this is what I want to do.’”
Ricardo likes to say it took him seven years and seven weeks from that moment to bring his dream to life. In 2016, a theater manager called him and asked if he could fill a sudden opening in the venue’s slate, as the scheduled show had crashed and burned, closing less than a week after it opened. Ricardo agreed, and launched his first longform show, Rosenkranz Mysteries. It was a success, and he returned every year through 2019. Ricardo, however, was frustrated by not having control over the length of his run. “You have this show, and it’s going well, and then you end it, and then whenever you’re going to start again, it’s like, ‘Oh my God, I have to ramp it all up again,’” he explained. “So part of the idea was, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if I found a venue that I could have a more permanent relationship with?’”
