Maine theater founder Victoria Crandall, 81

NEW YORK — Theatrical producer Victoria Crandall, whose adaptations of Broadway musicals delighted Maine summer audiences for more than three decades, has died at the age of 81.

Miss Crandall, of Wiscasset, Maine, died Sunday night in a New York hospital. She kept an apartment in the city and traveled there each spring to audition talent and cast roles for the coming season.

A former concert pianist, Miss Crandall in 1959 founded the Brunswick Summer Playhouse, which later became the Brunswick Music Theater. The name was changed again two years ago to the Maine State Music Theater, with Miss Crandall serving as executive director and artistic director.

The theater, located on the Bowdoin College campus, rejected packaged shows in favor of original productions. Since the theater was founded, she put on 186 shows that drew more than 1.5 million people.

The theater was launched as a for-profit venture, but became non-profit in the late 1970s in order to advance its educational mission, said William Picher, the theater’s director of development and public relations.

The Maine State Music Theater’s season will go on as planned with the first production of “Oklahoma” on June 12, Picher said.

Born in Cleveland to Swedish immigrants, Miss Crandall was a graduate of the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y. She went on to become a rehearsal pianist, working with performers Ethel Merman and Jimmy Durante and composer-lyricist teams such as Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe and Richard Rodgers and Larry Hart.

During World War II, Miss Crandall performed in Europe under the auspices of the USO.

As an assistant to a producer, Miss Crandall honed her skills in putting on Broadway musicals. She made her debut as a producer in 1951 and worked with a touring company.

“But all the time, she was looking for a place where she could settle down and establish a theater,” Picher said.

Miss Crandall’s only living relatives are two nieces in Sweden. A brother died last year.

A private funeral service will be held at Evergreen Cemetery in Hillside, N.J. Arrangements for a public memorial service in Maine were incomplete, Picher said.