One of Wythe County’s most far-reaching tourist attractions — and a major hub for the arts — will go up for auction in November.
Whomever the new owners of the building turn out to be, Wohlfahrt Haus Dinner Theatre will honor all shows remaining in its 2024 season.
“We always include a Nativity with our show,” said George Bailey, Wohlfahrt Haus artistic director. “Because our Christmas show starts prior to the auction, we didn’t want to interrupt the clientele’s ability to come be a part of that and share the holiday season with us.”
With its German tavern-style timber framing, the dinner theater grabs the eye on the northbound Interstate 81 approach to the U.S. 11 exit in Wytheville. Built to seat 225 in its dining and stage area, the dinner theater was the dream of Peggy Sutphin, a longtime Wytheville resident who believed the town needed a theater.
A larger question looms as to whether the 25-year-old for-profit theater and restaurant will continue as a theater once its properties are under new ownership.
“It is our sincerest hope that the next owners of the property will continue to utilize it as an entertainment venue for our region,” wrote Rosa Lee Jude, director of Visit Wytheville.
“I think there is a high probability, but no guarantee, that it will continue as a going concern, as an operating dinner theater,” said theater owner Pat Sutphin, who has arranged for Roanoke real estate brokers Woltz & Associates to conduct the auction. “It certainly is our hope that it continues as a theater.”
Bailey and Sutphin described several factors that led to the decision to sell. The closure and slow reopening of the theater during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Supply chain issues that have made even basic supplies more expensive. The negative impact of the pandemic on the bus tour industry. The state mandate to raise the minimum wage.
“Everything kind of went up. It was hard to keep up with that. The only thing that didn’t go up was the amount of bodies coming to the theater because that went down,” Bailey said. “It made for tough times, but we made it through, and we kept fighting.”
Fewer people doesn’t mean empty houses. “I was there on the day the contract was signed,” said Jonna McGraw, the Woltz agent who is handling the auction. “There were three busloads there,” with more than 200 people attending a matinee show.
For Pat Sutphin, 55, a personal factor also contributed to the decision to sell. “This was Mom’s vision. I’m not a theater person by trade. It’s not my passion.” In fact, his background is in the health care and pharmaceutical industry. “I think there are other people that are lovers of the arts who can potentially take it to another level.”
Business pioneer and community icon Peggy Sutphin died in March 2021 at age 83. “She was one of the most genuinely nice and kind people I have ever met,” Bailey told the Wytheville Enterprise in 2021 about his employer of two decades. “I wouldn’t be where I am today if it wasn’t for her.”
The story goes that during a late 1990s restaurant meal with her sister, Bobbie Jo Tolbert, and a friend, Bonnie Welder, Sutphin sketched the design for the theater on a napkin. Sketch became reality in 1999 when the Wohlfahrt Haus opened with a performance of the musical theater mainstay “My Fair Lady.”
A 2000 Roanoke Times feature showed the theater to be a full family production. Peggy Sutphin was the manager. Her son, Pat, the customer relations director; her sister, then Bobbie Jo DeHart, marketing director; and Bobbie Jo’s son, Richard DeHart, operations director. The name Wohlfahrt came from an ancestor who immigrated to the United States from Germany in 1750.
Peggy Sutphin’s vision proved to be a sound one, as the theater flourished, growing to employ about 40, more than half of them full-time.
“Early on, it was exciting to have this new opportunity in our area, but it was slow building,” Bailey said. Around 2006, “we reached kind of what I consider our golden age. Our group sales picked up, and then we started getting bus tours in. That’s really where the business began to thrive.”
“The Wohlfahrt Haus Dinner Theatre has been an anchor attraction among Wytheville’s tourism businesses for over two decades,” wrote Jude, the tourism board director. “It plays an important role in what Visit Wytheville offers to prospective travelers to our area. Wohlfahrt Haus productions are also enjoyed by local and regional citizens as a cultural center and special event location.”
“It’s been fantastic,” Bailey said. “I have grown as a performer and was able to grow into a leader in theater, one who is able to direct and choreograph and put together shows and casts,” and “was able to then take that and teach other people how to do the same.”
One of Bailey’s daughters works for Wohlfahrt Haus, managing the dinner theater’s social media accounts and website. “My kids have been able to grow up there. I’ve seen other kids in the community grow up there and really have the opportunity to learn and grow.”
Plenty of audience members gathered at Wohlfahrt Haus’ tables have come from out of town. “We’ve had people come from Georgia, Arkansas, Ohio, Canada, lots of different other places, but really, on the regular, people come in from North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, West Virginia, and up and down Virginia,” Bailey said.
At 53, Bailey said he would rather not have to start over in a new venture, and he hopes he won’t have to. “But there has been discussion, just in case that happens, of ways to continue keeping the arts alive in this area in a similar format,” he said.
As of this writing, Wohlfahrt Haus is in the midst of a new production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic musical “Oklahoma!” that continues through Oct. 20. The season closes out with “Christmas in the Park,” this year’s Christmas show, written by Bailey, with performances taking place Nov. 8-Dec. 22.
“When it’s Christmas time at the Wohlfahrt Haus, it is literally like walking into a winter wonderland,” Bailey said. “It’s Christmas trees galore. You know, 15-foot Christmas tree in the lobby and decorated to the nines. We have a blast doing the Christmas show.”
The auction of three Wohlfahrt Haus properties — the 19,300-square-foot main building, minimum bid $1.75 million; a house where cast members stay, minimum bid $210,000; and an adjoining lot with a storage shed, minimum bid $24,000 — will take place at 2 p.m. Nov. 15 in the Wytheville Meeting Center. “We sell them in the combination that creates the highest sale price,” McGraw said.
Allowing the conclusion of the 2024 season is a term of the auction, she said.
