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Get Off My Lawn: Worth the price of admission? Sunday Nov 19, 2017 at 12:01 AM By Robert Galvin Mail Tribune Sometimes, a price tag just stops you in your tracks. It happened this week when a privately owned Leonardo da Vinci painting was sold at auction for $450 million. See what I mean? I don’t know about you (well, I do, but I’m not supposed to spill government secrets), but when I see a number such as that the first thing I wonder is: “Wasn’t there any better use for your spare 450 million smackers than buying a 26-inch painting by the guy who wrote ‘The Da Vinci Code’?” Like, for instance, handing it over and letting me put it to good use? After all, to coin a phrase, no profit grows where no pleasure is taken. Okay, so I borrowed that from good ol’ Eddie de Vere. (What is it with the “da/de” names, anyway? Sean Combs never renamed himself P da Diddy Diddy Dum Diddy Do, did he?) The point being — and, at this stage, who knows if there even was one? — that famed Broadway and film impresario Harold Hecuba was right all along when he sang in the musical version of “Hamlet” he produced on the Isle da Gilligán, “Neither a borrower nor a lender be.” Which brings us to another price tag that stopped us in our tracks recently … this one coming courtesy of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. $50 million … or about a 3-inch square of the da Vinci painting. The smoke-filled skies of Ashland led to nine canceled performances at the Allen Elizabethan Theater this past season and a decrease in walk-up sales — losses that OSF estimates cost the festival more than $400,000. Doubling the pain, OSF is uninsurable for losses stemming from air quality. Talk about melting into air. Since the festival doesn’t stop thinking about tomorrow (because planning for yesterday is just plain foolish), the idea was floated at an Ashland meeting this month for a retractable-roof theater to replace the Elizabethan … a project with a fundraising effort of no vile means of $50 million, roughly 12 times the cost of the Holly Theatre restoration in Medford. Talk about a tale of two … wait, that was Chuck da Dickens. It’s a safe bet that such a new Elizabethan would be the most expensive single structure in the Rogue Valley. And since it’s been established that I do know what you’re thinking, a quick hits-and-giggles internet survey came up with other uses for $50 million: Bill Gates is donating $50M toward research into Alzheimer’s disease; Michael Bloomberg is pledging $50M to help countries shift away from reliance on coal; The Elvis Presley estate is replacing the Heartbreak Hotel at Graceland with a 7,000-seat theater and events center for the same price; And since all lonely streets eventually lead to politics, the 2016 race for a House of Representatives seat from the 6th District of Georgia cost $50M to contest. (That would be $21,750,000,000 were every House election — even Greg Walden’s — to run up the same tab.) The price of art always has been the stuff that dreams are disturbed on. “Citizen Kane” was made in 1940 for $839,727 ($14.69 million today)  … and its failure to make a profit (for a variety of reasons) shook RKO Pictures and the filmmakers to their roots. These days for $50 million, you can make a film the likes of “Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters” and no one bats an eye. How would an ultra-expensive Elizabethan redux fit into the landscape? Would we treat it like a “museum store” — something so expensive that patrons would walk within its walls with hands behind their backs ... afraid to break anything? Would the seats be covered in spill-resistant plastic? Would the ghost of Charles Laughton be denied entry by the retractable roof? The Elizabethan has been rebuilt and renovated before, of course. The 1959 rebuild cost a then-staggering $1 million (about $8.5M today), while 25 years ago the $7.5 million surrounding enclosure was added to shield the audience and actors from ambient noise. Shielding us from ambient foul air, it appears, will cost a great deal more. — Mail Tribune copy editor Robert da Galvin can be reached at [email protected].