Martinis Above Fourth takes its final bow

San Diego Union-Tribune

Oct. 20, 2020 8:20 PM PT

San Diego theater fans are mourning the permanent closure of Martinis Above Fourth Table + Stage, a popular Hillcrest cabaret space where local musical theater artists, jazz bands and touring national artists had performed over the past 10 years.

Martinis closed in mid-March due to the pandemic and was never able to reopen. In a post on Facebook, the owners said they couldn’t see how to reopen and survive in the COVID-19 era, so they will instead file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation. The supper club’s longtime piano bar entertainer, Don LeMaster-Hable, said he was speechless at the latest club closure.

“Honestly I don’t even know what to say,” LeMaster-Hable wrote on Facebook. “Lots of wonderful memories will stay close to my heart! Inn At The Park, Caliph and now another one bites the dust. It’s a sad day.”

Pam Kragen writes about theater for The San Diego Union-Tribune. Email her at pam.kragen@sduniontribune.com.

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Pam Kragen

Pam Kragen is the arts and entertainment editor, as well as the chief theater, dining and opera critic, for the San Diego Union-Tribune. She joined the Union-Tribune staff in October 2012 after 27 years at the North County Times, where she served as the Arts & Features Editor, as well as the paper’s longtime arts writer and theater and opera critic. She is the co-founder of the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle. She holds a bachelor of arts degree in journalism from San Diego State University and completed fellowships in theater criticism at the University of Southern California and opera-classical music criticism at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. And in 2022, she was chosen as one of the fellows in the prestigious National Critics Institute, run by the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in New London, Conn.

Martinis Above Fourth takes its final bow

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