This region was promised a decent concert hall and the state ought to deliver.

Act One: The curtain rises on the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark. Copper railings reflect the giant globe chandelier, and mahogany wall paneling highlights the sweeping tiers of plush red seats. Audience members are in the lobby eating sushi and drinking champagne, while the New Jersey Symphony sets up for its 40th show of the season … drawn back there once again by state-of-the-art acoustics.

Act Two: The curtain rises on the South Jersey Performing Arts Center in Camden. Bare steel girders hold up a metal roof that drums so deafeningly in the rain that it drowns out the performers. The floor is concrete, the seats are plastic. It's a good, easily hosed-down venue for a rock concert. But the New Jersey Symphony won't be playing there. Orchestral musicians on one side of a stage usually need to hear what musicians on the other side of the stage are doing, and that just doesn't happen at the South Jersey center.

South Jersey should have its own proper concert hall. Our tax dollars have paid for it. We deserve it. Where is it?

Somehow, the funds for it seem to have been woven into the fabric of the Newark center, nearly two hours away from here. Nevertheless, the state was pompous enough to call it the New Jersey Performing Arts Center.

Another insult.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. The South Jersey center once was promised a concrete roof and a beautiful hall with tasteful appointments - a concert hall that could stand separate from the E-Center.

But while South Jersey is supposed to get 25 percent of the state Council on the Arts budget, the South Jersey center gets $1 for every $12 that goes to the northern center. As for this year, the Newark center received $1.5 million from the arts council. It gave the Camden center nothing.

Camden will have its first full season in five years only because the Legislature bypassed the arts council altogether and gave the South Jersey center $750,000.

It's bad enough that this lack of a venue hobbles our local and respected Haddonfield Symphony - which lost money and customers when it tried to play at the South Jersey center.

But this also helps explain why the so-called New Jersey Symphony Orchestra - which has received more N.J. arts funding than any other group - comes to South Jersey only once a year, and never to Camden County. This is supposed to be our "statewide" symphony, yet no one outside North or Central Jersey ever sees it except on the Fourth of July, when this orchestra condescends to appear here - at a fort.

The orchestra's sole gig in South Jersey is at Fort Dix in northern Burlington County - as far north as one can get and still be in our area.

Our tax dollars are flooding into North Jersey's arts scene, and we're getting just about nothing back from it.

With a decent orchestral space, not only would the Haddonfield Symphony have a stable venue in which to continue building its reputation, the New Jersey Symphony could appear often enough in South Jersey to deserve to be called the statewide symphony, and even the Philadelphia Orchestra might be persuaded to make the 12-minute drive over here.

We don't expect a $187 million luxury arts center such as Newark's. Just our fair share. But when the curtain closes on this conflict, it reasonably could do so in a respectable venue, where the audience can hear the piccolos, the musicians can hear each other, and the New Jersey Council on the Arts finally hears the voice of reason. Thunderous applause.