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Broadway's Last Stand
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I recently wrote an article for Russia's The New Times magazine about the state of theater—and especially Broadway—this season. So, with their permission (the article is now live in Russian on their site), I am posting it here in English for the Examiner readers.
For those New Yorkers who love fancy parties and big Broadway shows with their $150 tickets, the last few months of 2008 were some of worst. From September to December half a million of Americans lost their jobs and many of the hardest hit sectors were in New York City. It seemed like everyone was unemployed, and partly thanks to the “Bernie Madoff and his Amazing Ponzie Scheme” spectacle many of New York’s richest theater patrons had to pull out of their investment commitments, cancel their tickets, and stop going to the shows altogether, ending the hopes of many great productions of making it to Broadway. And for the shows that did open, counting on the ticket sales became harder than ever. When the normally reliable out-of-town crowd can barely afford a restaurant dinner or a hotel room, why would they splurge on the price of a Broadway show? Renting “Shrek the DVD” was in, going to “Shrek The Musical” was definitely out.
Some may say “good riddance.” In recent years Broadway has become a place where big, overproduced shows like “The Lion King” attracted the endless tourist crowd. Sure it was great for the kids and somehow less cheesy than going to Disneyland, but was it really something that can take your breath away? Where was Broadway of theatre greats like Eugene O’Neill’s "Long Days Journey Into Night" and Tennessee Williams’ "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof"and "Street Car Named Desire"? In the post-Disney decade the audience would be lucky to see one truly remarkable play in the sea of pleasant but mediocre commercial productions every season. Add to this a financial crisis of biblical proportions, and this season was shaping up to be one of the worst in decades.
Yet somehow right around the time when we were done with 8 years of President Bush, and the old ways of doing things were quickly disappearing, a new era began to emerge. The machine churning out predictable fluff was being dismantled: in January alone 13 plays closed on Broadway. That’s when a cadre of new hungry producers, ready to take advantage of the situation stepped in, and the shows with simpler sets, smaller casts, more adventurous plots rose above the dust of the old and tired.
So what happened? Simple enough, Broadway shocked everyone by having one of the best seasons in years. There were amazing revivals: “The Seagull,” David Mamet’s “Speed The Plow,” “Hair” and “West Side Story,” a sprinkling of new dramas “God of Carnage” and “Irena’s Vow,” an energetic British transplant “Billy Elliot” and yes, the occasional overproduced old-style Broadway stuff like Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5” and “Shrek The Musical.”
Broadway had so many good shows this year that the Tony Awards weren’t able to nominate many deserving candidates, and some great shows have been ignored. According to the noted New York Times reviewer Ben Brantley, seeing the revival of Chekhov’s “The Seagull” was the high point of what turned out to be an amazing Broadway season for him, and yet it wasn’t even nominated.
Another play overlooked for a Tony nod (but recognized by the Outer Critics Circle Award and Drama Desk Awards) is “Irena’s Vow.” It’s the only new drama this season that is based on a true story of an unsung heroine, a young Polish woman, Irena Gut Opdyke (played by the talented Tovah Feldshuh) who, during the Nazi occupation of Poland, was able to overcome hate and fear and risk her own life by hiding eleven Jews in the house where she was working as a servant for one of the German’s highest ranked officers. It is one of the most moving plays I’ve ever seen.
So what about the nominees then?
“Shrek The Musical” sticks primarily to the plot of the popular 2001 animated movie with Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy and Cameron Diaz. The kooky love story of an ogre who travels along with an annoying donkey to fetch a princess for a scheming lord was a lot of fun on the big screen. The same almost holds true for the Broadway version, even though some critics panned the show. It still managed to collect an impressive 9 Tony Award nominations, including a well deserved nod for Best Actor for James D’Arcy, who wears the overstuffed ogre costume and still somehow sings and dances his green butt off. Not discounting its silly fart-filled cartoon-to-Broadway slapstick origins, the same New York Times’ Brantley still felt it had more going for it than its failed Disney competitors of seasons past (“The Little Mermaid,” I’m looking at your tail!), because it had a plot and identifiable characters.
On the other side of the musical spectrum is “Next to Normal,” which only recently opened to rave reviews and garnered a whopping 10 Tony nods. The musical about a severely depressed housewife can hardly come across as your standard uplifting Broadway fare. Instead it’s an emotional rollercoaster that takes you, with an unstoppable musical force, through suicide, drug abuse, bipolar disorder to a place where knowing what hurts you gives you the freedom to live your life.
If you love big dream stories where perseverance and talent eventually win, and you’re a dancer at heart, you’ll love the Broadway musical “Billy Elliot.” Based on the popular 2000 film, it was nominated for the most awards this season, including fifteen Tonys (a record it shares only with “The Producers”). The story of a talented but poor boy growing up in Northern Ireland, who shocks his coal-mining father with his girlish desire to dance is a big crowd-pleaser. Just like the “stand up and cheer” movie, the wonderfully realized musical, which opened in the fall of 2008 to rave reviews, gives everybody in the theatre the urge to dance and follow their dreams. The three young boys who play the title character are all nominated for the Best Leading Actor in a Musical Award, the first time the nomination is split between the multiple performers.
“Hair,” nominated for eight Tony Awards, including one for its director Diane Paulus, is the revival of one of America’s great musicals that helped create the vivid stereotype of the 60’s generation as a bunch of drug-taking, love-making, dancing hippies who didn’t like to be tied down by jobs or clothes. With famous songs like “Aquarius” to remember it by, it’s hardly been forgotten, but these days the new version of “Hair” is about more than just frolicking in the buff with long hair and trippy songs. Critics felt that the musical went beyond retro fun — it provided a timely snapshot of the present day 20- and 30-somethings, played by the splendid young cast, leaving the big party with nowhere else to go. This tune clearly resonates with the current economic climate, and Ms. Paulus’ direction gives the old play a modern twist.
The crisis is continuing to wreak havoc on the world and New York City, yet with one unintended benefit. Despite the current economy Broadway is proving it has the survival skills; so if you want to see the best theater in years (and can afford the cost of the flight), make this the year that you take a bite out of the Big Apple and help make one of the best theater seasons commercially successful as well. Oh, and while you are at it, can you save our newspaper industry too?
Read what the NYT had to say about the Tony's.
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