The New Scalping--ahem, "Broker"--Laws

Expert theatre reporter Robert Simonson has an excellent comprehensive overview for Playbill of the imminent changes to the New York State ticket scalping laws--which will effectively lift caps on "resales."

Two especially interesting predictions towards the end:

[Playbill development staffer Mike] Rafael thinks some tickets prices might go down, but does not see admissions to shows plummeting across the board. "I do not think the market is going to work in favor of customers getting a better deal. I think the reality is Jersey Boys and Wicked tickets [which are hot sellers at the moment] will cost a lot more and tickets to some other shows will cost a lot less."

And then this intriguing consequence:

The altered market may also lead to that unthinkable notion: producers and scalpers working hand in hand.

A marriage made in heaven?

REVIEW: The Dark at the Top of the Stairs

photo: CAROL ROSEGG

The Dark at the Top of the Stairs
by William Inge
directed by Jack Cummings III
presented by Transport Group
at The Connelly Theatre



I'm very glad I had a chance to check out the much-praised revival of Inge's The Dark at the Top of the Stairs before it closes Saturday (tonight!). This is exactly the kind of rigorously reimagined yet respectful staging of an old repertory classic that is common in Europe, but is all too rare on the New York stage. That the Off-Off B'way Transport Group manages to mount this ambitious project so lovingly with a minimum of resources (as opposed to a generous budget of an official state theatre, or even a decently-subsidized one) is all the more impressive.

We rely on these intrepid companies like the Transport, and the Mint, and the Keen (and, lately, the Pearl) to remind us what our national repertory is. That is, what it could be, beyond star-driven $100-a-pop spectacles of overblown nostalgia affairs on Broadway. (Which are invariably woefully misguided and miscast, or just pathetically lame and phoned-in.) Rather than treating the work of past American dramatists as "chestnuts" from a "simpler time," the best of these revivals remind us that these too were adventurous and brutally honest playwrights every bit as much as today's crop. Sure, in some plays you have to get past the dramaturgical conventions of an era (like forced happy endings or schematically plotted three-act structures). Just like future audiences--if there are any--will have to get past our conventions and trends. (The wisecracking gay friend? the extended monologue? zigzag chronologies?) But when well-acted and intelligently directed (by which I simply mean taking the play seriously, not reverentially, and treating the playwright as a contemporary not as an icon) those "dated" qualities are much easier to forget about than you might think.

Now I admit many of the productions at the above mentioned companies don't always get the best actors, or the sets they try to cram into their tiny spaces don't help take the play seriously. Sometimes the direction errs too much on the side of respectful (and just saying the words) without being bold enough to reimagine and bring out themes and conflicts beneath the surface. That's why Jack Cummings' staging of "Stairs" is especially admirable and revelatory. Though Inge may today be thought of as Mr. "Chestnut" himself (Picnic, Bus Stop) this is not a naturalistic production. It carefully employs naturalistic acting but in stylized relief against a spare, cold, and lonely landscape of the play's small-town 1920s world. By allowing the characters to frequently play to the audience, for instance, Cummings' exposes their deepest vulnerabilities, letting us see through the veneers they present to their scene partners.

Sandra Goldmark's practically empty yet elegant set is perfectly complementary. I kept thinking throughout how, say, the Roundabout would ruin this play with one of those sets "you want to live in." Lots of antique knick-knacks, evoking some paradise ideal of middle America. Instead, here you are greeted with white screens bordered with unfinished wood. The screens are used well, allowing a distancing and defamiliarizing of certain scenes which take place behind them. For a play so much about quiet inner suffering, about deceit and hiding, this is very appropriately a lonely place to live.

Then there's the play. While it was first performed in 1957, Inge wrote it about ten years earlier. So, far from an "Eisenhower-era" salute to can-do happiness, it's riddled with that disaffection and disillusionment that marks so many later statements of brooding 1940s postwar art. (Film noir, for example.) Largely considered an autobiographical play, "Stairs" is the story of a "typical" American middle class family...falling apart. The father loses his job, hits his wife, and leaves. The daughter, just coming of age, has massive anxiety about sexual awakening, and we watch her very first date go tragically wrong. Faced with the prospect of being a single mom and abandoned wife (in an era and place where divorce is still not talked about), Mrs. Flood begs her sister and brother and law to take her in, but they resist, as if fearful that the taint of one marriage's failure will prove contagious for their own. (Jay Potter's performance, by the way, of the brother-in-law is a masterpiece of pre-modern manic depression. Only a stylized approach could bring it out, yet it is utterly truthful and recognizable.) Her sister does eventually bond with her, long enough to reveal how her husband hasn't "touched" her for three years and she's never experienced an orgasm. (The laugh the formidable Michele Pawk gets as the character obviously symbolically rips off her corset to, finally, breathe, is well earned.)

Making the play even more unusual all this is effectively told through the perspective of the young boy Sonny. Or at least, Cummings' staging manages to suggest Sonny's point of view throughout. With considerable stage time and complex scenes the actor Jack Tartaglia (obviously no teenager passing, but a real 8-10 year old) is quite impressive and succeeds in holding the stage. The tableaux Cummings creates for him help. Such as the quite frightening face off between little Sonny, in a mini-suit, staring down his tall, tall father when he finally returns in shame. It's the American drama's iconic "father-son" conflict from O'Neill to Shepard in a flash.

Such deliberate, even if at times a bit stilted and awkward, tableaux are frequent, yet totally organic and enhancing of something in the text. When the daughter's date arrives (a charming Jewish cadet!) bedecked in his heroic uniform, he launches into a long monologue that soon takes him from pleasantries and boasting into his greatest doubts and anxieties. It's an extraordinary dramatic gamble on Inge's part, to have this character "open up" so fast. But Cummings avoids any stretching of credibility by embracing how...well, weird the moment is. He has the whole family fan out in a carefully composed portrait, the lighting (freely and expressively designed by R. Lee Kennedy) softens and dims to highlight the speaker's own contrast of dark sentiments and light delivery. The formal intimacy of the moment communicates that everyone is falling in love with the dashing young man. But you also just know something bad is going to happen. And it eventually does, of course.

I sense from some audience reaction and some reviews, that many have found the direction just too odd for their tastes. But I maintain it's thoroughly in tune with the play. It's just a very personal vision of it. One that truly raises the text and enhances it with the sensibility of someone from our own time showing us what's still vital and compelling in this old play.

Even though some of my fellow bloggers might say (in this case amusingly) good riddance to the old, and focus more on the new American classics-to-be, I do feel strongly that the strengthening (and broadening and revisiting) of a national repertory is in the interest of all of us. We have a theatrical tradition in this country. Or, to be more accurate, several of them. We need to take care of those traditions to preserve them, learn from them, and celebrate the role of theatre in our culture. All that will help new playwrights too, one way or another.

Transport Group's work in this particular, largely forgotten, old play is exemplary in pointing the way in how to make the best works of our heritage not just (to use a tired term) "relevant", but something even more important--personal.

McNulty & Cote on Pultizer

Charles McNulty weighs in, in the Sunday LA Times (online now), on the Pulitzer puzzlement. Not to dis Rabbit Hole, but to remind readers how badly the less commercial plays need the attention. Right on the money.

A panel of informed theater critics and professionals found excellence where there was little fanfare....We were being urged to pay attention to work that has more difficulty than ever of getting noticed. "Rabbit Hole" is worthy of the Pulitzer. And one can be grateful that the board didn't skip the drama award, as it did last year (not for the first time). But the unsung badly need a lift right now.

Patronage of adventurous programming is the only answer to skittish, market-centered leadership. Let's be sure to attend when and if the unheralded finalists make it here.

For those keeping score, by the way...
Articles so far on the Pulitzer Drama award in LA Times? 2. NY Times? Zero.

(Is Brantley's involvement--not to mention possibly even Tom Friedman's--enforcing "conflict of interest" rules?)

And another MSM critic, Time Out NY's David Cote goes blog-ballistic. Some may remember his lonely dissent on "Rabbit Hole" back when it first opened last year. At the time he was not necessarily just faulting the play, but using it as an example of supra-criticism to point the finger at the kind of regime of safeness that has taken over the larger nonprofit theatres (in this case, Manhattan Theatre Club). Not that David didn't believe these things before, but it was almost, dare I say, a great "Road to Damascus" moment for a critic, that I feel has defined his mission ever since. It was gutsy of him to put it in print back then, and presaged all the disturbing things about the Pulitzer board's decision now.

Personally, I see nothing cynical in MTC's programming of a play like "Rabbit Hole"--as well as similar "old fashioned" backward-looking Pulitzer-winning plays "Doubt" and "Proof" before it. I only think they are just perfectly in sync with the middlebrow arts tastes of the Journalistic Establishment. (The Ornette Coleman award aside.)

Which is why both subscription-based theatre and respectable print journalism are dying.

The Plays That Would Be Pulitzers

Everything you ever wanted to know about the passed-over nominees for the Drama Pulitzer this year (the playwrights and their plays) is covered in a nice Playbill feature. I have seen none of the three plays. But for what it's worth, I must say from the descriptions I'm much more interested in seeing any of them than I am in seeing Rabbit Hole.

Interesting tidbit, btw: "One striking similarity among the three finalists is that they're all musicians and performers as well as writers." Yes, theatre ain't just literature on legs no more. But that "does not compute" with the Pulitzers.

Everyone's a (Times) Critic!

Well, you simply must read Michael Riedel's extended excerpts today from the Scott Rudin-NYT flap. I've been hearing all week about the Times being mad that the mega-producer's "Year of Magical Theatre"--after getting less than a money review from Mr. Brantley--decided to lift some pull quotes from some other "critics" at the paper. Namely, readers who posted comments on NYTimes.com.

Sounds pretty shifty, eh? David Merrick must be smiling somewhere, I say.

For as deceptive as this seems at first, it brings up all kinds of hypocritical idiosyncrasies of how the Times regards the Web.

For instance, as Rudin points out in his defense, the Times theatre page has for a while solicited not just reader comments but "Reader Reviews". How is the general "reader" to interpret that word here, "reviews" as different from the paid critics' reviews? Open to question?

Consider the following exchange. Times's ethics & standards point man Craig Whitney complains:

We think that when you attribute a quote to "The New York Times Online" . . . readers are entitled to trust that the appraisal came from someone actually employed by the New York Times - not from a letter from a reader. The New York Times Online did not describe your play as "An evening of magical theater."

A reader, not vouched for in any way by the New York Times, said that.

Rudin replies:

You refer to these online reviews as "letters from a reader." They are not letters from any reader. They are reviews. You - the paper - label them reviews.

Now Scott Rudin may be a wackjob tyrannical asshole (as is often alleged of him) but he is pretty unimpeachable about this. The word "review" seems to be reinforced about 150 times on the pretty specific nytimes.com guidelines for said feature....Also, as for reader-reviewers "not vouched for in any way," well there is this:

Why do I have to register for Readers’ Reviews?
We want you to enjoy writing reviews, and reading reviews written by your counterparts in our outstanding audience. We ask you to complete the simple Readers’ Reviews registration to ensure that you are a “real” person (have a valid e-mail account) and that you accept our review terms and conditions. The registration process serves to facilitate the development of our online community, and ensure that members take responsibility for their writings.

No, not quite a degree from RADA. But clearly there's some kind of "vouching" process going on.

Rudin's other beef is that nytimes.com enabled (nay, encouraged) readers to post reviews of "Magical Thinking" before the official press opening--i.e. during previews. Now web gossip on pre-op shows has been common for over a decade on silly amateurish blogs. But I agree that is notable to point out that such scuttlebutt now can and does appear on the paper's official website.

All in all, I think Rudin has a case that to the web-surfing public at large, the distinction between a paid "official" critic and a posted reader comment may just be a distinction without a difference, functionally at least. (It all shows up on Google after all...) So his case is he is simply capitalizing on what the Times enables.

I also have to hand it to Rudin for turning in what may be a brilliant piece of subversive "theatre" himself. I mean, think back to that recent "arbiter of culture" remark hurled by Times Managing Editor Jill Abramson in response to David Hare's protestations to the contrary. Isn't pulling a quote from John Q. Times-Reader the ultimate travesty of the Grey Lady's Imprimatur? (Like Merrick's legendary search through the phone book to find citizens with the same names as leading critics.)

Now consider this, too: think back to earlier this week and the Times' official inhouse annual report, where the reading public's supposedly slipping standards for mistaking blog rantings for quality journalism was blamed for the paper of record's slipping revenues. Who's ranting now, eh?

(This is also an opportune moment to ask: have you ever seen a more crude form of "civil discourse" than the nytimes.com online reader forums? Typical of the cynicism of big media outlets who just want to increase their hit counts for ad campaigns, they couldn't care less what's said on their digital property. At least crazy bloggers generally read most of their comments, sometimes respond, and step in to police the more outlandish racism and crayon-worthy tirades.)

This raises some interesting web-criticism questions. Should media continue to delineate hierarchies of employed critics and then everyone else? Or is nothing going to stop cyberspace from continuing to level the playing field--so that Ben Brantley eventually has little more cultural capital than a guy with no more qualification than a browser and a working email address (which is all that's required to "register" as a "reader reviewer"). Let alone perhaps some learned and experienced albeit unemployed bloggers?... Or, to look at another angle: can big media outlets maintain those hierarchies and still go through the motions of "empowering" readers to provide "content"--which of course is the modus operandi of all web-commerce?

By the way, here's what seems a late breaking development. I would happily link you the page where you can post "reader reviews." But, hark, what's this?

Notice to Forums Participants:

The majority of forums are no longer active, with the exception of the following discussions:
• All Crosswords Forums
• Opera
• Books Reading Groups
• Classical Music
• Human Origins.

We invite you to express your views on our blogs, answer our daily question and submit questions for Times editors in our 'Talk to the Newsroom' feature.

Soon we will be introducing more ways for you to express your views on NYTimes.com. We value the participation of our readers and hope that you will explore these new features when they are introduced.

Thank you for your continued participation on NYTimes.com.

"New Features!" Such as, perhaps, signing off all reader comments with: "I am not a critic and do not authorize Scott Rudin to quote me."

May you live in interesting times, Mr. Times...

PS. The Daily News' gossip man Ben Widdicombe first broke the controversy here on Monday, with more on the quote itself. (Hat tip: Mark)

Times v Web

"The proliferation of nontraditional media, largely available at no cost, challenges the traditional media model, in which quality journalism has primarily been supported by print advertising revenues. If consumers fail to differentiate our content from other content providers, on the Internet or otherwise, we may experience a decline in revenues."

- The New York Times' annual shareholder report. For dissection see Gawker.

Something to bear in mind, perhaps, when reading anything they write about blogs?

(Hat tip: Moxie.)

More (objective?) glossing of the report also in Crain's (subscription).

Some Stats

The latest B'way box office stats (specifically, capacity figures) for some shows I've been tracking. Namely, some of the more "quality" titles: e.g. serious musicals, straight plays. Figures reflect week of April 9-15, compared to week before.

Company: 47% (down 14% from previous week)
Grey Gardens: 68% (up 6%)
Journey's End: 44% (up 9%)
Prelude to a Kiss: 68% (no change)
Spring Awakening: 78% (down 10%)
Talk Radio: 47% (down 5%)

By the way, Legally Blonde is already at 97%. In previews.

(Note: all percentages rounded off to whole numbers)

What Makes a Season? (Regional Theatre Edition)

Backstage has a good read today: a survey of the coming season at 7 of the biggie LORT theatre companies across the country: Arena, Goodman, Guthrie, Wilma, Alley, ACT, Oregon Shakes. Including soundbytes from their Artistic Directors. (And advice from their casting directors. This is "Backstage," remember.)

Is it just me, or do you also come away from this tour feeling the national repertory seems somewhat...limited?

Also some prime A.D.-BS.

Molly Smith on why she has to program a musical every season: "because that's the seminal American art form." Well, it's a seminal art form. But isn't it also because your Washington, DC old coot subscribers demand it?

Alley's Gregory Boyd explains how a brand new play by an unknown writer ends up in the smaller second space: "because it's a play that has a kind of dense language to it, so you want the audience to be closer." Not because yould never fill your 824-seat mainstage with it? (Or lose some of those mainstage subscribers?)

In other news... James Houghton is now "artistic advisor" at the Guthrie, too??? Between still running Signature and about to take over Juilliard, doesn't the man have enough jobs? (And do I sense some Guthrie-grooming in the works...?)

CORRECTION: As a commenter here has pointed out, Houghton already is running Juilliard. And has been with Guthrie for a long time. Just can't keep up with that man!

REVIEW: Rearviewmirror (Time Out)

photo: Colin D. Young

My review of Rearviewmirror at 59E59 Theatres. In Time Out New York.

Re-reading this, it comes across that I just don't like monologue-plays. Well I don't. And for good reason, I think. Sure, being in the presence of a great actor telling a great story can be good theatre. But that just didn't happen in this case. And for me, good theatre has to be something other than words being said on stage. Call me biased that way. But there you have it.

Rearviewmirror, for the record, is not a one-person show, but three intertwining, simulatneous monologues with actors mostly face out. But for me the essential problem of the monologue play persists. As all our writing teachers always admonished us: show, don't tell. For me, great drama shows. (Or demonstrates. Enacts.) Telling is the easy part.

Brian Friel--who I reference in the review (and who I know has not only written monologue plays)--can get away with it due to the sheer beauty of his language. And he's been helped by some great actors over the years. But have you ever sat through an amateur production of Molly Sweeney?

There's lots that can be said about why the monologue play as a form is exploding now. Is it the economics? General resurgence of "spoken word" culture? A topic for another time.

Meanwhile, I only state this bias so you may keep it in mind while reading the review, and hopefully I've communicated enough about the play so you can decide if there are other things about that interest you.

"Runaway Jury"

"To me, it seems like a case of the board trying to correct what they felt was a renegade or runaway jury by choosing a play that had a Broadway production."

-Pulitzer-nominated playwright/performer Eisa Davis.

Good article on this from Mike Boehm in the LA Times today. No one else has broken any news yet. Still nothing from NYT. I hope Riedel will come through with some scoop for his Friday column.

No real news from Boehm either. Other than he tries to get Ben Brantley on the record but he "said through a representative of his paper that he couldn't comment on deliberations." (Further feeding Grey Lady's silence so far?) But one interesting point is how unusual this really, really is for the Pulitzers:

[T]he awarding of a Pulitzer to a play that was not one of the finalists appears to be unprecedented, Gissler said, at least since finalists were disclosed starting in 1983. In 1992, Robert Schenkkan's "The Kentucky Cycle" was chosen over four finalists, but Gissler said that was a case in which the jury nominated all five plays. Nowadays, he added, jurors are under strict orders to name only three.

What accounts for such a sharp break with "precedent"?

One factor seems to be the embarrassment last year over awarding no prize at all. (Something that wasn't unprecedented, but seemed especially churlish at a time when we all want to encourage new writing.) One former Pulitzer winner--a writer of pretty safe plays and hardly a rebel--offers some impressively critical analysis:

Donald Margulies, who won the Pulitzer in 2000 for "Dinner With Friends" but was a bridesmaid both in 1992 (to Schenkkan) and when no drama prize was awarded in 1997, speculated Tuesday that the Pulitzer board didn't want to give the prize to an unknown but, "for fear of losing credibility," could not brook two years in a row with no prize for drama. "They chose a play that had been talked about as an award-worthy play by a well-known writer," Margulies said. The real problem, he added, is the refusal to award prizes some years. "I've never heard, 'Gee, there was no editorial cartooning deserving of a Pulitzer this year.' There is something patronizing about the attitude toward the drama prize, that it is something that can be withheld."

Indeed, how many other Pulitzer categories have ever been given "no award." A quick perusal of the past lists on the official site reveals that while it was not uncommon for some awards to be "ungiven" in the early years, last years Drama-snub was the only such instance in the last ten years. The only one, that is except for 1997, when no award was given in .... yes, Drama. So some weird exceptionalism going on there lately indeed.

Margulies is also onto something in pointing to the Pulitzer folk's anxiety over "credibility," and how that would supposedly be shattered by awarding an "unknown." (Remember, even the thoroughly accessible "Anna in the Tropics" raised some eyebrows because it had not yet--egads--played in New York.) It's a shame that in a pluralistic age when the old-establishment cred of such an august and outdated body as the Pulitzers matters less and less, that they'd be so squeamish about actually using what little power they have to lift up new writers and expose otherwise ignored work to the light of day. Rather than give yet another $10,000 to the bookwriter for High Fidelity and Shrek The Musical.

It's hard for me to resist pointing out also that in at least in the case of one nominee might there have been some political squeamishness? Eisa Davis happens to be the niece of Marxist black-power activist Angela Davis. (Her previous show "Angela's Mix Tape" was about her.) Hey, the 60s were a long time ago, I know. And maybe the P-Board just didn't like her play. But if they read her bio, that probably didn't help either.

The article also foregrounds what I pointed to yesterday about the composition of the overseeing 17-member Pulitzer Board--namely that there are no artists or arts critics on it. The official defense? "They feel they have the basic sophistication and understanding to discharge their role...They're an intelligent cross section of America." Cross section of America? Look at the list again and have a good laugh.

Look--we don't have to kid ourselves. There's nothing highbrow about the Pulitzers anymore. Yes, it's nice for a playwright to get $10,000 and a virtual "title" to their name in perpetuity ("Pulitzer Prize Winning Playwright ______" is up there with "Academy Award Nominee" in movie trailers.) But the last two years have illuminated just how out of touch the most elite circles of news media (which the Pulitzers both enshrine and embody) is with the current art of American theatre.

Maybe the day isn't far off that they drop the category entirely. And somehow I'm not sure that would be a bad thing anymore.

Pulitzer Puttering

LA Times' Scott Timberg has more dope on the backstage drama of Drama at the Pulitzers, 2007:

The 17-member Pulitzer board couldn't reach a required majority vote on the nominees and faced a second consecutive year without awarding a prize in drama, Pulitzer administrator Sig Gissler said Monday. "Rabbit Hole" also had been "mentioned favorably" in the jury's report, Gissler said, and the board, by a required three-quarters majority, sidestepped the nominees and gave it the prize.

So, to recap, here's what happened. The "jurors" selected to nominate plays (Ben Brantley, Paula Vogel, two regional theatre critics, and a Haverford English professor) submitted three titles they deemed the best of the year. Surprisingly, and to their credit, all three were relatively little known, aesthetically and/or politically challenging pieces nowhere near Broadway. They were:

"Orpheus X" by Rinde Eckert
"Bulrusher" by Eisa Davis
"Elliot, a Soldier's Fugue" by Quiara Alegría Hudes

Now some are already chiming in with ho-hum reactions to having seen these. I didn't see them. But I'm still impressed that the jury (a jury that included the New York Times lead drama critic!) went ahead and submitted such refreshing and unorthodox titles without even making a gesture not only to Broadway, but even to sanctioned nonprofit "safe houses" for new plays like Manhattan Theatre Club, South Coast Rep, etc.

So then those three titles had to be voted on by the gang of seventeen. Who are these Pulitzer Board members, you may ask?

In alphabetical order:
Lee C. Bollinger, President, Columbia University

Danielle Allen, Professor, Departments of Classics and Political Science and the Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago

Jim Amoss, Editor, Times-Picayune, New Orleans, La.

Amanda Bennett, Executive Editor/Enterprise, Bloomberg News

Joann Byrd, Former Editor of the Editorial Page, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Kathleen Carroll, Executive Editor and Senior Vice President, Associated Press

Thomas L. Friedman., Columnist, The New York Times

Donald E. Graham, Chairman, The Washington Post

Anders Gyllenhaal, Executive Editor, The Miami Herald

Jay T. Harris, Wallis Annenberg Chair, Director, Center for the Study of Journalism and Democracy, Annenberg School of Communication, University of Southern California

David M. Kennedy, Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History, Stanford University

Nicholas Lemann, Dean, Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University

Ann Marie Lipinski, Senior Vice President and Editor, Chicago Tribune

Gregory L. Moore, Editor, The Denver Post

Richard Oppel, Editor, Austin American-Statesman

Mike Pride, Editor, Concord (N.H.) Monitor

Paul Tash, Editor, CEO, and Chairman, St. Petersburg Times

I'll tell you something I notice about this list. None of them, not one, could remotely be considered an artist or even an arts specialist. Given the Pulitzers are a Journalism/Media entity--famous for giving certain highly prestigious awards to the arts, the fact not one critic is on the ultimately decisive board is pretty shocking. And insulting to the arts.

Can you really imagine any of these people--let's just say even the New York-based ones--seeing any of the plays nominated? Or is the theatre going experience of journalist cognoscenti like Nicholas Lemann and Tom Friedman limited to a token Manhattan Theatre Club subscription?

Ok, I don't know if either of them subscribes to MTC. But it shouldn't surprise us that not even 9 out of this group (that "majority") could get behind any of the three choices of the eminent juror panel. And that a "three-quarters majority" (so, 12?) had no problem completely overruling them in favor of probably the only play they had seen all year that fit the qualifications (i.e. it wasn't British, it wasn't Shakespeare, and it wasn't a revival).

Here's another theory: are the scripts of the plays provided for the jurors, and the board, to read? Since very few people saw the nominated plays, one would hope everyone at least read them. However--while I didn't see them, I know enough about the work of Rinde Eckert and Eisa Davis (basically performance artists) and know from the reviews of "Elliot"--that these are profoundly visual and performative works. In nominating these titles, the jurors were also taking the bold step of saying the most exciting new plays out there are not necessarily primarily literary.

(I can't help wondering if the same problem is what hurt the two-woman AIDS documentary piece In The Continuum--the play rumored to be the juror's favorite last year.)

I can only imagine these three scripts might have been baffling reads for the board. (Imagine reading an avant-garde theatre text for the first time, without the visual aid/supplement of performance.) At least, a lot more grueling a read than... Rabbit Hole?

Yes, Rabbit Hole is easy to like, if what you ask from theatre is just good story, poignant emotion, and a glamorous lead performance. And, yes, it also hails from both Manhattan Theatre Club and South Coast Rep. (Ok, I dropped those names earlier as a setup.) So no matter the merits of the play, what a safe, safe pick.

Which is probably exactly what the board considers its charge to do.

All Pulitzer info from the official site. (No direct links to specific pages possible. So, happy hunting!)

It's Rabbit Hole

The Pulitzer is now official. No surprise, I guess.

But the runners up are quite unpredictable:

"Orpheus X" by Rinde Eckert
"Bulrusher" by Eisa Davis
"Elliot, a Soldier's Fugue" by Quiara Alegría Hudes.

The judges?

Ben Brantley, chief drama critic, The New York Times (Chair)
Kimberly W. Benston, Francis B. Gummere Professor of English, Haverford College
Karen D'Souza, drama critic, San Jose Mercury News
Rohan Preston, theater critic, Star Tribune, Minneapolis-St. Paul
Paula Vogel, playwright and professor of English, Brown University

That must have been some odd debate going on between traditional and alternative, eh? Not to mention who to exclude...

Have at it!

UPDATE: Pardon my hastiness-- Playbill has the full story:

The Pulitzer jury had nominated three plays — Orpheus X by Rinde Eckert; Bulrusher by Eisa Davis; and Elliot, a Soldier's Fugue by Quiara Alegria Hudes — however, the board decided to bypass the nominations and chose a play that hadn't been nominated by the jury.

Funny, that wasn't mentioned on the Pulitzer site.

Pulitzer Watch: Stay Tuned

3:00pm today is the announcement.

So if you're a betting man or woman, you still have a couple of hours. Meanwhile, consulte Playbill's Zachary Pincus-Roth for a refresher on how the game is played:

First, let's review the rules. According to the Pulitzer website, the award is "for a distinguished play by an American author, preferably original in its source and dealing with American life" and "productions opening in the United States between January 1, 2006 and December 31, 2006 are eligible" (and opening does mean press opening, as opposed to simply beginning previews). This year is only the second year that the drama prize has used the calendar year, as opposed to the previous system of considering plays between March of one year and March of the next. A small committee of theatre critics and artists determines the nominated finalists, and the overall Pulitzer board picks a winner.

Turns out there are lots, and lots of competitors within those rules. And some surprising non-starters, by plays and playwrights that would normally be usual suspects. August Wilson's Radio Golf, for instance. Not because the playwright is dead, naturally, but because its first version already premiered in 2005, and its revision is only opening on Broadway now. (It's been submitted by Huntington Theatre who did it last year.) Also, Christopher Shinn's "Dying City" is only eligible for its New York run this year, not its London premiere last year. As for Stuff Happens David Hare is a limey.

But don't forget these rules allow for last February's already feted Rabbit Hole, as well as the hit Broadway musicals Grey Gardens and Spring Awakening. (So, does a Wedekind adaptation count as American subject matter just because it has rock music?).

Lots and lots of small shows mentioned, too. Stay tuned...

Oh, and, by the way--remember last year, there was no Pulitzer for drama. So the pressure's on.

Netroots Theatre Fundraising?

Do you think the arts--and theatre in particular--can learn something this political season from those campaigns that take a more populist small-donor approach to fundraising?

Remember Howard Dean and his online $25 clicks adding up? And now Barak Obama has almost outpaced Hillary Clinton with small donations from a wider list of supporters?

Is there some applicable model here, say, for the nonprofit theatre company? When we think of all the sway big donors have, would artistic leadership be freeer from donor pressure if no private personal donations were allowed over $100? And instead all "development" was geared toward small "events" targeted at younger audiences at $10-20 a pop?

If you're thinking this sounds like a McCain-Feingold for theatres... you're right!

Of course this would would have to be supplemented by aggressive grant-seeking and hopefully increased public sector funding. I wouldn't even mind select and carefully chosen corporate gifts. Say maybe one big exclusive corporate sponsor per show, or per season.

But when we think that all the effort that's expended on the $500-500,000 crowd and keeping them happy--most of whom are not under 500 years old--couldn't this be a good thing? In theory at least.

Then again, I'm already sick of getting a phone call from every theatre a buy a ticket to, begging for even $25. So nevermind, that would only get worse, I suppose...

Theatre: Good for Brain?

Click here for the meaning of the above graphic. In short, theatrical activity in this study turned out to be the best at maximizing brain cells...for senior citizens, at least.

I have to say I'm surprised the "Psychological Well Being" results are even above the x axis.

What exactly this may or may not have to do with the ageing of the audience, I have no idea.

(hat tip: Peter)

The Dream of the Federal Theatre Project

"This theatre is your theatre. You are responsible for its creation and its progress."

Even your stoic Playgoer choked up a bit at reading these words I came upon in some recent research, at the bottom of an original program for the 1936 WPA presentation of Orson Welles' "Voodoo Macbeth."

A stirring mantra, for then and for now.

The New 45 Bleecker

A premium Off/Off-Off Broadway venue (and the former home of the Culture Project) is under new management.

All About the Limestone?

The Theatre at Epidaurus

Adding to the wonders of how the Greeks did it... Could the acoustics of the huge outdoor theatres been helped by the limestone built into the seats? So say "scientists."

And here's an audio-tech blogger's take, too.

Sing out, Oedipus!

"Insane" Producing

Riedel entertains us today with the hilarious shenanigans behind a crazy-but-true producers' scheme to do another Cat on a Hot Tin Roof on Broadway (despite a tepidly received revival just a few years ago) but this time with an all-black cast. Make that an all-star all-black cast. Hey, with good actors (Forrest Whitaker, Phylicia Rashad, Audra McDonald, Anthony Mackie) and a good director (Kenny Leon) who would begrudge.

The artists were apparently into it, until they realized who (or what) they were working with:

But two weeks ago, Leon and Whitaker pulled out of the project after repeatedly clashing with the producers, a group of extremely wealthy hedge-fund managers with no previous theatrical experience.

Whitaker, says a source, was annoyed to learn that the producers, tired of waiting for him to sign his contract, were threatening to replace him with Danny Glover.

Leon, meanwhile, was fuming that the producers were second-guessing his casting. They called McDonald a "regional theater actress" (her four Tony Awards notwithstanding) and were trying to replace her with either Whitney Houston or Beyoncé.

Why? Why? Why??? Who are these people who keep wanting to exploit and ruin our dramatic national treasures on Broadway. I guess hedge-fund managers do like risk. But even for robber barons, Broadway is

My guess is they were inspired by the success of the P-Diddy "Raisin in the Sun"--which Leon directed and Rashad starred in--and figured they too could cash in on the black audience out there ready to come to the theatre to see a headliner.

It also has to be said--not that these weirdly misguided moneymen would even pretend to be doing a service to African American Drama--that this seems like a classic case of something August Wilson once decried as fake black theatre. Doing Death of a Salesman (his example) with an all-black cast does not a "black play" make. Of course, Wilson's views on this--and "color-blind" casting in general--were controversial. But I think his point was well-taken, from a writer's standpoint, at least. Playwrights like Wilson, and Williams, and Miller, wrote out of a specific social milieu. To simply erase the original social backgrounds of the characters implies race is irrelevant in our society. Yes, all families have "universal" struggles, but might not the Loman family or the Big Daddy clan have some different issues--and face some additional obstacles--if they were black?

All great art works on both the level of the universal and the highly culturally specific. So, true, sacrificing one aspect does not necessarily mean losing everything that's great about it.

Of course, the proponents of "color blind" casting usually end up taking the actor's perspective. Let any actor play any role. Fair enough. Especially actors of color, who--if one is to cast them strictly on the skin color character breakdowns of "the repertoire--have more limited leading roles. Personally I would love to see Whitaker play Big Daddy. Maybe Tennessee Williams would do. Hey, Arthur Miller went to direct Salesman in Beijing at the height of the cold war, and loved it. But while a black "Cat" might be a fascinating production, surprisingly relevant to the African American experience and provoking new readings of the play, from a social and political perspective, it's not the same play.

The problem is not just race, though, but genre. Or style. This really is only a big problem in naturalistic drama. Because naturalism not only demands you look at "appearances", but also depends on the social forces of the environment acting upon the character. This is why color-blind casting in Shakespeare--and opera, for that matter--has been going on already for a long time, without raising an eyebrow. In naturalistic acting, the total bearing of a character is , ideally, informed by their full social upbringing and deepest psychological motives.

Wilson (who's last play "Radio Golf" Kenny Leon is also currently directing on Broadway) had the views that he had because, stylistically, he was one of the last of the committed naturalists, even if a poetic naturalist, like Williams. Which is why Williams, I believe, stopped a all-black "Streetcar" production from happening at the Public back in the 70s. Was he unnecessarily limiting his own work?

And speaking of Williams, back to his interests:

Sources say the producers' option on the play expires at the end of the year, and I hear the Tennessee Williams' estate would like nothing more than for "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" to pass into the hands of experienced producers.

In the end, a story like this does make us realize that as playgoers, we're really just thankful for good actors doing good plays. So hopefully we all can at least agree on an end to talent-blind casting.

Brustein calls out NYT

Lest anyone assume it's just the young bloggers that rip on the Times arts coverage, they have nothing on Robert Brustein, who offers quite the tongue-lashing, old school, at the new New Republic blog.

How's this for starters:

Consider The New York Times, an organ on which so many of us depend for clarity and balance. It is ironic that the same newspaper that editorializes so eloquently against corruption in the political administration now bears so much responsibility for helping to corrupt our culture. Look what has happened, for example, to the Sunday "Arts and Leisure" pages, once popularly known as the "Drama" section, and now often indistinguishable from the "Style" section of the same newspaper. In the past, it used to routinely publish numerous background features, reviews, and idea pieces about theatre in New York and elsewhere. Today, its front page is largely devoted to columns about the careers and collisions of rock, rap, and hip-hop stars, when it is not running multiple stories about "American Idol."

The impetus for this calling out seems to come from some inside dope he's gotten on the Times' treatment of the new Oliver Twist that just opened. Produced by Theatre For A New Audience, it also happens to have originated at ART, where Brustein used to be the head, but no longer. (As to who will be now after Robert Woodruff was dropped is still a mystery. But anyhoo...)

Here is where I disclose that I too have some personal connection to TFANA, namely that I once worked there, albeit 10 years ago. I also saw the Oliver Twist, as their guest, and liked it a lot. I am now motivated to write more about it, hopefully before it closes Sunday. All the disclosure aside, I'll just say it's a very striking production by a very exciting director/adapter Neil Bartlett--a name well known to anyone familiar with British political ensemble theatre. In short, this production is less like Oliver! The Musical than John Doyle's Sweeney Todd meets Gangs of New York meets Three Penny Opera.

And that apparently was the New York Times' problem with it. I remember reading that review, shocked that descriptions such as the following were meant to be bad things:

Contributing to this absence of feeling is a lighting design that illuminates the actors from below. The effect is to have them looking like specimens to be observed in a vitrine. And it hardly helps that at various points the actors telegraph the story’s plot points and themes in a sobering, clerical a capella.

If you're like me, you might say, "sounds kind of cool!" In short, the play's deliberate rejection of "sentimentality" and "melodrama" were listed as its chief faults, as opposed to its contrarian strategy.

While Brustein may be reacting on TFANA's behalf to yet another New York Times bad review, the more revealing part of his complaint is his story of the lengths to which the AD--my old boss, Jeffrey Horowitz--had to go to even get the Grey Lady to come! The ultimate delayed, abridged "courtesy" write-up simply added injury to insult, to coin a phrase.

What Brustein doesn't mention, though, is that TFANA--a company long hailed for its daring Shakespeare productions--has never been on the Times must-see list. I always wondered if they just didn't have good enough press rep's. Sometimes they get a feature article, but often their shows are only reviewed a week late, and never by the first-string critic. They're a very small (i.e. poor) company that just will never attract the kind of coverage automatically bestowed on the rich companies like Lincoln Center, Roundabout, and the Public. But you also gotta wonder after a decade of snubs if somebody up there at NYT Arts just doesn't like them.

But back to Brustein:

Reasonable people can differ about the quality of a work of art. What is less open to argument is the way the Times often ignores or dismisses the more significant artistic achievements of the year, while exalting the sensational, the tawdry, and the inane. (Sarah Ruehl's A Clean House, a superficial domestic sit-com featuring a cartoon Latino maid who wants to be a standup comic, solicited one of Isherwood's few positive reviews this year.) What is also inarguable is the way the Times often reduces a production to its function as a saleable or fashionable commodity, while still continuing to anoint itself as "the central arbiter of taste and culture in the city of New York." [the words recently attributed to its Managing Editor]

....No wonder so many people are turning away from the New York stage when producers, in an effort to please the Times's critics, offer such disposable trivia at such exorbitant ticket prices? Who at that newspaper is now preparing to write the obituary of the American theatre it has been helping to bury through artistic injustice and critical neglect?

Is it fair to keep ganging up on the Times? I'm sure individual writers are doing their best to cover theatre well. And maybe its role as "arbiter of culture" is not self-appointed, but in fact bestowed upon them by us, their readers. Lately I feel a need to stop even citing them as often as I do, to more proactively seek out theatre coverage from other outlets, just to demonstrate theatre coverage need not be a one-party state.

That may be the most effective media criticism. Angry letters to the editor will likely be dropped in the wacko file. But looking elsewhere for your arts coverage--that may get their attention.

Oh, the Humana-ty!

"Ever more, it seems, the storied Humana Festival of New American Plays at the Actors Theatre of Louisville is being undermined by a confusion of purpose. The agents, critics, artistic directors and other national theater professionals who've been arriving here every spring for years come mostly to find the viable, exportable and, above all, buzz-worthy play. Yet Marc Masterson, this theater's artistic director, hates the Kentucky Derby aspect of the festival he inherited from founder Jon Jory. Masterson prefers to program intensely experimental works -- often with quirky, fantastical themes and with storytelling low on the list of priorities.

Many of these pieces, it seems, are destined only for the nation's smallest theaters, assuming they don't crash and burn in Kentucky, as often is the case. For as Chicagoans well know, the best of such work invariably takes place among ensemble artists who live and work together in the same city, not among casts imported for an individual production in a high-stakes festival."

-A provocative reaction, to the current Humana Festival by the Chicago Trib's Chris Jones.
Although biased toward the Chicago ensemble tradition yet against the experimental, some good questions here for what once was an emminent event, but now must reinvent itself post-Jon Jory.

Fashionable Criticism

Year of Magical Thinking may be the "snob hit" of the season (despite lukewarm reviews). But the Slate--the online journal of choice for the elite cognoscenti--let one of its fashion writers, Amanda Fortini, review it. Here is how she describes one of the age's most formidable actresses, Vanessa Redgrave:

Her posture is pin-straight; she nods with schoolmarmish emphasis and gestures with her hands for accent. Not infrequently she enunciates with the polysyllabic care of an actress taking elocution lessons. (One of the play's more awkward moments is her nearly slow-motion pronunciation of lacunae.) Her acting, genuinely moving when she expresses grief or loss, too often feels like a caricature of the way a very fastidious woman would conduct herself.

...One wishes that Redgrave and director David Hare had found a means of theatrically telegraphing Didion's detached sensibility. Calista Flockhart's benumbed, almost affectless performance in Neil LaBute's Bash! several years ago comes to mind; or, more recently, Meryl Streep's restrained turn as the frosty, unflappable Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada. Didion should have been played slightly less demonstratively, with a bit more subtlety and, it might be said, control.

Is it just me, or are references to disembodied hand gestures, facial expressions (and accents) the last refuge of an impoversihed theatre critic. And one would hope one could call on a greater range of great actresses than Ally McBeal and Devil Wears Prada.

To be fair, the review demonstrates Fortini knows her Didion, and it's all very literate. But I would hope that Slate could do better when it comes to theatre. Then again, based on their lack of coverage, it sometimes seems they barely consider it an artform.

Not even He wants "The One That I Want"

"The 'Grease' show in America was appalling, just awful. But when it is done right, it can lead to the idea that theater can indeed be cool."

-Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber who, um, was responsible for the "Grease" casting-by-reality show ordeal, "You're the One That I Want." Or at least, he sparked the trend with his UK version for "Sound of Music." Then his former business partner David Ian took over the American version--on which ALW even served as a judge! Then again, the ongoing ALW-Ian spat probably accounts for this dig more than anything.

See Patrick Pacheco's rundown of reactions to the show in the LA Times. Including this counterpoint from Des McAnuff: "reality programs are bottom feeders, and there's a danger of dumbing everything down. If you really don't end up with the most talented people, you could damage the work itself."

And, by the way, have you ever heard of "click tracks"? I hadn't. But it's pretty outrageous. And I ain't talkin' flamenco dancin'...

Brits vs Yanks, cont.

Everyone's getting into the Brits vs Yanks act now, even Sunday Arts & Leisure...

Actually, three rather entertaining and interdisciplinary critic-takes from Brantley, A.O. Scott, and TV's Alessandra Stanley.

Stanley adds a fresh note to the debate by reminding us that, "Enhlish enunciation isn’t what makes Americans weak at the knees: it’s the cruelty behind the words." Not only in the case of those ubiquitous Brit-accented villain roles, but even when playing "heros" that are supposed to have redeeming social values.

A case in point is “House,” the hit television series that obliges one of Britain’s best and funniest actors, Hugh Laurie, to lose his clipped Oxbridge cadence and imitate an American accent, which he does flawlessly. Yet Mr. Laurie’s chief asset is not his voice but his bravado.

His character, Dr. Gregory House, is a flippant, sarcastic misanthrope who thrives on piercing his co-workers’ delusions of good will and affection. In a recent episode House, who does not bother to hide his addiction to painkillers, makes his friends and colleagues believe he has terminal cancer in order to enroll in an experimental treatment program and get drugs.

Many American actors play curmudgeons, but even the meanest tend to lose their nerve and go soft and cuddly once the audience embraces them: James Woods plays a shyster lawyer on “Shark,” but a cuddly one.

Stanley then gets off base accusing even Larry David of "tender moments." And while she's right that Steve Carrell's "Office" boss, while hilarious, is less hateful than Ricky Gervais', she misses that Gervais' gentler "Extras" character was a clear attempt at greater audience sympathy.
Still, the point stands: a commercial entertainment machine + a prevailing acting training that extolls "empathy" above all else = all American actors must be likeable all the time.

In other news, A.O. Scott says all this cross-Atlantic rivalry

risks distracting actors in both countries from the real threat: the Australians, who seem right at home in London or Los Angeles and whose diabolical plan for world domination in the field of English-language acting appears all but unstoppable.

Hmm, Kidman, Blanchett, Jackman, Crowe... By Jove, he's got it!

Next it'll be the Canadians...

Bloggin' Stuff

I try to steer clear of Theatre Blogging Inside Baseball. But I can't avoid offering my two cents on a certain tempest in a blogspot that made some noise over the internets this week.

First there was the Time Out New York special Theatre Issue. (And, yes, I am a freelance TONY contributor.) First, I'm grateful for the shout-out in the spread's (web-only) blog list. And I enthusiastically recommend their spotlight on some underappreciated master thespians of the New York stage. Although, I'm surprised they left out the irresistible item that two of their "Playbill Bunnies" Liz Marvel and Bill Camp are married! Or are they not anymore? Do tell, guys...

But some bloggers have taken umbrage at item #3 of their"20 Dirty Secrets about New York Theatre"

Beware the blogotainmercial.
You know that clever theater blog you bookmarked, the one with inside dope on the edgiest shows and artists? Be careful—it might be a PR tool. Marketing departments have offered drama bloggers free seats to write about hipster-skewing plays such as Pig Farm and Dying City. Mind you, theaters don’t demand positive write-ups; they just want the cool-kid buzz. Blogs to trust: George Hunka’s Superfluities, Isaac Butler’s Parabasis and Jaime’s Surplus.

I have to admit I'm a little concerned about any reporting (no matter how well intentioned) that feeds perceptions as all bloggers as disreputable amateurs with no ethics and no taste. And TONY theatre man David Cote has been as staunch an advocate for the bloggers as there is, including moderating two panels I've appeared on, as well as hiring me and others to freelance.

So I'm worried that less blog-savvy people may take the wrong idea from this. And that it conflates several very different issues. First there's the distinction between an independent blog (like this one) and an institutional blog promoting a particular company or a commercial site linked to a particular show. Steppenwolf and Seattle Rep, for instance, both have blogs, but neither is hardly crude p.r. Broadway shows have sometimes put an actor's blog on its official site, too. But who's going to be fooled by that?

Then there's the difference between a critical blog (like this one) and a fansite. Last July I commented on a more plausible "payola" case, reported in an "Arts & Leisure" article. If "Wedding Singer" rounds up self-proclaimed "gossip" sites and swag-happy fans with websites, that's very different that saying "Please come review our show."

I still don't understand this question that came up at both blogging panels I did--and that seems to come up in all press accounts of blogging--about whether free tickets compromises bloggers coverage of shows. Huh??? Does anyone ask Ben Brantley? Now some might suggest it does compromise Ben Brantley (or at least the New York Times) to have any quid-pro-quo of tickets for coverage. And perhaps things would be more "clean" if newspapers and legit media outlets properly bought the tickets to the events they covered.

I know I for one can't afford that. I also know I do pay for quite a lot of what I see. Basically I review things I'm able to see--whether that's through free or discount ticket offers of all kinds (I'm on a lot of mailing lists, let's say) or in cases where I just want to see the show badly enough to pay full price (rare). So I'm really, really wary of any generalizations about how theatre bloggers get their seats. And so should you be.

On this issue, I have to say, I find myself at odds with my virtual colleague Isaac Butler. I do appreciate Isaac's concern with ethics and, more so, appearance of ethics. Anything bloggers can do to foster a reputation for legitimacy is good, and good for me personally. But when Isaac starts insisting that we should only accept free tickets when we ask for them--not when the theatre approaches us--just baffles me. Seems like a distinction without a difference to me. I suppose if I accepted all free tix offered me, I'd be something of a whore. But I don't. If I get an email from a press rep or theatre about something that genuinely interests me, why not see it and review it? After all, that's what the big boys do.

Isaac is to be applauded for engineering a "bloggers night" at Pig Farm, but for me to achievement there was getting the Roundabout to acknowledge bloggers at all and treat us like press. At the time I actually hoped it would lead to more invitations later, putting us more on a footing with regular press, but it hasn't. And I still think that would be in Roundabout's--and other big companies'--interest, especially for their new work and other youth-oriented or commercially riskier shows.

The blogosphere had a successful follow up to this with Lincoln Center and Chris Shinn's Dying City, which was aided by Shinn's own links to many bloggers and organized by Mark Armstrong. Given all the connections we had with this show, we bloggers were asked a lot on this one if we were influenced by the free tix. To which I respond: with Dying City I would have gladly flashed my CUNY ID for a $10 student ticket for this. Maybe I can be bought, but not for as cheaply as ten bucks. Give me some credit please.... Again, this was a show for which it was only smart of Lincoln Center to treat us as press, since bloggers much better represent, speak to, and indeed may even be more read by the ideal audience for this show than even the New York Times. (As the growling, sleeping LCT subscribers attested during the preview I attended.)


The second kerfuffle this week has something to do with the new Adam Rapp play, Essential Self Defense at Playwrights Horizons. I missed some of the early details, but essentially the story begins with Charles Isherwood's scathing NYT review, which really did become the talk of the town amongst indie theatre artists. It was a big deal because--as was spelled out in a recent Time Out profile of Rapp--the youngish playwright may be a hero downtown, but this was his debut at a "respectable" nonprofit subscription-based company. Needless to say, Mr. Isherwood--already a favorite pinata of the blogosphere--did not help his reputation as a boogeyman of new writing and downtown theatre. In sum, the impact of this was much greater than the usual thumbs-down. The critic definitely seemed out to cut the celebrated playwright down to size.

Playwrights Horizons must have really panicked about the results of this chance they took with an edgier playwright. (Yes, for Playwrights Horizons, Obie-award winning Adam Rapp is a risk.) So they, smartly, shifted their marketing strategy with ads defying Isherwood and actually quoting bloggers! (Although not identified as such: just "younger critics" with oblique references to links to further info.)... This led to the impression that bloggers were getting behind the show in general, which led some to ask if Playwrights Horizons was orchestrating this. Rumors (fostered by an ill-informed Culturebot post) even spread about free beer and other enticements.

Now this was all a surprise to me. Frankly I was beginning to ask: where are my tickets, Playwrights? Funny enough, their marketing dept. actually had been reaching out to me and other bloggers with their previous two shows (including the very unhip Richard Nelson Frank Lloyd Wright biodrama). I was tempted but ultimately passed on both due to other assignments and deadlines, and the shows frankly weren't the most interesting to me. But on the Rapp show I have heard nothing. Have the Playwrights people actually researched me enough to learn I'm over 30! That I write a lot of negative (or should I say "critical") reviews? Ok, I flatter myself. But my point is, there was no clear blogger-blitz for Essential Self Defense, as far as I could see.

Again, I still want to see it, folks! And you close next week. Better hurry with my payola.

(Or at least a better discount. I hope they realize even the current $40 offer is out of the price range of Rapp's fan base. Perhaps in this context, the subtext of Isherwood's review could more charitably be read as "sure it's fine at $15, but is it worth full Playwrights Horizons prices?" In other words, has the ticket price adversely affected the reception?)

Anyway, whatever dispute there was seems to have been settled, or at least quited down. Even Gothamist chimed in, and Isaac wraps up here and here. (The comments sections on both Gothamist and Parabasis offer even more debate.)

In brief, let me offer, then, this alternative to the Time Out "warning." If you're reading a theatre blog and have questions about the potential biases of the blogger, then give it a few days so you can read some of what he or she is writing. You'll learn soon enough if this is a voice you trust, warts and all. It won't be a "secret" for long if the blog is just a shill or striving for a more autonomous criticism. As for biases and conflicts of interest, I find bloggers are all too happy to exhibit their prejudices! We don't have editors telling us not to use the first-person pronoun. None of us have circulation figures or subscriptions to worry about, so alienating readers isn't that big a risk. Yes, some have ads (including me) but my policy toward them is to keep writing whatever I want and let them decide if they still want to advertise here. (Yes, they even try to sell "Tarzan" tix here, believe it or not.) And besides, the ad revenues quickly go into buying all those tickets I'm not given for free.

It will still take a long time for anyone writing online to successfully claim an equal "legitimacy" to print--despite all the Jayson Blair stories and all the Ann Coulter columns still running out there. But while I myself take blogging seriously--are we really at the point yet where we need a code of ethics on a par with major newspapers and news networks. Has the debate over how much someone paid or did not pay for a Pig Farm ticket really risen to the status of a certain paper's complicity in selling us on "Weapons of Mass Destruction"? It's theatre folks, not war policy. One should know by now that blogging--like theatre criticism online or off--makes no pretence of objectivity. You're getting an opinion, not an intelligence briefing. Yes, you probably want an informed opinion over an unqualified and/or bought-and-paid-for opinion. But perusing a few short blog posts will probably tip you off to the difference in no time.

LA Theatre, Confidential

As a native New Yorker, my view of the arts scene in Los Angeles has typically been shaped by Woody Allen's famous dictum from Annie Hall of a city whose "one cultural advantage is turning right on a red light." (Or is it left? See, I don't drive.)

Well in my most recent trips out west I've become more curious about what's really going on, especially under the radar. In theatre, we know about the Taper and the Geffen. But what are all those exciting New York actors that have left us doing out there when they're not doing an episode of She Spies? Steven Soderberg's tv series Unscripted and underrated film Full Frontal have provided humorous spoofs of "poor" theatre (in both senses of the word) in a rich city. But what's the reality?

Well the LA Weekly offers a special theatre issue this week digging up the dirt. In the words of theatre editor Steven Leigh Morris,

In the articles that follow, we sought to isolate specific moments in the lives of theater artists or companies when they come to that crossroads at which, after considerable duress, they must decide whether to continue doing local theater, or to leave. Through these stories, we hope to learn about these individuals and companies, and what their experiences tell us about the state of our theater.

There's even a bit at the backbiting going on at Tim Robbins' old Actors' Gang company. Turns out Tim's still very involved, but not to everyone's liking...

Friday Onion Dose

MORGANTOWN, WV—Surprised audience members reported Sunday that Morgantown High School's production of Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize–winning play Our Town features line memorization, a marked change from last year's staging of Guys And Dolls...

The Onion is on the story.

Paper Mill lives!

Thanks to some unusually generous real estate developers...

Brits vs Yanks: Now it's TV

Do English actors reign supreme on television, as well as stage? Is there a connection?

One important thing to note about Hugh Laurie in "House" and Dominic West in "The Wire"--you can't blame it on the charm of the British accent, cuz they're speakin' 'merican.

Ah, but here's another reason for the British invasion that I haven't heard aired yet. And it probably holds true for stage as well.

They have still another advantage, which only one network executive was willing to mention: They work more cheaply. “It has gotten so expensive to sign American actors,” the executive said, requesting not to be identified because financial terms are never made public.

The executive said it is increasingly difficult to get an American actor in a lead role for less than $100,000 an episode. British actors work for considerably less, the executive said, though the figures vary.

Modesty? Lower expectations of wealth coming from a welfare state? Bad agents?

Look: actors should be paid more, not less. But something about that British stage work ethic--honed during years of rigorous training, small ensemble roles, and poorly paid gigs (all mitigated by National Health Care and a healthy dole, of course)--probably makes them easier to work with than many of those spoiled talentless children in Hollywood.

Raw Numbers

Time Out is right ("Secret" #7) that Broadway may not be dead as far as quality goes. At least, thanks to some good shows developed in Off B'way nonprofit-land or imported from London.

But take into account these sobering box office stats for some of the Rialto's more serious efforts in the week ending April 1:

"Company" is at 47% capacity (down 9% from the previous week)

"Grey Gardens" at 62% (down 10%)

"Journey's End" at 36% (down 5%)

"Talk Radio"--a known title with a famous star--is barely breaking 50% (down 10%)

Miraculously, "Spring Awakening" is at 79%, and even that's down 8%. Even more miraculously "Prelude to a Kiss"--a 15-year-old Craig Lucas play with no stars except possibly John Mahoney--is managing to pull in 65%. But that must be due to those massive Roundabout subscriptions.

Keep in mind that "capacity" at most of these theatre is around 1,000 seats. Except the Roudabout which is 740, which means that "Prelude" like the others is also playing to about 500 folks a night.

Once again, a healthy, even SRO size Off Broadway. But in the Big House, that would look like Death Row to me. If I were a producer, at least.

See them while you can! There must be discounts...

Oh, and I forgot to mention something. All the above shows got very strong--I dare say "money"--reviews from the New York Times. What does that tell us?

Paper Mill in Red Ink

Paper Mill Playhouse is a name long associated with the kind of pleasing provincial musical theatre you'd think would always find an audience. One of the less risky regional theatre ventures, you might say, not to mention, a longstanding successful one.

Well times have changed and if the bank doesn't come through by Friday (tomorrow) they may fold. According to Variety, at least.

Paper Mill, a major regional house in the tri-state area located 30-40 minutes outside Manhattan, has mirrored the national trend in losing subscribers over recent years. This season's total of 19,500 is down from 40,000 in 1990.

Contributions make up about one-fifth of the theater's income, an unusually low percentage for non-profits (which often aim for a 50-50 split between contributed and earned).

So essentially the problem is--may we surmise?--that half of their subscriber base died over the last 15 years. Plus, they didn't cultivate donors enough.

In other words, Paper Mill was just the kind of theatre older people liked to buy tickets to, go enjoy, and then go home. As opposed to joining the "Gala Committee" or rounding up donations from all their business partners. Or to put it another way, dare I suggest that their patrons were normal people who just liked to going to the theatre? And not using it as leverage in their other local philanthropy dealings?

Yet more evidence that the philanthropy game has overtaken the seemingly more straightforward business of putting on good shows. Which may explain there are many well-funded theatre that put on bad ones.

PS. Also in the Times yesterday. Both articles point to the Broadway resurgence siphoning off some of the nearby regional sales. Perhaps, but sounds like just an excuse to me. However that new Performing Arts Center in Newark, which houses a lot of touring shows, probably has made a big dent.

PPS. If you'd like to support Paper Mill, here's their website. They're having a big fundraising performance there next week, too.

CD or not CD

If you can get past the gatekeepers at Times Select, check out today's op-ed by my friends at NYCD on the "failed state" that is the music retail/CD business. Tony and Sal were particularly burned when they had to give up their brick & mortar a year ago and go online. But then Tower went completely belly up just months later.

Did big business (gasp) fail the art in this case? Money quote:

The sad thing is that CDs and downloads could have coexisted peacefully and profitably. The current state of affairs is largely the result of shortsightedness and boneheadedness by the major record labels and the Recording Industry Association of America, who managed to achieve the opposite of everything they wanted in trying to keep the music business prospering. The association is like a gardener who tried to rid his lawn of weeds and wound up killing the trees instead.

In the late ’90s, our business, and the music retail business in general, was booming. Enter Napster, the granddaddy of illegal download sites. How did the major record labels react? By continuing their campaign to eliminate the comparatively unprofitable CD single, raising list prices on album-length CDs to $18 or $19 and promoting artists like the Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears — whose strength was single songs, not albums. The result was a lot of unhappy customers, who blamed retailers like us for the dearth of singles and the high prices.

Read more here, or better yet--be a relic and buy CD's from them!

REVIEW: "Scituate" (Village Voice)

A shortee today in the Voice on a new play, Scituate. (It's a town in Massachusetts.)

For what it's worth, I'd like to add that I found the cast fairly appealing and trying their best, given limited commercial material. But in the end, this was just another one better left unreviewed. Not due to amateurishness. But to tv-style hollow superficiality. It felt like an LA actors showcase! Not a contribution to our theatre culture.

Louisville Dispatches

Two detailed reviews of the Humana Festival, currently at Actors Theatre of Louisville: Isherwood and McNulty. They both more or less agree that the most notable plays are those by Naomi Iizuka and Carlos Murillo.

Neither write-up is super enthusiastic, though. Isherwood avoids incendiary remarks like last year's "why do playwrights need to invent new worlds" and leaves it at:

Superior artistry was mostly lacking at this year’s festival, unfortunately. The selections at the festival cannot be used as a barometer of contemporary American playwriting. New plays are produced by the dozens each year at regional theaters. But it was dispiriting to come away from immersion in new playwriting with little to celebrate.

There's a valid point here, I sense. Namely: why does the Humana festival get such props--and such unique national press attention!--when its record as of late boasts few if any breakthrough plays? (Maybe it helps that a major insurance corporation is the backer, and that money provides for a very aggressive pr offensive every March.)

I'm all about supporting new plays and supporting regional theatres. But as Isherwood says, that's happening all over. Why not search out the best new plays all over? Something in the Humana selection process--if we are to believe the recent accounts--seems to not be finding the best that could be out there.

That said, I myself enjoyed my one trip to Louisville two seasons ago. Caught one show, Carlyle Brown's "Pure Confidence," which was ok (strong central idea, weak production), not necessarily what I would program on a "best of" series, but worthy of being exhibited. Most of all I appreciated that there was a local audience in Louisville to come out and see (and enjoy!) these plays. No doubt the extra hype Humana publicity helps. So if it strengthens the interest and loyalty of their local audience, more power to 'em. But otherwise, any hopes of this festival representing a kind of "National Theatre" of new writing are misplaced.

When They Don't Want "The One That I Want"

Michael Riedel bursts the "Grease" bubble this morning, after the celebration of their advance sales in wake of American Idol-lite--I mean, the "You're The One That I Want" reality show.

The phones at Ticketmaster were, I'm told, ringing off the hook because a lot of viewers who bought tickets to "Grease" weren't happy with the actors chosen to play Danny and Sandy: Max Crumm (change the name, kid) and Laura Osnes.

"There was a bit of a frenzy because a lot of people wanted Austin and Ashley to win," says a source. "They wanted their money back."

So much for an open casting process. Maybe it's not good for the audience seeing all the sausage making...

By the way, how's this for a reality tv show pitch: Put on a big Broadway musical, have an open casting call, and have the viewers vote on the winner--except make sure the actors are good! Like, by having an actual professional, Equity open call. Yes, I know the point was the "everyman" appeal. But don't you think the viewing public would also tune in more if they could see some of that great musical theatre talent that's already beating the pavements of Times Square? (Instead of awkward karaoke-singing jocks from Long Island?)

The tv show might have helped give some much-needed visibility to the theatrical arts, but as Riedel reminds us, "The show did marginally better than the Tony Awards, but that's like saying Alan Keyes did marginally better in New Hampshire than Dennis Kucinich."

Sam-BAM-Thank You, Brits!

What to make of the big BAM-Old Vic-Sam Mendes partnership announced today?

On the one hand, great! I'm a super, super Sam fan. I can't wait to see Simon Russell Beale play Leontes and Lopakhin. Be nice of Sir Kevin (Spacey) made an appearance, too, but strangely not, for now. (No matter how much money BAM raises, it won't be enough to pay Spacey's current B'way salary.)

But it is a big, big gimmick, that's for sure. And a disconcerting turning point for BAM, as signalled at the bottom of the article.

Mr. Melillo [Joseph V. Melillo, BAM executive producer], who has been criticized in the past for risk-averse programming, acknowledged that he had relied heavily on British productions but insisted that it was because the work was of such high quality.

Mr. Mendes was more forthrightly pragmatic. “The truth is, there is and has to be in any English-speaking city a limited audience for foreign-language shows,” he said.

For those of us who have cherished BAM over the years, its value has not been the occasional Brit-import retread (Peter Hall's lifeless Importance of Being Earnest packaged tour, e.g.), but the odd foreign language visits from all over the globe. Sure, I've spent a few deadly nights staring at supertitles while listening to screeching. But where else could I catch up with the new European avant-garde directors? I've always thought BAM has saved me thousands of dollars in airfare! Yes, some of the highlights have involved British artists. But honestly, the greatest shows I saw by Declan Donnelan and Peter Brook were with international casts. At its best, BAM has truly been a center for constantly varying international performance.

Now remember the French 4:48 Psychosis débacle last season? I'm afraid this may be the result. As BAM (like all arts orgs on the move) seeks to widen its subscription base, supertitle theatre is less and less attractive to them, I'm sure. Note what Mendes says about "limited audience." BAM's got a couple of huge venues to fill. From their view, the only way to recoup after booking an expensive tour is to sell out the house every night. That's hard to do for even 3 or 4 nights, when people hear there's going to be reading involved, I guess.

From there it's not too great a leap to asking: hmm, what does pack the house. Oh--Brits!!!

Another shift in thinking here is from the other side of the pond. Spacey needs this deal bad to keep his quixotic Old Vic eneterprise afloat. Once upon a time, the subsidized English theatre could depend on Broadway transfers--"Nicholas Nickleby" was on Broadway, after all, not at Lincoln Center. Even "Les Miz" made such a transition. "History Boys" was the most recent success, when the Royal National formed a partnership with commercial producers to transfer a set number of shows a year. But their latest venture "Journey's End," alas, has not proven snobby or charming enough.

So, their nonprofits now have to increasingly rely on our nonprofits (like BAM) to get their work over here. And of course the synergy helps the fundraising on both sides.

Lortel Awards

Precursurs to the Obies, the nominations are out for the Lortel Awards, also devoted to Off-Broadway. They'll be handed out on May 7.

In short, the plays: "Busy World is Hushed", "Dying City", "Indian Blood", "Stuff Happens"

The musicals: "Gutenberg," "In the Heights," "Striking 12", "Spring Awakening."

If it seems weird such juggernauts as "Stuff Happens" and "Spring Awakening" is competing against the little guys, well they did play Off Broadway.

Quote of the Day

"The original proposal to bring the arts to ground zero wasn’t merely to give four lucky arts institutions new homes at the center of the city’s attention. It was also to make sure that the redevelopment site wouldn’t be monopolized by grief or commerce. The plan created a temporary sense of good will — but when that collapsed, it showed Gov. George Pataki exactly which way the political winds were blowing and how to take cover. It was an apt reminder of how weak the national appetite for government support of the arts really is."

-The New York Times Editorial page, weighing in on yet another embarassment in the plans for a cultural center at Ground Zero: dropping the Signature Theatre Company.