Quote of the Day

"With tickets going on sale months and months in advance of a show's opening - and with prices at $200 to $450 - I don't think it's inappropriate for columnists to give their impression of a show. I hope people read my reports on "Young Frankenstein" and "The Little Mermaid" out of town. I would have saved them lots of money.

These people are not making art. They're in it for the money. Period."

-The Post's Michael Riedel, defending his swipes at the forthcoming Shrek against Dramatist Guild prez John Wideman's objections.

Yes, in theory workshops should not be "reviewed." But my question for Disney--and for the Dramatists Guild--is: when you put on a "workshop" that's supposed to be invitation only and just for fundraising, etc...why do you invite the freakin' press???

The answer obviously is for puff pieces and free promotion. Such events are usually accompanied by Hollywood-esque "junket" interviews.

So is it fair to draw a distinction between a not-for-profit workshop and a Broadway "teaser"? Is Riedel right that criticizing the Shreks and Young Frankensteins in advance is fair game because "they're only in it for the money"?

Rose's Turn, Turns Deadly!

Anyone who saw Patti LuPone's Gypsy at City Center last summer knows she brought the house down.

But--scarily--that seemed to literally happen Monday night at first preview.

Toward the end of the show, as Ms. LuPone’s Mama Rose was about to launch into her show-stopping number, there was a crash in the balcony. A huge metal plate, about 30 inches in diameter and part of the ventilation system, came crashing down from the ceiling. It hit a young woman in the head and ricocheted into the back of my friend’s neck before rolling into my seat.

Confused, we looked up and saw the hole in the ceiling. The young woman held her head and sobbed and quickly fell into hysterics. My friend was startled, but luckily had been wearing her coat, which cushioned the blow to her neck.

Thankfully, both women escaped without serious injury.

But still...holy shit!

I'm surprised this wasn't a bigger story, and that it took me over a day to catch up with it--on a NYTimes web-only feature, their "Well" blog, which is in the "Health" section! And the post is there just because the writer happened to be at the performance.

If the grand St. James theatre is falling apart, what about all the others? A house manager is quoted in the webpost, but just to the effect of "the theater is still trying to determine what happened, and the show will go on tonight as planned."

How about asking the owners at the Jujamcyn Organization how they let the safety conditions of their building lapse so badly?

Or should we take comfort that the falling piece was from the more modern ventilation system, not the original 1927 infrastructure itself.

Broadway is Texting You!

Remember when they used to tell playwrights on the Rialto, "If you want to send a message, use Western Union"?

Well, amend that to: "text it!"

(I mean, talk about dated expressions...)

Some scary visions from the future of "viral" marketing last week from Variety's Gordon Cox. Basically, Broadway producers are eager to adopt the latest in cellphone targeting to send you all kinds of "subliminable" promptings via your phone. Or better yet--if you have a headset--into your head!

I linked to a similar report here back in June.

One consolation:

Current mobile activity on the Rialto requires consumers to take the first step in opting in. The paranoid worst-case scenario, which imagines your phone ringing every time you walk past a Broadway theater, isn't really possible with most U.S. phones, according to Wachs.

Wha??? There are phones in Europe that have some mind of their own?

If this comes here, I am avoiding that "Grease" theatre like the plague.

(Dated expressions, I know, I know...)

Quote of the Day

"I get tired of the jokes about who's going to play the instruments in 'Peter Grimes'...I've done over 20 productions in my life, and they've not all involved people carrying tubas across the stage."

-John Doyle, currently showing his range simultaneously at the Met (Grimes) and on Broadway (Catered Affair).

Indeed, I too am sick of people talking as if John Doyle somehow invented (and only 3 years ago!) the radical concept of ensemble staging, where the onstage performers actually create the whole show in front of you.

When actors move set pieces on and off as part of the action do we say, "Aha! I bet he's doing that to avoid paying the stagehands union!" (Not that that's possible, of course...)

But what do you expect from people who have never seen theatre at less than $75 a ticket and less than 1000 seats.

Gielgud the Outlaw

Jasper Britton as Gielgud, caught in the act.

It's always news when a critic writes a play, I suppose. But Nicholas de Jongh (of London's Evening Standard) has piqued even more than usual interest, given his chosen subject: the very public 1953 arrest of John Gielgud after he was caught chatting up gents in a public lavatory.

The play is based on the real-life incident in 1953 when the late John Gielgud, then at the height of his fame as an actor, was arrested in a public lavatory in Chelsea, and pleaded guilty in court for the charge of persistently importuning men for immoral purposes. His conviction caused a sensation and threatened the continuation of his career – but it also helped break the great taboo upon the general discussion in the national press of homosexuality, which was then an illegal practice in Britain.

I never about this episode, so I must say, as a Gielgud fan, I'm intrigued. Shocking that one of the most illustrious British stage careers was almost derailed by such stupid Victorianism. (As if ruining Oscar Wilde wasn't enough.)

Speaking of Gielgud's career, I find it interesting to remember 1953 was the year of probably was Gielgud's biggest Hollywood role at that point, as Cassius opposite Marlon Brando in Julius Caesar. Nice to see (from his filmography) that the first director to hire him for a major film after "the incident" was his old friend Larry in Richard III.

23.5%

That was the average capacity total for Passing Strange's first week of previews (Feb 18-24).

Mind you, that was basically the first 8 performances, in a show with no stars, and no advance word north of 14th Street. (Aside from tons of coverage in the Times.)

While 3 empty seats out of every 4 never looks good, keep in mind that 1/4th of the Belasco Theatre is still 250 people a night. But that about maxes out the downtown crowd willing to fork over Broadway prices.

Let's hope ticket sales have gone up since the "money" reviews. At least to 50%!

(Meanwhile, in the very same week, fellow hipster musical In The Heights did a whopping 80% in an even bigger house! This one's got legs...)

UPDATE: Indeed, as Steve points out in Comments, the new grosses out today from last week do reflect an increase for Passing Strange--31.1%! True, the impact of the review could be a few days, and that figure doesn't reflect future sales. Stay tuned...

Quote of the Day

[He] chalked up the split to "artistic differences. We thought it should be good."

Rick Elice, Jersey Boys co-librettist, commenting on why he and partner Marshall Brickman bailed "Father of the Bride: The Musical."

(As reported by Riedel.)

O'Neill Center Retains Leadership!

The O'Neill Playwrights Center has remarkably not replaced their leadership! Wendy Goldberg is now signed till 2010.

For those of you who know...how's she doin'?

Avant Garde Crossovers?

Charles McNulty has an interesting LA Times piece considering a slew of recent avant-garde/pop hybrid pieces from Wooster Group (Hamlet), Will Power (The Seven), and even Les Freres Corbusier.

While commending all to a degree, when contrasted with the more severe alienating aesthetic of something like The Living Theatre's The Brig (currently touring in LA), he can't help wondering if the new generation of iconoclasts are chickening out a bit.

There's something usually quite rarefied about such theatrically assembled works. The audience, for the most part, is the already initiated or the intrepid few willing to stretch their performing arts paradigms, while more mainstream attendees are typically left scratching their heads. Recall what happened when Robert Wilson's "The Black Rider" played at the Ahmanson Theatre and subscribers unaccustomed to the stylized storytelling were reported to be leaving in angry droves, some before intermission.

Perhaps this accounts for why the new breed of innovators seems to be rebelling against the example of their sometimes obscure forerunners. Yearning for wider appreciation, these artists want their avant-garde attitude and their accessibility too.

Yes, it's hard to think of current celebrated enfant terribles actually surviving the poverty and fringe-existence a group like the Living Theatre thrived on forty years ago. But one could counter that the younger generation has less innate scorn for pop culture than did the predecessors (who came of age in the relatively homogonous and limited white-male fare of 50s and 60s Hollywood). In the age of the internet and all things "streaming," the current crop sees no shame in the current multi-cultural pop culture and perhaps a genuine opportunity to reach out to more people and build a bigger community.

It's an argument at least.

I do agree with McNulty, though, that the sheer indifference to audience pleasure you get from The Brig today is...well, refreshing!

I knew John Cougar Mellencamp was SCARY, but...

Why do I have a feeling this is not coming to a theatre near you anytime soon.

“Ghost Brothers of Darkland County,” a new Southern Gothic musical by Stephen King, above left, the horror writer, and John Mellencamp, above right, the musician, is to open in April 2009 at the Alliance Theater in Atlanta. In a recent interview in Rolling Stone Mr. Mellencamp said that if the musical, about the reverberations of a tragedy in small-town Mississippi, did well in Atlanta, it would head to Broadway.

Strikes me as the poor man's Capeman!

In Bay Area, Torches are Passing

"Bay Area theaters are undergoing the greatest amount of flux since the mid-1980s," says the SF Chronicle, turning our attention to a new crop of AD's at Ashland and San Jose, as well as new associates and initiaves at the biggies ACT and Berkeley.

Let's see if it leads to a theatrical Renaissance in what is already surely one of the country's top 5 playgoing regions.

REVIEW: Moliere's Don Juan

"Yehuda Duenyas IS Don Juan!"

In today's Voice, my snapshot of Don Juan by way of Moliere, by way of "The National Theater of the United States of America."

No, we still don't have a real national theatre. You didn't miss anything. You can read about this Obie-winning group here. This was my first time with them, and I had fun. Curious to see more.

It was also nice to get out of Manhattan and explore another emerging theatre scene in Long Island City. The Chocolate Factory there has an interesting line up for the Spring, as well. Looks like they're out to become the St. Ann's Warehouse of Queens!

(And they're not to be confused with London's Menier Chocolate Factory--originators of the current Sunday in the Park with George.)

"Fantasy Casting Calls"

Yes, that was me in the Times' "Spring Theatre Preview" Sunday.

But you dead-tree subscribers missed me, because I was only deemed cool enough for web-readers.

So check out the online version (or as I like to say "bonus edition") of the "Fantasy Casting Calls" piece, and read what A-listers like me and Kim Catrall had to say on the topic. An online exclusive!

And while you're at it, let's continue to conversation here and tell me who you would like to see on stage in a great classic role?

To get things started: I also told them it's time for Ivo Van Hove to take on Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, with two of his favorite actors, that real-life fiery couple Bill Camp and Liz Marvel. God knows what liquids they could throw at each other in this one!

Bentley, Brustein, & Kaufmann: The Transscript

Back in the fall, three giants of oldschool, intellectual American theatre criticism--Eric Bentley, Robert Brustein, and Stanley Kaufmann--gathered at a roundtable here in NYC at the Philoctetes Society. Since neither I nor anyone I know could find the damn place(!) I'm grateful to American Theatre fpr printing an edited transcript this month.

(The complete text--and even a video!--are available on the Philoctetes website.)

Lots of scintillating and provocative statements all around (some fresh, some grumpy). But I found myself nodding along most with Brustein. Here he is explaining how he got fed up with "conventional" reviewing even after making a good career at it:

It was very boring to be continually banging your head against what you thought to be the really deleterious and second-rate mediocrity of the Broadway stage. You gained nothing. You were probably losing readers. So the task I set for myself was to put theatre into a context and try to see how this or that play fit into our particular time, our particular society, our particular culture, our particular political life, and how it reflected on that. I don’t think anyone can write a word without somehow creating that kind of reflection. You just have to find it. Then I began to get happier about my criticism.

And more and more, I found myself subordinating the judgment that was so necessary to criticism, and that we’re all looking for: Does he like it? Does she hate it? When I read criticism, I find that to be the least interesting part. I began to call that “Himalayan criticism” after Danny Kaye—when he was asked whether he liked the Himalayas, he said, “Loved him, hated her.” It’s essentially what we’ve all been practicing—Himalayan criticism.

Indeed. Other subspecies of this kind of review include: Let's rate everyone's accent! Or, compare the actors to the stars who did the role in the movie!

And on the perennial question of where are the new great American plays...

It’s not that there are no playwrights in this country—I think there are more playwrights in this country of high quality than ever before in my memory. They just don’t have a place to have their plays produced. Broadway has turned away from them altogether, as has even the resident theatre movement, which is no longer being supported either by the National Endowment for the Arts or the Ford Foundation or the Rockefeller Foundation (though there is some support from Mellon and Shubert and Jujamcyn, but not enough to keep them going). Therefore, [the resident theatres] have begun to turn themselves into commercial producing organisms. And they’re putting on things that have been successful elsewhere and not taking the chances on the new. As a result, we have succeeded ourselves out of existence, I think.

Isn’t it also an incredibly impoverishing pressure on a young playwright who wants to see his or her work produced when he or she is told, “Look, two or three characters max, one set”? What kind of constricting effect does that have on the dramatic imagination of somebody who wants to think epically, who wants to think about class?...And if that playwright does write that play, he or she is told, “We’ll give you a reading, a workshop, another reading, another workshop.” They never get productions.

And if that's not depressing enough, imagine how my heart sunk at these encouraging words from Mr. Bentley:

Some of you young people here who might be thinking about becoming drama critics, I think the advice is, “Don’t.”

Oh well.

(By the way, his counter-advice is we should all become playwrights!)

So if you're not an American Theatre subscriber already (or pilfer it from your office) print it out for a good long read.

Too Many Plays?

"I don't think the market can support so many plays."

-Bob Boyett, producer of many of this season's high profile dramas on Broadway.

He oughta know. As Variety's Gordon Cox illustrates, the abundance of dramatic fare in commercial productions ended up crowding the market, leaving solid critics' darlings like The Homecoming and even The Seafarer irretrievably in the red, it appears.

Other highlights?

Jeffrey Richards--another last-of-the-drama-lovers producer--argues: "Plays were in a good position, because there was no musical that really took hold of the public's imagination this fall."

On the other hand, Manny Azenburg says it's apples and oranges since, "we have two different audiences."

At least two.

Dennis Letts

If you're a fan of August: Osage County then you probably already know that the author's father was in the original cast. Sadly Dennis Letts has now passed away after struggling with cancer through much of the run.

Mr. Letts created the role in the Steppenwolf Theatre Company's world premiere of August in summer 2007, and moved with the troupe to Broadway. He was diagnosed with lung cancer in September 2007 after the Windy City run.

"His choice to persevere with the New York production in the face of his devastating diagnosis is a testament to his love for the project and the people involved," Tracy Letts said in a statement. "Dad had a full and fascinating life, and August: Osage County was the cherry on top."

Having still not seen the show yet, I'm sorry I will have missed him.

He reportedly left the show only a few weeks ago, and is still listed on the official website's cast list. I assume his understudy, Munson Hicks, has taken over the role?

Diddy, "Raisin," TV

The trailer for the upcoming ABC Raisin in the Sun movie with Sean Combs & co. actually looks pretty hot! I didn't see the Broadway revival, but this just might vindicate his performance after all--especially since the camera might favor it far better than the stage.

There's also Phylicia Rashad and Audra MacDonald, of course.

And just the whole atmosphere and look of the film (directed by Kenny Leon from his stage production) just seems right. Very in period and very tough.

Worth watching, I say. This Monday, February 25.

(But with the trailer, you may want to skip past the first minute of Diddy's weird introduction.)

Whatever Happened to The "Playwright in Residence"

I feel late to the party with the current NYT.com "Reading Group" discussion of August: Osage County. (Maybe because I still haven't seen it!)

But some interesting comments from Frank Rich and Marsha Norman, as well as more literary (i.e. "Reading Group") peeps Eliza Minot and Blake Wilson.

Like Isaac, I found especially valuable Norman's comments on the importance of the Steppenwolf relationship with Tracy Letts--something sadly unheard of these days in New York and indeed much of the country.

I like what this play represents: a life-long association of a writer with a group of actors and a theater. This is why Shakespeare wrote so much, he had a whole gang of actors waiting to do his work. Go down the list — the writers who wrote a lot of wonderful plays were always associated with a community of actors they could write for: Shepard, Chekhov, Brian Friel, Alan Ackbourne, David Mamet, Lanford Wilson, Caryl Churchill, Richard Foreman, Wendy Wasserstein. Playwrights who live apart from theaters and actors have a lot of trouble getting their work done. Playwrights need to be around actors, need to be a part of a theater’s life.

[...]

If we wanted to do one single thing to improve the theatrical climate in America, we’d assign one playwright to every theater that has a resident acting company. People wonder why so much great work came out of Actors Theatre of Louisville in the early days. I was there, so I know it was simply that you had everything you needed: actors who wanted to work, empty stages ready for plays and an artistic director who gave everybody a chance to do whatever they wanted as soon as they could think of it. Playwriting in America has suffered a devastating blow from the development process that keeps writers separate from the rest of the company, working on the same play for years. What playwrights want is what Steppenwolf has given Mr. Letts: a way to get a new play done, see what works, and then go on to the next one. “August: Osage County” is way more than a wonderful play. It is how we get back to having American plays on Broadway. We get them written for actors who want to do them, then producers get on board and start selling tickets.

Indeed--why not a "Resident Playwright" program? Well, first I guess you have to bring back the idea of a resident acting company! The biggest, most well funded ones I can think of are Oregon Shakespeare Fest, ACT in San Francisco, and ART in Boston.

I imagine these and other such companies have occasionally had such visiting writers. But from my experience these tend to be very short-term "residencies" where the playwright gets, at best, a reading or two of works already read to death and maybe a commission for some new children's show or community oriented documentary theatre piece that they'll never get published or performed anywhere else.

The Chekhov/MAT, Lanford Wilson/Circle Rep, and (may we add) Odets/Group Theatre model Norman is referencing has effectively died, institutionally. Certain playwrights still like collaborating with certain actors and directors. But no framework supports that anymore.

And it's worth investing in, the next time someone devises a new grant program for "emerging writers."

I believe TCG has such a program--but can anyone elucidate what it entails?

(BTW--you may notice I snipped out of the Norman quote her remarks about how playwrights benefit from having been actors, like Letts. I'll leave that to the scribes out there to argue with.)

Bitty Bear's Last Bow

You may remember how the American Girl empire has been in an Actors Equity fight for a little over a year now, over the demands of their in-store performers to join their professional union.

The company's solution? They're folding the whole repertoire. American Girls Revue, Bitty Bear's Matinee, all the classics. The Trib's Chris Jones has the story.

Explains he:

"Management felt that the time was right to find new entertaining experiences for our guests," Parks said. Those experiences, however, won't include live performers.

Might I suggest...Revolt of the Beavers?

"Passing Strange"--Stranger to B'way?

Today, Riedel reports on the backstage buffonery over what to do with a genuine rock musical once you've pored millions of dollars into bringing it uptown to Broadway.

The other day in the green room of "Theater Talk" (the talk show I host on PBS), Stew, the founder of the band that bears his name, said he's often baffled by the Broadway argot.

For example, the term "button": the big finish to a song that's supposed to get the audience to applaud.

Shubert chairman Gerald Schoenfeld (who, even when he's on his cellphone, still says "hold the wire" when another call comes through) thinks there should be more "buttons" on Stew's songs.

"I had no idea what he was talking about," Stew confesses. "In the rock world, you don't necessarily expect applause at the end of every number. Sometimes, songs just flow into each other."

One area of contention is the noise level. The Shuberts and McCann think the band is too loud.

"The drummer is too exuberant," Schoenfeld often remarks in a booming voice of authority.

He might as well have screeched: "Turn that noise down, you rapscallians!"

Liz McCann, the lead producer, is the embodiment of good intentions. But she also ruined Well (another Public Theatre creature) by transferring it from downtown glory to Tony-fizzer, and sticking it with a flashier new clunky set in the process.

This will make a fascinating comparison with In the Heights when it opens down the street. I assume the producers of that will not be so stupid to pump down the volume.

I mean--with all the over mic-ing and Young Frankenstein sound blitzes on the Rialto these days, these people are worried whether a five-piece band will rock out a little too..."exuberantly"???