The Playgoer: Roundabout Woes, ctd.

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Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Roundabout Woes, ctd.

In case you missed your NY Times today, Patrick Healy adds to the "What's Up With the Roundabout" pile-on. Of interest: looks like the company will end season in the red for the first time in two decades, and Todd Haimes admits an obsession with real estate.

Perhaps even more illustrative of their problems is that their big Spring show for the flagship American Airlines B'way venue is another one of those bloated revivals of a small Off Broadway play from twenty years ago no one much cared about the first time: Terrence McNally's Lips Together Teeth Apart. And with only minor-TV-celebrity leads. This is their ticket back to solvency???

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The fact that every one of Todd's colleagues had to mention him by name in the same breath as the Roundabout was unsettling. I don't know why. Don't other people work there, or does he really do it all by himself?

More unsettling, however, is Mr. Haimes's smug dishonesty when it comes to his blathering about "creating a home for artists." That isn't what the Roundabout is trying to do at all, and they are very brazen about it when off the record. Their mission is to "produce revivals with stars." Period.

I hope some of these commercial producers turn their resentment into a lawsuit. I'd like to see a judge and jury weigh in on how well the Roundabout adheres to its not-for-profit mission.