I'm now thinking the problem may have been the venue, and it would be too bad if they couldn't try to reopen somewhere else.
We bought full-price seats for the matinee today, hoping to see it one last time - and right now, in addition to other disability stuff, I'm unable to use steps in general since surgery in June, and the staircase there is treacherous if you have steps trouble. There is a service elevator in the cafe downstairs. A lady from the cafe went upstairs twice to get someone at the Triad or the show to make the elevator available, but by 2:20 before the 2:30 show, the word was "five more minutes" and the upstairs folks clearly were not going to let me use the elevator until everyone else was seated, which at the Triad is a disaster to be seated last.
My advice: Choose your parents carefully and try not to be born disabled. If you are not disabled at birth, try not to become disabled. Seriously, unless it's their own protected class, no one cares. As they sang in Encores' "Superman," you got disabilities, or something like that.
Long way of saying: Don't judge viability when the reception is so great but the venue could make a laughing hyena depressed. The time for "Forbidden Broadway" is not over, or at least that can't be judged by this run.
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As Emily Litella says: Never mind!
Did press already know about this before I kvetched? Must be the deep state! :)
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/02/theater/forbidden-broadway-moving-york-theater-company.html
My luck lately, the 99%-always reliable elevator at the York will be on hiatus when I go.
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Just read this show will not extend beyond the end of November. Maybe its usual audience didn't see a lot of the recent work?
From last season's Broadway musical productions, it looks like "Hadestown" and "Ain't Too Proud" are the only two that feels like they WILL have financial success. "Beetlejuice" looks like it might possibly have picked up, though, but seems so associated with its star. (Is it the case that even "Kiss Me Kate" may not get picked up again, at least in NYC?_
Maybe we're at a point in time where a musical NEEDS to be premium-bait to even recoup, where if people aren't willing to pay premium, they're also not coming in enough numbers at all. But that a premium show becomes a huge event (almost printing money Merrick never dreamed possible) will , I bet, keep investors developing new shows for the genuine thrill they seem to get when they become part of a "Dear Evan Hansen" or "Moulin Rouge."
(I did find it odd to wait on a TKTS line with cousins from Scranton, and then the discounted seat was $105 each after a wait that used to bring a bargain.)
For those of us who love New York theater but can only get there rarely (or not at all) this exchange makes me miss the CUNY produced ‘Theater Talk’ even more where critics like Green or Brantley with actors and producers etc could share their opinions and experiences. Now that was a wonderful forum.
“How Are Things in Irish Drama?” is recycled Forbidden Broadway. They used the same tune and theme to poke fun at THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LENAANE years ago.
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@Matthew MacDermid - This example for Irish drama being still relevant a decade apart is why the whole history of the show tracks what's going on in Broadway theater.
I recall the "Anna Karenina" train scene to the tune of "Atchison- Topeka and The Santa Fe" popping up while the musical "Anna Karenina" was on Broadway and also in a forbidden literature/classics project he did, but different performers made it new even if you'd seen it in the other.
(Has this ever been submitted for a Pulitzer for commentary? The "Behind the Mylar Curtain" book he and Michael Portantiere wrote certainly reads like a history, along with the coffee-table trappings. Maybe a Very Best of 40 or 50 Years someday could be a Broadway show in this flexible time of what's a Broadway show?
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I was glancing through the "Forbidden Broadway: Behind the Mylar Curtain" book before, and with the Stritch book there on the desk, it somehow needed to be said -
"And one for Mylar!"
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Regarding "he certainly struck fool’s gold with the fabulous parody sequence called “Woke-lahoma!,”
Just reading that "Oklahoma" put up its closing notice. :( I'm remembering that the classic "Grim Hotel" actually got people to re-see "Grand Hotel" in its day. to the point that we at times find ourselves slipping into "People come, people go, people move chairs" as if it was not a spoof. "Oklahoma" has even fewer seats to fill to break even than "Grand Hotel" - I could actually imagine Dan Fish embracing the skewering in "Woke-lahoma!" even proudly saying "Yeah, he's got it right."
Maybe some jovial appearances together?
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I'm waiting for Forbidden Cabaret.
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@Grittenhouse - regarding " Forbidden Cabaret."
Given that I've been blacklisted at 54 Below AND couldn't afford to even see Petula Clark at the old Feinstein's, it shouldn't be a stretch that I actually tried this!!
Try Eating at Subway, Darling (affording Petula at Feinstein's)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WQiQ9FhEBI
Go Tell Emma (Emma Stone takes over from Michelle Williams at "Cabaret," which FB'way somehow missed)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmV2qmS_-5Q
Jonathan Tunick seemed to get pigeonholed because of massive success at a field that wasn't composing, so his composing gets minimized even though it's as good (or better) as many shows that have been huge successes. In the same way, it's not strange in terms of the way auduences think, I guess, that Gerard Alessandrini got branded the guy who did this one thing - and did it so incredibly well. I loved his "Madame X" with new music, and reviews were really good IIRC, but it just didn't get picked up, like 90+% of festival shows. The work he did with Jonathan Tolins and Fred Barton on "Creature from the Black Lagoon" was so well-written, but some thing kept it from hitting huge enough to lead them to more at Universal. I hope he gets on Broadway if he wants it, though who knows if that's his goal now?
In trying to avoid doing any songs/subjects he'd done, I'd even imagined Patti LuPone going to his spoof of her and finding it adorable and not nasty enough https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NHwKWrvqlk figuring he'd never parody himself. But he did spoof being a parodist in "You'll Never Work Again" - and I can tell you producers who have no issue with their shows mercilessly knocking other public figures really don't take it at all well when they are spoofed.
He remains the master in hitting these 40 years head on and masterfully putting it onstage.
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@Freddie
So right. Type casting applies to writers and composers as well as actors. And it is equally wrong.
As well, no one hits the bullseye all the time. Just because one edition of a topical revue is less than what came before is no reason to infer a down hill trajectory.
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Hi Ed Weissman, and yet sometimes all turns out well overall - whether or not that reaction was fair, without that reaction we might not have been treated to him shaking it up with "Spamilton" which feels to me like a masterpiece of a genre, that should endure in comedy history as long as "Hamilton" holds its place in theater history.
I looked back, and "Madame X" had even gotten a terrific notice in the Times! It could be that there's a block on letting people stretch. (Even decades ago, people were shocked that Mary Tyler Moore was actually an actress in "Ordinary People"and Cher in "Silkwood" - what had they been doing on TV for so many years before that?)
Yes, I guess I really did just compare Gerard Alessandrini to Cher and MTM, and Siri didn't laugh so maybe I'm OK. :) Maybe more directly on point - I can't find the quote, but I remember Neil Simon saying on TV that he wrote "The Star Spangled Girl" only because his fans expected something from him every year. And then he roared back the next couple of times out, too.
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I am struck by Brantley's remarks re Butterworth, poking fun at Butterworth's "lugubriousness" and "luridness" as writer of "The Ferryman.". How does that equate with his review where he found the play thrilling and nothing but raves for the playwright.
I know Forbidden B'way is a parody- having seen umpteen years of their performances but the choice of those descriptive words riled me and made Brantley appear insincere as a critic.
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@fritz - Just as to "lurid," is that a negative word? I've been thinking and calling "The Beauty Queen of Leenane" the most lurid experience I've ever had at a play, more so than even seeing a murder onstage - but certainly never meant that as negative. Does it have a bad connotation if lurid is what was intended?
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